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Tamale

Wrapped and unwrapped tamales Oaxaqueños from Oaxaca, Mexico, filled with mole negro and chicken
Origin
Place of origin	Mesoamerica
Details
Course	Main course
Serving temperature	Hot
Main ingredient(s)	Masa, corn husks, banana leaves
Approximate calories per serving	100

A tamale (Spanish: tamal, from Nahuatl: tamalli^[1]) — also tamal — is a traditional Mesoamerican dish made of masa (a starchy dough, usually corn-based), which is steamed or boiled in a leaf wrapper. The wrapping is discarded before eating. Tamales can be filled with meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, chilies or any preparation according to taste, and both the filling and the cooking liquid may be seasoned.

Tamales have been traced back to the Ancient Mayans, who prepared them for feasts as early as the Preclassic period (1200-250 BC).^[2]

Tamales originated in Mesoamerica as early as 8000 to 5000 BC.^[1] Aztec and Maya civilizations, as well as the Olmeca and Tolteca before them, used tamales as portable food, often to support their armies, but also for hunters and travelers. Tamale use in the Inca Empire had been reported long before the Spanish visited the New World.^[1]

The diversity of native languages in Mesoamerica led to a number of local words for the tamale, many of which remain in use.

Mexico[link]

A batch of Mexican tamales in the tamalera

A chipilín tamale

A tamal de dulce, filled with raspberries, raisins and pineapple

In Mexico, tamales begin with a dough made from nixtamalized corn (hominy), called masa, or a masa mix, such as Maseca and lard or vegetable shortening. Tamales are generally wrapped in corn husks or plantain leaves before cooking, depending on the region from which they come. They usually have a sweet or savory filling and are usually steamed until firm.

Tamales are a favorite comfort food in Mexico, eaten as both breakfast and dinner, and often accompanied by hot atole or champurrado and arroz con leche or maize-based beverages of indigenous origin. Street vendors can be seen serving them from huge, steaming, covered pots (tamaleras)or ollas.

In Mexico City, the tamale is substantial enough to keep a person satisfied until Mexico's traditional late lunch hour.

The most common fillings are pork and chicken, in either red or green salsa or mole. Another traditional variation is to add pink-colored sugar to the corn mix and fill it with raisins or other dried fruit and make a sweet tamal de dulce. Commonly, a few "deaf", or fillingless, tamales (tamales sordos), might be served with refried beans and coffee.

The cooking of tamales is traditionally done in batches of tens if not hundreds, and the ratio of filling to dough (and the coarseness of the filling) is a matter of preference.

Instead of corn husks, banana or plantain leaves are used in tropical parts of the country, such as Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, and the Yucatán Peninsula. These tamales are rather square in shape, often very large— 15 inches (40 cm) or more— and thick; a local name for these in southern Tamaulipas is zacahuil. Another less-common variation is to use chard or avocado leaves, which can be eaten along with the filling.

Tamales became one of the representatives of Mexican culinary tradition in Europe, being one of the first samples of the culture the Spanish conquistadors took back to Spain as proof of civilization, according to Fray Juan de Zumarraga.

Today, tamales are often eaten during festivities, such as Christmas, the Day of the Dead, Las Posadas, La Candelaria Day (February 2) and Mexican Independence Day.

Cuba[link]

In Cuba, before the 1959 Revolution, street vendors sold Mexican-style tamales wrapped in corn husks, usually made without any kind of spicy seasoning. Cuban tamales being identical in form to those made in Mexico City suggests they were brought over to Cuba during the period of intense cultural and musical exchange between Cuba and Mexico, between the 1920s and 1950s.

A well-known Cuban song from the 1950s, "Los Tamalitos de Olga", (a cha-cha-cha sung by Orquesta Aragón) celebrated the delicious tamales sold by a street vendor in Cienfuegos. A peculiarly Cuban invention is the dish known as tamal en cazuela, basically consisting of tamale masa with the meat stuffing stirred into the masa, then cooked in a pot on the stove to form a kind of hearty cornmeal porridge.

Corn-husk wrapped tamales are also popular in southeastern Cuba.

