How to Cook Perfect and Delicious Tamales (With Secret Ingredient)

every recipe in this kitchen written down (372 pages): https://berthascookbook.com Mija, come in and wash your hands, and bring whoever else is in the house, because tamales are never made alone. If your masa came out heavy like a brick, or stuck to the husk, or tasted like wet cornmeal with a little meat hiding in the middle, it was never you. Nobody showed you slowly, from the beginning. And there is one ingredient in my mother's tamales that most recipes leave out. It is not a spice, you cannot buy it, and most people pour it down the sink. I put it in your hand in the middle of the video. ⭐ TAMALES ROJOS DE PUERCO (about 4 dozen, book pages 169 to 174) • About 2 lb (1 kg) masa harina PARA TAMALES (the coarser grind) • 1 lb (450 g) manteca (lard). Yes, that much. The manteca is the tamal. • 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1 tablespoon salt • 6 to 7 cups WARM BROTH (see the secret below) • 3 lb (1.5 kg) pork shoulder, plus half an onion, a few garlic cloves, a bay leaf, and salt for the pot • 2 cups fried, strained red chile sauce (the enchilada video sauce: guajillo and ancho) • 60 to 70 dried corn husks (buy extra, every bag has torn ones) • A steamer pot and one coin ⭐ THE METHOD 1. HUSKS: very hot water, held under with a plate, at least 1 hour, until soft like cloth. 2. PORK: cover with water, add onion, garlic, bay, salt, gentle simmer about 2 hours until it shreds. Shred and fold into the warm red sauce. KEEP THE POT. 3. WHIP THE MANTECA 3 to 5 full minutes until pale and fluffy like frosting. That air is what makes a tamal light (page 171). You cannot add it later. 4. Mix masa harina, baking powder, and salt. Beat it into the whipped manteca a cup at a time, alternating with the warm broth, then 3 to 4 minutes more. Soft peak, like thick cake batter or soft hummus. Too stiff: more broth. Too wet: more masa harina. 5. Float test: a small ball in cold water. Floats = ready. Half floats is fine. Sinks = beat more, a little more broth. A tradition, not a laboratory (page 172). 6. ASSEMBLE: husk smooth side up, wide end toward you. 2 to 3 tablespoons of masa in a THIN layer over the wide half, a hand wide, tail bare. A generous spoon of filling down the middle. Fold one side, then the other, then the tail up. Top OPEN. 7. STEAM: water below the basket with a COIN in it. While it rattles, there is water. When it goes quiet, add hot water down the side (page 173). Tamales standing up, open end on top, covered with spare husks or a wet towel, lid on, 60 to 90 minutes. 8. TEST: pull one, WAIT 2 MINUTES, then open. Releases clean = done. Sticks = 15 more minutes. 9. REST 15 minutes off the heat. The masa sets as it cools. ⭐ THE SECRET INGREDIENT (spoiler, so watch first) The broth the pork cooked in. Page 171: "6 to 7 cups warm broth, the pork broth from cooking the filling, ideally, so the masa and filling speak the same language." Steam mutes flavor, and masa is most of the tamal. Made with water, you are steaming plain corn. Made with the pork broth, every bite of masa already tastes like the meat inside. THE HONEST WORDS (because I will not oversell you): • Sticks after a full steam and rest → needs more time. Sticky means underdone first. • Dense and heavy → the manteca was under-whipped or the masa too stiff. Whip like you mean it next time. • Flat → salt the masa more bravely. Steam mutes salt. • The day felt like too much → you did it alone. Fill the kitchen first. WHO PROFITS (page 170): eight dozen cost about $40 to $60, roughly 50 or 60 cents a tamal. At the market they sell for $3 or $4 apiece, more in restaurants. The woman at the market earned every dollar. But she can charge four dollars because most people believe they cannot do what you just did. THE HABIT: dozens, never a handful. Feed everybody on the day, freeze the rest in their husks, re-steam from frozen 20 to 25 minutes. December feeds March. And the masa baked onto the steamer basket? That is the other half of my life: 🧼 Clean The Mexican Way → [link to cleaning channel] Pick a Saturday and fill the kitchen first. If you only change two things: whip the manteca until it looks like frosting, and make the masa with the pork broth. Then tell me in the comments how many hands were in your kitchen. Tell me the truth: were you pouring that broth down the sink? Tell me your county, and which filling your family fights over.