The in-laws are in town for the holidays and they brought some special ingredients with them from Costa Rica.
Some local annatto paste (achiote) which can vary slightly from country to country.
image source and tutorial on how to make annatto paste and oil
The idea was to make some home-made family Costa Rican tamales!
We're downtown city folks and live in a small apartment, so we're not used to cooking anything for more than 3 or 4 people. We had to make a quick trip to the local market in Guatemala's historic district to buy some meat from the butcher, some plantain leaves and some mediums pots to cook in.
We got there at about 7:00am.
I know, you wouldn't usually drive to the supermarket at that time, but the market is something else. Vendors start coming in in the middle of the night, maybe 3:00 or 4:00 am and start setting up their stalls. By 6:00 everybody is ready to go. Fresh fruit, meat and the catch of the day from the sea.
This is what the fruits and vegetables area looked like:
Once we got the huge pot, we got to cooking the pork ham, which comes from back side of the pork. We also added some bone to add flavor.
Once it's nice and cooked, we chopped it up and added some chopped onion and annatto to give it a bit of flavor and color.
Team A (the manly men) cut up the plantain leaves into squares to make the wrapping and we also heated them on the stove to turn them soft. Otherwise they'll be crunchy and will easily break and get flooded with water when boiling. You don't want soggy tamales.
Team B (the ladies) stirred the corn dough in the pot in the meantime. It starts off very watered down, but soon starts to become thicker.
Once leaves and dough were ready, it was time to bring out the large ice cubes I made earlier and pour some whiskey. It was time to start building.
We made a little production line to add the ingredients. First we placed the plantain leaves in pairs. A slightly smaller one on the inside to make a double wrapper. Like I said, you don't want water leaking in while it's boiling. You put a scoop of dough in the middle and pass it on to have the ingredients added.
First, we added a bit of rice...
Then the pork and other ingredients.
Our assembly line goes counter clockwise in these pictures. Station 1 is on the bottom left, followed by station 2, where @pamarias is. Station 3 is on the top left. This is the wrapping station and station 4 is in the center: the warehouse.
By the time it went once around the table, it looked like this, and had:
- Pork
- bell pepper
- boiled egg
- rice
- potato
- carrot
My mother in-law is the only experienced one when it comes to wrapping tamales. So everybody poured themselves a glass of wine or whiskey and watched while she explained and demonstrated the process.
The last step in the assembly line was to tie them up in pairs using jute string. That keeps them from opening up and ruining your tamale while boiling.
We made about 40 of these babies and lined them up on the table like so:
After the hard work was done, we opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate the first time ever making Costa Rican tamales.
The final step was to put them back in the pot to boil.
After that, we let them cool and put them in the refrigerator to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning.
It was a relatively small batch and it turned out to be a fun family activity. We could have probably turned a profit had we decided to sell them, but that wasn't our goal in the first place. We'll just show up to visit friends and family and bring them delicious Costa Rican tamales as a gift.
Pura Vida! 🇨🇷
Team work for this masterwork!! My jaw dropped 🤤
I always had a full glass of whiskey 🥃 in my station. I think this should be standard for all employment. It increases employee morale and productivity.
Im from Panama 😜, Tamales here are a bit more messy IMO something I dont like, they taste ok but its just something about putting all this things together to eat that doesnt attract me that much, a Tamal is like food to go when you didnt have much time to cook jjajaja, great pics ✌️ Pura Vid Mae
The interesting thing about tamales is that they're made throughout such a large part of Latin America and they're made slightly differently in each country. I like them very much actually 😄. And the best part of making them is that we had lots of wine, whiskey, champagne and !BEER It was basically a cooking party. Can't complain. Pura vida mae!
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BEER.We have Tamales in the Philippines, and I have no idea how it's made. I think this should be very similar, and I didn't know it took a lot of steps and work. Makes me appreciate them more now. Thank you for sharing this.
I'm trading some of these for "Chinese tamales" or Zongzi (咸肉粽). My friend's family is from China and made some this year. Funny how people all over the world like to wrap stuff in leaves and eat it 🤷♂️ Love it though.
I agree. We also have Suman which is sticky rice packed inside leaves. I didn't know a lot of countries have their own tamales as well. We don't even have to use the leaves for wrapping as well. We have pandan leaves placed inside when cooking rice for aroma and flavor. We have torta where we cook a mixture of ground pork, carrots, potatoes, and egg on top of banana leaves.
These look like elf rusks, man, from Lord of the Rings. They also reminded me of a song I heard years ago and it made me laugh. Have you seen it?
Hahaha, great song! We made like 40 of them so we have elf rusks for all our friends!
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Hace unos dias probe los tamales por primera vez, peo con una receta colombiana; estaban muy ricos!
Saludios!
Imagínate que los hacen desde el norte de México hasta Colombia. Todos con sus pequeñas peculiaridades. Ahora tengo que saber como son los tamales colombianos! 😜
Son muy ricos, tenian carne de gallina, cerdo, y res, ademas arroz, lentejas, papas, zanahorias y huevos!
Saludos!
Your homemade tamales look good and kudos to your mother in law for wrapping them
I’m glad you had a great time with your family
Thank you kindly. We had a great time making them. First time for this group, I think it will become tradition 🫔
The supermarket really looks so big and it makes me to remember the similar type of supermarket that we have where I stayed also. Omo I was already salivating looking how delicious this was taste oo 🤤
There is no supermarket in my post.
The fruits and vegetables area is looking like a supermarket that's why I tagged it a supermarket
It's in the first paragraph of my post:
The reason I point this out is because I often see you replying to my posts with generic, and sometimes unrelated comments to my articles. It tells me you don't read through what I wrote. It could appear like you're just fishing for votes from me. Of course, I know you're not, but it could appear that way.
Anyway, thank you for stopping by and commenting on my post.
Oh I never knew you were thinking that way.
Actually one thing I always believed in my comment is to make it brief, short but address the particular aspect of the post I wanted to comment on. Obviously I can't comment about all the aspect of the post so I usually drop brief but targeted aspect of the post I desire to comment on or about.
So that's why most times it look like my comments are generics but it is actually not. There are some post I made long comments on also and some on short comments.
Actually why I also mentioned the supermarket aspect is not because I quickly read the first paragraph but I actually read through all the part of the post.
"I know, you wouldn't usually drive to the supermarket at that time, but the market is something else"
You were talking about supermarket also in this aspect and the area looks like a supermarket and that's why I mentioned it.
I always drop quality comments
Ah, Well, thank you for clearing that up.
Again, thank you for stopping by and commenting on my post.
Yea
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