Tamales-making day

A couple of weeks ago my daughter and I made tamales.  I ordered some corn husks and ancho peppers from an online Mexican grocery here in the U.K.   I made some sauce and cooked the meats beforehand so that on the day we could just mix the masa up and make the tamales.  

Corn husks:

Getting started:

This was only our first time so don’t laugh!

My daughter working:

We worked out a code to tell the different types apart.




I’m fairly tall but needed help to put the tamales into the canned which was serving as our steamer. 






The extra husks went on top as per instructions. 


A bit of larking about with cleavers seemed to be in order as we waited for the tamales to steam.  (Plant is “cleavers” “goose-grass” or other names depending on your location/upbringing.). (My decoration was courtesy of my daughter!)



It came time to test.  






My verdict was that it wasn’t bad for a first try.  And I definitely want to try again.  I want to do better on the sauce - I messed up on part of it and want to perhaps find another recipe anyway.  But daughter and I liked them!

At dinner they looked like this: