Homemade Tamales

We made tamales!  Homemade tamales!

I saw bags of masa at the grocery store last weekend and immediately thought about tamales and decided to go for it and try to make some.  So, I also bought a large package of chicken breasts that was on sale, a large can of green enchilada sauce, and a bag of corn husks.

I cooked the chicken in the crock pot all day today with the sauce, chopped onion, and garlic.  By mid afternoon, it was done and falling off the bones.  Hubby took all the meat off the bones, shredded it and mixed some of the green chili sauce and onions into it and set it aside.  I soaked the corn husks in hot water for about an hour.

I watched a couple of videos online that showed how to assemble the tamales.  It looked easy and it was!  It was also a lot of fun!  As we made the tamales, we set them inside the holey part of a pasta pot.  When we were finished, I set it into the main pot that had water in the bottom.  I got the water boiling and steamed them for 45 minutes and checked to see if they were done.  They ended up needing a little more cooking time.  Fifteen more minutes did the trick!

They turned out really good!  We had them with salsa on top.  Yum!  

When we started out assembling the tamales, I was making them kind of small.  Turned out that hubby was making them a lot bigger.  And, as we went along, they seemed to get bigger and bigger.  Funny, but it worked out just fine.  Next time, I'll use something to measure out the masa so they'll be more uniform in size.

We'll definitely be making tamales again!  They're so much fun and so good!

We'll try some different flavors too.  Turns out they can be made sweet or savory.  I had no idea!