Central America[link]

Nicaraguan nacatamales

In Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, they are also wrapped in plantain leaves. The masa is usually made from maiz (dent corn in the U.S., not sweet corn, which is called elote). Guatemalan cuisine is known in particular for its hundreds of varieties of tamales; some popular ones include tamales de gallina (chicken), tamales dulces (sweet), and tamales de elote (in Costa Rica, the name can also refer to a type of corn pastry). In Guatemala, a variety of tamales is called tamales colorados, which have chicken or pork filling and a tomato-based sauce (recado), (hence the colorado, which means red). It may also contain olives, red bell pepper, prunes or raisins, capers, and almonds.

The tamale is a staple in Belize, where it is also known by the Spanish name bollo. Nicaragua has a large form known as nacatamales. In Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras, tamales without filling are served as the bread or starch portion of a meal:

• Tamal de elote (made with yellow corn, sometimes with a sweet or dry taste)
• Tamal de chipilín (made with chipilín, a green leaf)
• Tamal blanco (simple, made with white corn)

During Christmas holidays, tamales made with corn flour are a special treat for Guatemalans and Hondurans. The preparation time of this type of tamale is long, due to the amount of time required to cook down and thicken the flour base.

In Panama, where tamales are considered one of the main national dishes, tamales are fairly large. The most common fillings are chicken, raisins, onions, tomato sauce, and sometimes sweet peas. Pork is also used. Another variation is tamales de olla, which are cooked in pots, then served directly onto plates. Tamales are usually served for all special occasions, including weddings and birthday parties, and are always found on the Christmas dinner table.

South America[link]

Tamales are found in northern Argentina (the provinces of Jujuy, Salta and Tucumán). Tamales salteños are made with shredded meat of a boiled lamb or pork head, and corn flour wrapped in chalas. Tamales jujeños use minced meat and corn and red peppers.

Another version, called a humita, is found in Peru, Argentina and Chile. It can be salty or sweet. Sweet ones have raisins, vanilla, oil, and sugar. Salty ones can be filled with cheese (queso fresco) or chicken. Humitas are cooked in the oven or in the pachamanca. They are not tamales by Peruvian and Argentine standards. In Chile, the food known as humitas is almost identical to tamales.

Peruvian and Bolivian tamales tend to be spicy, large and wrapped in banana leaves. In Lima, common fillings are chicken or pork, usually accompanied by boiled eggs, olives, peanuts or a piece of chili pepper. In other cities, tamales are smaller, wrapped in corn husks and use white instead of yellow corn.

In Brazil, a similar food is called "pamonha", but is not really a tamale and has different origins.

In Venezuela, tamales are called hallacas. They are wrapped in plantain leaves and filled with stewed pork, raisins and olives. They are traditionally eaten for Christmas. Also, the Venezuelan bollos are similar to tamales, wrapped in corn husks, filled with hot peppers or plain, and eaten as a side dish.

In Colombia, they are wrapped in plantain leaves. The several varieties include the most widely known tolimense, as well as boyacense and santandereano. Like other South American varieties, the most common are very large compared to Mexican tamales — about the size of a softball — and the is dough softer and wetter, with a bright yellow color. A tamal tolimense is served for breakfast with hot chocolate, and may contain large pieces of cooked carrot or other vegetables, whole corn kernels, rice, chicken on the bone and/or chunks of pork. A related food is the envuelto or bollo, which is often made of yucca flour cooked in a corn husk, and resembles a Mexican tamale more closely but has simpler fillings or no filling at all.

Ecuador has a variety of tamales and humitas; they can be filled with fresh cheese, pork, chicken or raisins. Ecuadorian tamales are usually wrapped in corn husk or achira (canna) leaves.

Caribbean[link]

Conkies are a corn-based, cookie/tamale-like delicacy popular in the West Indies. The ingredients include corn flour, coconut, sweet potato, and pumpkin, and the dough is steamed in banana leaves.^[3] Conkies are thought to have originated in West Africa, where a similar type of kenkey known as dokompa is popular in Ghana.^[4]

In Barbados, conkies were once associated with the old British colonial celebration of Guy Fawkes Day on November 5. In modern Barbados, they are eaten during Independence Day celebrations on November 30.

