Make It Mexican With Roland: Tamales

7. Cooking The Tamales

LP Hastings

You will fill this great pot with your nicely wrapper tamales in a standing fashion. Start by leaning one against the wall of the pot and then stacking the rest in a circle around it. The key is to loosely fill the pot--if there are too many tamales, the steam will not reach all of them.

Once your pot is loaded up, close the lid and put it on the stove under medium to high heat. The more tamales you have in the pot, the warmer you will want the stove top to be. It usually takes one and a half to two hours for these babies to be ready, but you should really judge with your nose. When you can smell the earthy masa in your kitchen, it's probably time to check on them.

To see if they are indeed ready, pull one out of the pot, unwrap it's wax paper, and peel back a part of the husk. If there is little to no masa coming off on the husk, your tamales are ready. You can also stick a toothpick through the center, much like a cake, and if it comes out clean you're good to go.

LP Hastings

Perfectly Done Tamale = No Masa on the Husk

And that's it! As you can see, tamales are easy to make but a bit time-consuming, so have a whole day set aside to prepare and enjoy them. When you're serving them to friends, drizzle some green sauce and sour cream over the top with some jalapeños and cotija cheese on the side. Of course, if you don't want to put in the elbow grease you can try these same tamales made by Roland himself at Rubalcava's. Enjoy!

LP Hastings

Roland and His Tamales

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