In South Texas it’s almost a given that tamales will be served with the holiday meal. Tamales at Christmas are like ham or lobster in other parts of the country.
Texas Public Radio Reporter Louisa Jonas recently moved here from Baltimore and she’d never eaten a tamal. Here's her story -- in her own words -- about the initiation.
If you’re a recent transplant to San Antonio like me, here’s a 101 to eating your first tamale.
Do. Not. Eat. The. Corn. Husk.
I'm sitting in my car outside Delicious Tamales where I’ve just finished gathering sound for this story. In my lap are a dozen pork tamales. I unwrap my first tamale, see it looks like a hotdog in a bun and put the whole thing, husk and all into my mouth.
Thankfully, I spit that husk out.
I Google and learn afterward that swallowing that husk could have caused severe abdominal distress. I feel like such a Baltimore girl. Then I eat the pork inside and get the tamale obsession.
Valerie Gonzalez takes me behind the scenes so I can see how it all comes together.
"Right now they are packing dozens of tamales ready for sale for all the people in line," says Gonzalez, who is the owner of Delicious Tamales. She welcomes me with a warm smile and whisks me back past the customers to the kitchen. It’s a huge room, and it smells like home cooking. You can hear the tamales being wrapped in foil, the clanking of metal pans and workers speaking Spanish and English.
San Antonians demand tamales at Christmas. In the weeks leading up the holiday season, Gonzalez’s business prepares up to 48,000 tamales a day.
"It’s a whirlwind popularity that we’re going through with tamales. It used to be a Hispanic cultural thing, but now it’s not just Hispanics anymore, it’s everybody," she says.
It takes a lot of people to make that many tamales. Ramiro Ramirez’s day starts early.
He says, "Since 1 o’clock in the morning. Until 5 or 6 depends how fast we are." That’s 5 or 6 p.m.
Gonzalez says the secret to making a good tamale is passed down through generations of women. "Usually the aunts, the grandmas, the sisters would get together and make the tamales, while the men were outside enjoying themselves, waiting for the delicacy to come out."
And these gender roles date back to the time of the Aztecs. Men now work alongside women making tamales here, but some traditions, they hold onto. "We cook, grind our corn the old fashioned way."
And thus my misunderstanding. That corn? That’s for the masa dough made from corn. But when I opened the foil to my first tamale, I saw that corn husk. I thought there it is. The old fashioned corn! Well, that’s going to be tasty….
Gonzalez takes me out to the counter where David Gilsdorf is standing in line.
"Family gets together Christmas eve. I make chili; we have tamales; someone brings beans; we make salsa. It’s just a tradition," Gilsdorf says.
What happens if you don’t bring tamales home for Christmas? What would your family say? I ask.
"Oh, they’d probably run me out of town," Gilsdorf says.
Gonzalez says, "Now the only thing you have to do, you need to open up your foil, make sure they’re cooled off. You can leave them in your fridge for 2-3 days."Gilsdorf nods and leaves with his tamales.
I decide it’s time to head to destination No. 2, JJ’s Tamales, just down the road. Jose Rodriguez is the manager. It took some convincing for him to let me come today. He said they’d be making tamales all day. I promised I’d be in and out in 10 minutes.
Rodriguez says, "We’ve got pork, pork jalapeño, we got cheese jalapeño, we got chicken, and beans jalapeño."
I tell Jose I’ve just moved here from Baltimore and have yet to have my first tamale. He stares at me wide-eyed.
"You’ve never had a tamale before? I’m going to make sure you can take some so you can taste it. Our tamales are pretty good," he says.
He’s confident I’ll like his tamales because of where he got the recipe. From his landlord. He ran the restaurant before it became JJ’s.
"It took my landlord 2,3,4 years to make the recipe. When he quit because he was making 7,000 dozens of tamales in one year, in one December. He was very busy and he almost had a heart attack. So he quit because of that," he says.
I’m beginning to think that tamales have taken over San Antonio. I want in on the secret to this booming business, but of course Rodriguez can’t give me the recipe. He does tell me what not to do when making a tamale.
"A lot of time it doesn’t have enough lard, so it comes out dry. A good tamale has to have an exact amount of lard, with the spices. Some people—I won’t say names—put too much cumin, we call it comino in Spanish," he says.
It’s time to let Rodriguez get back to his tamale making. I’ve learned some things today. What not to do when making a tamale. What not to eat when being served a tamale. And why it’s worth it to place your order early and stand in line for this traditional holiday treat.
