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Chicken Tamales
Boil two pounds of corn and a handful of lime in water enough to cover, until the skins of the corn are loosened; then wash the lime from the corn, and grind the latter very fine. Boil a large chicken (or a little more than three pounds of beef), and mix the resulting liquid with the ground corn, adding a scanty pound of firm lard, and salt to taste. Having boiled one pound of red peppers until soft, remove the seeds and skins and grind the peppers fine; add three or four pieces of garlic (chopped), a small quantity of sliced tomato, and one-half pound of ground chilis. Mix this preparation with the chicken or beef; then fry for a few minutes, and add salt to taste. Spread wet corn-husks with the prepared corn meal, put in the chicken mixture, and then boiled eggs, olives, and cucumber, if desired. Then put on another corn-husk spread with meal, and boil for from threefourths of an hour to one hour in one gallon of water. When all are half done, turn the top ones over. The above directions are calculated to make one dozen tamales.
This is a full nixtamal-from-scratch tamale, written for a cook with a metate and a wood range. Nothing in it is unsound, but several steps assume knowledge the text does not supply.
- The lime must be the right lime"A handful of lime" means cal — food-grade calcium hydroxide, sold as cal or pickling lime. Garden lime, quicklime and masonry lime are not interchangeable with it. The usual proportion is about 1 percent of the corn's dry weight, so roughly a tablespoon for two pounds; the corn is then rinsed and rubbed until the loosened skins and all trace of slipperiness are gone.
- "Corn" means dried field cornNot sweet corn. Two pounds of dried dent or flint corn is what nixtamalizes; boiled 20-45 minutes in the lime water, then steeped off the heat until a kernel's skin slips under the thumb.
- Grinding "very fine"The original assumes a metate or a hand mill. A wet nixtamal will not grind properly in a food processor. If you have no mill, masa harina slaked with the hot chicken broth stands in for the whole first paragraph.
- A scanty pound of lardA little under a pound, and it wants to be beaten into the masa until light rather than simply stirred in — that aeration is what keeps the dough from turning dense. Rather less lard than this is closer to modern taste.
- The peppers are dried chilesThe peppers are probably dried chiles -- The boiling, seeding and grinding described is the usual treatment for dried red chile pods such as guajillo or ancho, though the instruction to remove the skins would also suit fresh peppers roasted and peeled. The additional half pound of ground chilis makes this a very hot filling by present-day standards — taste the paste and scale it down before it goes near the meat.
- Cook the chicken for the brothThe point of boiling the bird whole is the liquid, which carries the masa. Reserve every drop; the dough should be the consistency of soft butter, not stiff.
- Boiling versus steamingThe recipe boils the tamales in a gallon of water rather than steaming them, and tells you to turn the top ones over when half done. Standing them upright in a steamer over simmering water for the same 45 to 60 minutes gives a cleaner result and no risk of the husks unwrapping into the pot. They are done when a husk peels away from the masa without sticking.
- HusksSoak dried corn husks in hot water 30 minutes until pliable. Wrapping in a second husk spread with masa, as directed here, makes a thick-walled tamale; folding a single husk over is the commoner method now.
- YieldA dozen very large tamales, or closer to two dozen at the size sold today. Two of the large ones make a meal.
Tamales reached English-language household cookbooks late and by way of the American Southwest and Mexico, usually printed as a curiosity for northern readers — which is why this version explains the lime treatment of the corn at all, a step no Mexican cook would have needed spelled out. That step is nixtamalization, an indigenous Mesoamerican technique of thousands of years' standing: alkali softens the hull, makes the corn grindable, and incidentally frees niacin the body cannot otherwise absorb, a fact European maize-eating regions learned the hard way through pellagra. The optional boiled eggs, olives and cucumber tucked into the filling may reflect what is often said to be a regional habit of enriching festival tamales with whatever was on hand, though cucumber is unusual.