I’ve never had a tamale! EVER! In my entire life!

It seems in the past year or so tamales have come up in conversation over again as if to tease me. It’s a favorite dish for many AND since becoming vegetarian 3 1/2 years ago its been near impossible to find one that wasn’t stuffed with meat!

While roaming the aisles in search of random goodies to entertain me for the night, I came across a lovely little tamale kit that looked fun and interesting! Having already decided that tonight was a Mexican night, it only seemed fitting to get the kit and experiment!

WooHoo! I love Kits!

When I arrived home I got right to work by laying out several plates and setting up my little tamale making station. The recipe called for a pound of ground meat, but having several years worth of substitution experience it was easy for me to find a replacement. I went with 2 cans of organic black beans and one can of vegetarian refried black beans.

Basically the kit said to take a nice little spoonful of the filling and roll it around in the corn mala until nicely coated. This was an interesting and fun step to try and master! Because I substituted beans for the meat, I had to try and figure out how to solidify the soupy like mixture. Daniel suggested flour! Brilliant!! I added little pinches of wheat flour and BAM! Perfect clumping effect!

I rolled the mixture around a bit and then placed it on the paper wrap making sure to leave a fourth of the wrap empty, as instructed. I folded and pushed and squished and somehow fit the gooey bean/corn mixture into the tiny tightly packed paper! I folded under that little empty end and had officially made my first tamale! I was pretty proud.

I did quite well with my first attempt at rolling a tamale! Its not easy business!

(I think it had a little to do with having so much sushi rolling experience.)

The kit came with 36 paper wraps, but I  ran out of filling and the corn mala stuff, so I only got about 18 or so out of it. I suppose I really stuffed those puppies!

I tossed the tamales in a pot and covered them all with the tamale sauce and set it to simmer for 40 minutes. Those were the longest 40 minutes!! Everything smelled so good!

By the time the tamales were finished I only had room for 1 taste test! Lol! I had filled up on the salsa and chips and the black beans and rice side dish that I had made to accompany the tamales! Isn’t it funny how it works out that way?! You fill up while picking and tasting during cooking that by the time everything’s done you’re already stuffed! Haha!!

Oh well, that taster was fantastic! At least I knew I’d have a great lunch prepared for tomorrow! 

The finished dish!! Everything came out delicious!

Enjoy!

P.S. – I wanted to slip in this tiny picture as a cute little treat, as it made me so happy after I took it! Daniel recently discovered his favorite salsa! Normally I’m the salsa queen and Daniel is never really a fan but I came cross this interesting Tomatillo Verde Salsa in the store and when we got it home Daniel couldn’t keep his fingers out of the jar!! I made him take a picture with it, and this is what came out!! It makes me smile.