Cooking for the Future – Tamales and Chili

Ive been having trouble getting dinner ready lately and with all the CSA veggies we get every week, I hate to see anything go to waste. We had a ton of parsley, cilantro. scallions, banana peppers, tomatoes, and walla walla onions that needed to be put to good use. We split a quarter cow with our neighbors so we have huge 5 pound roasts in our freezer just waiting for us to get creative. So I decided to spend the weekend making various meals. By the end of the weekend, I’d made a quart of tomato sauce, chimichurri sauce, pupusas, chili, burritos, and tamales. Phew! Now I have many options for quick dinners — pasta with tomato sauce, chili, or tamales.

For the tomatoes I made some Super “T” sauce. I roughly chopped up all the tomatoes we had from the garden and the CSA, about 6 pounds worth I think, threw them in a Pyrex dish, added olive oil, a little bit of salt and pepper, some fresh oregano from our garden and lots of garlic. Since it’s been so hot the last couple of weeks, I decided to roast this slowly outside on our propane grill. I roasted them on indirect heat — I just put the Pyrex dish on one side of the grill and turned on the opposite burner to low then close the lid. This kept them about about 200°. I roasted until the liquid was mostly evaporated, stirring a couple times throughout the day. You end up with a delicious, tomato paste-like sauce that’s great for pasta, pizza, or as a foccacia topping.

Super T sauce on the BBQ

The day before this I braised the giant 5 pound roast on the Propane grill. I seasoned the roast really well with salt and pepper, and browned it nicely over direct flame on the grill. Once the meat was nice and crusty, I put it in a large roasting pan with lots of stock so that it was sitting in about a half inch of stock. I used chicken stock because that’s what we’ve got handy in our freezer. This gets braised on indirect heat for many hours. I think I let mine braise for 6 or 7 hours total. I kept the temperature of our grill at about 275. I let it cool, them chopped it up pretty finely, removed all the fat and gristle, and stored in strained braising liquids. That night we had delicious carne asada burritos with black beans and rice. The rest went into the fridge for the next round.

Some of the braised beef went into a batch of chili. I know a lot of people let their chili cook all day long but I like to be quick and get it done. Since the beef is already cooked, there’s really no need to do a lot of cooking.

Chili Ingredients

  • 1 Tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
  • 1 onion diced
  • 5-6 garlic cloves
  • 1 mild pepper diced (I used a banana pepper)
  • 2 cans diced tomatoes
  • 2 cups beef
  • 1 cup super “T” sauce (or 2 Tablespoons tomato paste)
  • about 2 Tablespoons chili powder
  • 2 cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed
  • 11 can black beans drained and rinsed

Saute the onion, garlic and pepper in the oil until tender. Add the canned tomatoes, tomato paste, beef, and chili powder. Let simmer on medium heat until some of the juice evaporates. This will give you a nice, thick sauce. Add the beans and heat. That’s pretty much it! To save it for later, let it cool a bit in the pan then ladle into freezer safe containers and freeze away! This recipe will give you about 5 servings. I freeze mine in leftover yogurt and cottage cheese containers — the large size, and that gives us a very hearty meal for two per container. Once I’m done packing my freezer containers, I usually have enough left over for some delicious chili nachos.

chili with chimichurri and yogurt

Last but not least, the tamales
I used this recipe for the tamale dough. It’s important to get good, fresh tamale masa if you can. The great little market near us, Cherry Sprout has good stuff. I use 1 cup bacon fat, 1 cut vegetable shortening in mine. I also use homemade chicken broth, don’t use water, it’s a million times tastier with broth. This recipe will make about 3 dozen tamales. Once the tamale dough is done, you can let it sit in the fridge until you’re ready for your tamale making marathon. I kept mine in the fridge over night.

I had all this cilantro and parsley so I made some chimicurri sauce. This is an adaptation from a recipe our CSA gave us. I removed the cayenne so my toddler can eat it too.

In a food processor, combine:

  • 1 large bunch parsley, washed and dried, stems included
  • 1 large bunch cilantro, washed and dried, stems included
  • 3 scallions, chopped and tough tops removed
  • 5-6 cloves garlic, peeled
  • 1/4 cup fresh lime or lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Process in your food processor until pretty fine but you don’t want it incinerated.

For the tamales you’ll need a bag of corn husks. If you can find masa, you can find corn husks. In large grocery stores you can find it in the “Hispanic” section.

Tamale ingredients:

  • Corn husks
  • Tamale dough (see above)
  • 2 onions, caramelized and cooled
  • A round of firm Mexican cheese. If you can’t find this, feta, goat cheese, or even Monterrey jack will suffice
  • Lots of braised or roasted beef, diced finely
  • Chimichurri sauce (see above)
  • Fine kitchen twine cut into 6″ pieces
  • Large steamer pot with water filled to just below the steamer basket

In a large Pyrex dish, pull out a few corn husks 10-15 at a time and pour boiling water on them. Allow them to sit for about 5 minutes until they soften up. I like to put a plate on top of mine to weight them down.

Lay down a clean kitchen towel in front of you to dry your husks and roll your tamales on. Grab a husk, dry it off and find the smooth side, this is the side you want to lay your dough down in. Smear about a heaping tablespoon of tamale dough into the husk, leaving a couple inches free at the top and bottom of the husk and put a little bit of each filling on it, here’s an example:

chimichurri beef tamales

Roll it together like a tube, then fold the top and bottom don and tie each with a piece of twine like so:

tamales

Repeat ad nauseum until you’ve rolled all your tamales. If you run out of beef, black beans make great simple tamales too. I always end up with a few black bean tamales near the end of my rolling sessions.

You should have about 3 dozen tamales.

In a large steamer pot, stand up your tamales. Depending on the size of your pot and how tired you are, you can usually cram in about half the recipe in one go. Bring the pot up to a boil and steam for 40 minutes. Check the water in your pot to make sure you haven’t gone dry. I periodically dribble some water into the pot, in between the tamales to keep from drying out. After 40 minutes, check for doneness, they should feel firm, not squishy when you test them with kitchen tongs. If they’re done, pull them out and let them cool on a plate or pan lined with a toil. Once they cool, you can store them in the freezer in freezer bags. They take about 20 minutes to reheat in a steamer. I suppose you could microwave them if you’re into that sort of thing.

Serve with hot sauce of your choice and some sour cream or plain Greek yogurt. Yum!

My 1 year old LOVES these. That’s why I keep out all the spicy stuff in the tamales and add it as a topping.

tamale dinner

Another delicious thing to do with tamale dough and fillings is to make little pupusas. I made this one as a filling tester:

pupusa test

Check out all these tamales!
tamales

Enjoy!


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