Mark Bittman’s Tamales

Just made these (including the red-chili meat recipe with pork) and they turned out great! We recommend steaming for closer to an hour and 15 mins. Also, the instructions on assembling the tamales were a little confusing (and the tying seems unnecessary) so we looked up a really helpful video on you tube. It would be great if the nyt cooking team could create an instructional tamale video!

While this recipe yields tasty tamales, it is typical to use nearly a 2:1 ratio of masa to lard for a more authentic version. More importantly, using homemade stock from the meat filling will go a long way towards making the masa more flavorful.

These turned out perfectly. Delicate yet firm once cooled a bit. I used unsalted butter instead of lard without any trouble. Managed to make the dough without a mixer, though doing so took determination. Also, the trick to checking for adequate moisture in the dough (does it float) is on point. Lastly, my tamales took about an hour to steam. I then unwrapped them to let them set up for a few minutes.

Great, practical, fast recipe. Being as we don't eat pork, I resorted to my work around and got excellent results with duck fat (which is an amazing alternative to lard.) I did blend it with a bit of butter and olive oil but used mostly duck fat and as others noted, increased the ratio. Other lard work-arounds for us include high-quality peanut oil (for flavor) high-quality coconut oil in various combos. There are ways around lard. Used smoked duck meat with red chili sauce. Awesome.

I've tried several versions of tamales and can attest that they are best with a higher proportion of lard to masa, and made with the broth used to cook the pork. At one time I tried with vegetable oil - very disappointing and required a sauce. Good tamales should be edible "straight".

It is key to get fresh lard, not the hydrogenated kind. Some butchers will sell rendered leaf lard. It is not terribly difficult to render it oneself.

We use organic unrefined coconut oil. I really like the flavor this adds, whether for these savory, meaty tamales, or for sweeter tamales with fresh corn, cheese, and/or green chiles (hatch chiles are my favorite)... If you use the coconut oil be sure it is cool enough that your oil is a solid at room temperature, so that the step in the recipe where you whip the fat with the salt and baking powder doesn't result in an oil slick. :D

Reading over the ingredient list, I must confess I was puzzled by one item....Masa marina. A thickener for nautical cooks?

Masa marina is a quite rare ingredient. You'll probably never see it nor will you ever understand it.

The first time I made this, I stripped the meat off of a half rack of leftover ribs and used that. It worked! Everyone loved it. The second time, my vegetarian granddaughter was here, so I used Knorr tomato bouillon to make a vegetable stock base and cooked it with a small whole unpeeled yellow onion and a carrot and the tops of a celery bunch. I let cool, then strained it. I cut the kernels from two cobs of corn and added it (raw) to the masa dough along with the stock. It was good, too

Used leftover bacon fat for the lard. The measurements across fat and stock aren't critical. In the end, you want a dough that you can spread over a husk, so that may involve wetting your spatula with water.

Anyway, this recipe and my personal experience affirms that tamales are not rocket science, nor do they necessitate a family reunion for a production line. Preparing the dough and the filling on different days to help spread out the labor is not a new idea!