ErnieB and Thomas, doggone it, I can't find my recipe. It's been several years, but 6 of us guys used to get together periodically to make tamales; an all day assembly line operation with some big steaming pots and big stainless steel bowls and good spatulas for spreading the masa. The first step was cooking and grinding the meat (and the guys I did it with wanted beef chuck roasts boiled with chopped onions and one of us would cook it all the day before). We bought dry masa mix, then mixed it with melted lard (real hog lard) and a little chili powder to get it warm and the right consistency for spreading. And we mixed the ground meat with salt, chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper, and enough of the melted lard to moisten it. Of course, we also bought bundles of corn shucks and they had to be washed and soaked in water to soften them. Then one guy would be washing shucks, taking them out of the water and handing to two guys spreading masa, who'd pass them on to the two guys spooning the meat on and rolling them up (and you turn the small end over), and they'd pass them to the last guy who'd have a big pot with an inch or less of water in the bottom and a rack to keep the tamales up out of the water. He'd place (stack) them on the rack in a circle with the open end of the shuck to the center of the pot (when the pot was full that left a hole down the middle), then he'd lay a damp towel on top, put the lid on and put it on the stove to steam them for a couple of hours. We'd start pretty early in the morning, get the first pot made to eat while we worked, then make one pot full (usually 5 dozen) for each to take home.
And the most important ingredient of all; for 6 of us, two cases of beer was required./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
Bird