In Saint Lucia, it is called paime, and is usually associated with Jounen Kweyol(Creole Day) which is on the last Sunday of October every year.^[5]

In Trinidad and Tobago, it is called a pastelle and is associated almost entirely with Christmas. Raisins and capers along with other seasonings are added to the meat filling. The entire thing is wrapped in a banana leaf, bound with twine and steamed.

In Jamaica, blue drawers, also known as tie leaf or duckunoo, is a similar dish to tamales de dulce.

Sinosphere[link]

Chinese cuisine includes the zhongzi, which is an equivalent of the tamale, but made with glutinous rice and a variety of fillings, including pork, chestnuts, mung beans, peanuts, and mushrooms.

Malaysia and Indonesia[link]

Malay cuisine includes the otak-otak, which is made of fish meat. Otak-otak is made by mixing fish paste (usually mackerel) with a mixture of spices. In Indonesia, the mixture contains fish paste, shallots, garlic, green onions, egg, coconut milk, and sago flour or can be substituted for cassava starch. While in Malaysia, it is a mixture of fish paste, chillies, garlic, shallots, turmeric, lemon grass and coconut milk. The mixture is then wrapped in a banana leaf that has been softened by steaming, then grilled or steamed.

India[link]

In India, the many types of tamales are usually cooked during festival seasons. Names differ in different parts of the country, such as modhak, kolukattai and momo. Ingredients added there include glutinous rice dough, coconut, jaggery, sugar or salt and some beans or pulses. The southern Indian province of Kerala is famous for a variety of ada (not the same as the Tamil ada) which uses rice flour, grated coconut, sugar/jaggery, spices and a variety of additional fillings such as jackfruit and bananas, all wrapped in banana leaf and steamed or roasted.

Philippines[link]

An indigenized version of the Mexican tamale, the Filipino tamale is a steamed delicacy made with a mixture of ground white and toasted rice, ground peanuts and coconut milk topped with strips of chicken, chorizo and slices of hard-boiled eggs and wrapped in banana leaves. The municipality of Ibaan in Batangas province is known for this delicacy. The fillings used include chicken, but neither eggs nor chorizo.

Bangladesh[link]

Paturi, famous among the Bengali people, is a dish where fish is marinated in a mustard paste, wrapped in a plaintain leaf and steamed, like a Mexican tamale. In the case of ilish fish (a favourite fish of Bengalis), it is often wrapped in a pumpkin leaf and is eaten along with the leaf.

Nepal[link]

Among Newar communities in Nepal, moist, ground black gram paste is wrapped in colocasia leaf and steamed. Later, they fry it and dip it in a curry sauce (fried onion, tomato, a little mustard paste, ginger and other spices mixed and boiled with water). While frying, the wrapper is firmly mixed with black gram paste and need not be removed.

United States[link]

Tamales have been eaten in the United States since at least 1893, when they were featured at the World's Columbian Exposition.^[6] A tradition of roving tamale sellers was documented in early 20th century blues music.^[6] They are the subject of the well-known 1937 blues/ragtime song "They're Red Hot" by Robert Johnson.

While Mexican-style and other Latin American-style tamales are featured at ethnic restaurants throughout the United States, there are also some distinctly regional, indigenous American styles.

Cherokee tamales, also known as bean bread or "broadswords", were made with hominy (in the case of the Cherokee, the masa was made from corn boiled in water treated with wood ashes instead of lime) and beans, and wrapped in green corn leaves or large tree leaves and boiled, similar to the meatless pre-Columbian bean and masa tamales still prepared in Chiapas, central Mexico and Guatemala.

Semisweet tamales, wrapped in banana leaves and called guanimes, are found in Puerto Rico.

In the Mississippi Delta, African Americans developed a spicy tamale made from cornmeal (rather than masa), which is boiled in corn husks.^[6][7][8]

In Chicago, unique tamales made from machine-extruded cornmeal wrapped in paper are sold at Chicago-style hot dog stands.^[6]

In North Louisiana, tamales have been made for several centuries. The Spanish established presidio Los Adaes in 1721 in modern day Robeline, Louisiana. The descendants of these Spanish settlers from Central Mexico were the first tamale makers to arrive in the eastern U.S. Zwolle, Louisiana has a Tamale Fiesta every year in October.

See also[link]

• Zongzi

References[link]