Homemade Tamales With Mole Sauce - How To

Well I made it, a year of projects. It's ironic I started with Feng Shui and ended with the same type of activity. I managed to clear out over 200 bookmarked web pages. I'll continue with new projects but they won't be so product oriented, next month, I learn juggling.

The Mole Sauce Recipe came from Food dot com. Here's their recipe but with the changes I made.

1 cup chopped onions
3 tablespoons oil  fry the onions in oil until they start to become translucent
3 tablespoons flour  add the flour and cook together to make a roux

4.5 cups chicken broth whisk into the roux

1 tablespoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2.5 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon cocoa  stir in and continue to cook until the sauce thickens

I had never attempted tamales so the step by step instructions at What's Cooking America were very helpful. Here's the changes I made to their recipe.

Tamales

Cook the meat in a large pot. I used hamburger since the pork shoulder didn't look good at the market. It's becoming difficult to find meat that hasn't had water with "flavor enhancements" added to it. Add some Mole Sauce to the cooked meat.

Soak dried corn husks in hot tap water. I put a plate on top to keep them from floating 

Dough

2 pounds of Masa Corn Flour (this is not the same as corn meal)
3 tablespoons paprika
3 tablespoons chili powder
3 tablespoons garlic salt stir together in a large bowl

1 cup oil stir in

add water or broth until the dough becomes the consistency of fresh Play Dough

Assembling the Tamales

Drain the corn husks.
Lay a husk on the counter, if it's a narrow one you may need to overlap more than one to make it wider.
Take a handful of dough a press it a 1/4 inch thick. Don't go all the way to the edges, You need to be able to roll the husk later and fold over the bottom edge.
Spoon some meat mixture into the center.
Roll the husk up and fold over the end.
Place into a steamer.
Steam the tamales until they are no longer doughy, mine took almost 2 hours.