We eat a lot of tamales in Texas and all the way down to the tip of South America. The tamale married the best of the New World, corn, with the fat and meat of the the old world pig. Beef tamales may be as common as pork. I really don't know. In South America, the tamales are filled with fruit and other strange things. The best tamale I ever had was from Santa Fe, New Mexico and was filled with cheese. Yum.

Tamales are a lot of work to make. You mix up the masa (corn meal and fat) to make a paste. You spread the paste over corn shucks soaked in water. You then spread your filling over the masa and roll it up carefully in the corn shucks to seal the package. You then steam the little packages for about a hour ... and you have a tamale!

I have never made a tamale, nor has my sister or my friend Chef Jami. Jami and I decided that we would gather up a group of friends and family, head to my sister's in Luckenbach this weekend and make tamales, drink, and generally have a good time.

I did a little reasearch and found out that a tamale party is called a "tomalada" and is common throughout Mexico and South America.

I am now cooking about twenty pounds of pork and about twenty pounds of beef on my smoker. I'll wait and cook the chickens when I get there. I think a tamale filled with Texas BBQ should work fine but I guess I'll find out. My sister has a bunch of duck so we might make some duck tamales as well. So far, the menu is pork, beef, chicken, cheese, and duck tamales. I was thinking of adding some Italian Parmesan meatball tamales but that may be too much work.

I had forty pounds of fresh New Mexico Chile peppers shipped to my sister so these are going to some spicy tamales. Any minglers are welcome to stop by have shot of tequila, a rum punch, or a little gumbo as we make these strange little packages.

Hot tamales welcome.

Over here in Miami they wrap them up in these large leaves and string it up tight to boil in water. Of course many Latin American nationalities are living in Miami so you have many different variations to look at.

Best Tamales, i have ever eaten, here, in New Mexico---& West Texas, or Siminole Texas.--- Pulled pork, or cheese, or chicken, or beef with red, or green chilis. WOW! Now, thats good food.

So where should I find you at Joe, with all of this food?

I don't know about Robin's. This is just something I dreamed up with my friend Jami and my sister. I am cooking now so the filling for the tamales will not need to cook then. I will probably get there sometime tomorrow but we will start to party friday afternoon till late and all day saturday.

Oh shoot. This weekend? We shall see...I would love to come though

Yum! How 'bout a Skype BBQ?....

Groan Three types of premiums Tequila. Three types of red wine.
Danger (Tequila and red wine do not mix well)

I got there Thursday night


The first batch of tamales was New Mexican Green Chile Cheese (Monterrey Jack and Mozzarella)

The only masa my sister and I had gave mixing directions by weight and she has no scale. I eyeballed the proportions, worked it a little by hand and made some test tamales, they came out perfect (big surprise).

Friday Morning we made New Mexican Red Chile sauce and cooked for the other people coming. We made jalapenos stuffed with seasoned cream cheese and wrapped in bacon.

Peach french toast casserole.

Olives, roasted red pepper medley, with goat cheese.

I had smoked two briskets and two pork shoulders the day before. I was going to make tamales out of half but my sister said they were too yummy to ruin in a nasty tamale so we just had BBQ with everything else all weekend. We cooked another pork shoulder and two seven bone beef roasts for tamale meat.

All of my green chile tamales were eaten as people showed up on Saturday. The BBQ was a big hit. Everyone said the brisket was the best they had ever had.


My cousin (the fire chief) was put in charge of masa since he was the only one who had made tamales before and he had only done it once. The masa is the corn meal mixture that goes around the filling.

We made about ten dozen cheese, ten dozen pork, and somewhat fewer beef tamales before my brother started with his chicken, corn, and green chile tamales (I don't know how many of those were made.)

We never got the masa as good as the first batch, some were crumbly and dry, but we had a lot of fun.

I never want to look at another hot tamale.

Glad you had a good time! We missed you around here

awwww yes, I learned to make tamales when I lived in AZ and spent Xmas with my friends. The husband is hispanic...the food was delicious.. they eat cheese tamales with eggs and bacon for breakfast on Christmas... and it does take some time to make them...
Yours sounded delicious!!

Robin was talking about the chili cookoff in Terlingua, not a BBQ. He posted some great pics in General Discussion.