How I spent the day....

[Big Muddy]

Promised wifey to take her to the World Hot Tamale Festival in Greenville, MS.
I ain't gonna admit to how many hot tamales I ate. ;)
There were about 40 contestants, and in my opinion, these folks had the absolute, hands-down, best tamales I've ever eaten....I am on a first-name basis with Shuckies. ;)

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[LJ3]

Having a mexican woman with a mexican family, and having participated in the annual ritual of making a years worth of tamales many times over I consider myself a well qualified expert on the matter and will be flying down to visit you this evening :)

[BarryBobPosthole]

I'm a tamale lover to. We get these frozen ones from an outfit down in Texas, the Texas Tamale Company in fact. they are dang good if you can't get 'em fresh. I need to get some shucks and make a bunch soon. Good fall food.

BKB

[Thumper]

Youse dufes are just a bunch of amateur wannabes and I consider myself a self-proclaimed connoisseur of good tamales! I got hooked while working for Cadillac in Los Angeles. I swear, around Christmastime, EVERY customer of Mexican decent, would bring me a batch of tamales. I guess they associate tamales with Christmas the way we associate turkey to Thanksgiving. Families would get together and have a regular production line pumping out homemade tamales! Add to that, I stayed in Mexico at least two weekends a month and had my favorite little bakery down in Encinada where I'd always stop and pick up a couple dozen. I'd take my tamales down to the beach, along with a case of Coronas on ice, and have a feast. It got to be a tradition. They're hard to find here ... but Sam's Club carries some pretty dang good ones around Christmas. We buy about $125 worth and freeze them to use all year.

The best I've ever found if you go anywhere near there in your travels, is a little place in Pecos, Texas. We stumbled on the place a bazillion years ago while travelling and I continued to stop when driving my truck if the timing was right. It was in a tiny little tortilla factory for many years and was mostly take-out, but there were maybe two small tables in the front with maybe 5-6 chairs if you wanted to eat in. The last time I was there, they'd moved directly across the street into a different building and it was more like a restaurant. If you're EVER in Pecos, you'd better stop! Here's the old building where it all started. I don't think they have a website, but it's La Nortena Tamale Factory in Pecos, TX.

http://frankhardyphoto.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/tortilla-factory-_adj_sfw_4-mar-11.jpg

[LJ3]

Yep, it's how they roll. It's a Christmas/NYE tradition. We have an industrial sized mixer for the maza, and create an assembly line of a bunch of different fillings. Honestly, they're ALL a little bland if you ask me. too much filler and not enough filling. And if you have enough filling to make it worthwhile, may as well save yourself 10 hours of effort and wrap it in a tortilla and be done with it :)

[Chicken Dinner]

Len, you hit up my issue with tamales completely. All that masa and not enough of the good stuff. Give me an enchilada anydamnday.

[Thumper]

Well, that's ONE thing that makes a good tamale ... a good balance of masa vs. filling. Of course the filling and masa have to be good also ... in the right proportions. Ya' don't want to order a hamburger with an 8" bun and a 3" pattie. Same thing.

[BarryBobPosthole]

There's a restaurant over in a little town near here (Catoosa) that hand makes tamales on day a week and sells them out the door by the dozen. They never fail to sell out. all they do is put up something on their Facebook page on when they're gonna have them ready and folks start lining up. Really good tamales are hard to find around here and it seems the very best ones are hand made and fresh. and by the way, they're $18 a dozen. that's prolly a 1 million percent markup.

BKB