Columbia, Panama, Mexico, Oh My! Recipe for TCK Tamales

These tamales are a culmination of my own personal tastes, a month of research, as well as this recipe for vegetarian tamales and this recipe for Columbian tamales. While they are time consuming to create, you’ll be rewarded with a delicious and long-lasting delicacy for the whole family to enjoy.

You Will Need:

For the masa:

• 2 cups corn flour (maseca/ harina maseca)
• 1 cup flavour broth (more on this below)
• 1tbsp garlic salt
• Warm water (not boiling, lightly steaming at most)
• Oil/lard substitute- melted coconut oil, butter or vegetable oil

For the filling:

• Fake meat (for my tamales I used Viv Era shawarma kebab & vegetarian chicken)
• 2 carrots
• 1 large white onion
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• 1 potato
• 1 seedless chili pepper (optional, for additional heat)

For the flavour broth:

1/5 or 1 cup liquid oil (melted coconut oil, butter or vegetable oil will do)

• 1 tsp Cumin
• 1 tsp Garlic salt
• 1/2 tsp Onion powder
• 1/2 tsp Paprika
• 1 pinch Cayenne Pepper
• 1/2 tsp Coriander
• 1/4 tsp Aji Amarillo (or a pinch of tumeric for colour)
• 1 tsp tomato puree
• 1 vegetable stock cube
• 1 red bell pepper
• 2 spring onions
• 4-6 cloves garlic

How to Prepare the Tamales:

1. Before you start, soak your corn husks in warm water for at least 30 minutes. If you’re using banana leaves, pass them over a low heat to soften and prevent them from breaking. Put to one side.
2. Let’s start the filling: use a low heat and large frying pan, letting a small amount of oil heat up. Finely mince the onion and cook until translucent, then add the carrot and potato. While this is cooking, you can make a start on the flavour broth.
3. Place a small saucepan over a low heat and add the oil. Don’t worry if it looks like a lot (this is for adding flavour and texture to your masa later)- add your spices (the cumin, garlic salt, onion powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, coriander, and aji amarillo) as well as a stock cube. Mix for a minute while the oil heats up, but don’t let it boil or else you may burn your spices!
4. Finely mince your spring onion and garlic. Chop your bell pepper before adding all of these (as well as the tomato puree) to the oil to cook until the bell pepper is soft. The oil should change colour to become red.
5. Drain the oil into a cup (you should have at least one half of a cup- if not, add more oil and mix to distribute the flavour throughout), removing the bell pepper, garlic, and spring onion and adding these to the frying pan with your other vegetables. At the same time, add your peas.
6. If your filling is cooked (the carrots and potatoes should be soft, but keep in mind they will be steamed inside your tamales as well so don’t have to be fully cooked) then remove it from the heat and put to one side. Time for the hard part- the masa!
7. To make the masa (corn flour dough), use a large mixing bowl. Add the corn flour and the reserved oil. Mix it gradually, and then gradually add warm water until the masa is joined together, but is easily malleable. Add your garlic salt and mix for five minutes. Masa is traditionally mixed by hand, but if the dough is too warm you can use a whisk, electric mixer, or other equipment to save your skin!
8. Add oil until the masa is gleaming, but not so much that there is a ton of oil in the bowl that refuses to combine- this means you’ve gone to far and need to add a bit more cornflour to compensate (a slippery hill into making the mix too dry again!) Youtube is your friend for knowing if the masa looks correct or not. Here are some of the reference videos I used:
   1. How to make masa for tamales with Maseca– CookingWithGloria
   2. Vegan and Vegetarian Tamales | No Lard and From Scratch– Cooking With Rusbe
   3. Colombian Tamales Recipe 4 | How To Make Tamales Bogotanos– Sweet y Salado
9. Finely chop your fake meat, whether it’s vegetarian chicken cubes or shawarma pieces, you want to make sure it will be evenly spread and not overly chunky.
10. Now for the fun (and tricky) part: assembly! Refer to the above videos for exactly how to do this, but here’s the run-down: take a corn husk, and use a large spoon to spread the masa around the inside, patting down any patchy parts with more masa. This should be a fairly thin spread, as the masa will grow when it’s steamed.
11. Then, take a spoonful of filling and place it in the centre. Take a small spoonful of fake meat and sprinkle over the top before folding.
12. To fold the tamal, first fold in the bottom (this is the part of the corn husk which isn’t pointy) and then fold in the edges so that both sides of the masa are touching. Roll it tight and secure with cooking string. If this step is particularly tricky, you’re probably overfilling your tamal.
13. Once your tamales are all assembled, place them in a steamer for 45 minutes to 1 hour. You can tell that they’re done if you unwrap the tamale and everything stays in place- no masa sticking to the corn husk!

To Store a Tamale:

Many people make them in bulk and then freeze their tamales. If you’re going the freezing route, make sure you do this before cooking them, otherwise the tamale might get a little dry and crumbly once thawed.

To reheat your tamales, most people go the simple route with a few minutes in the microwave. Others re-steam them for 15-20 minutes (which might also prevent them from drying out as they reheat.)

What You Should Know Before Making Tamales:

Tamales are a culturally significant food, with origins far older than the Spanish conquest of Latin America. They’re thought to be the world’s oldest portable food, and are easy to store and carry for long periods. Warriors carried them on hunting trips and during long journeys, women prepared them for ritual and celebratory purposes.

There is a Mesoamerican story that says the first humans came from corn husks. Indeed, throughout much of the Americas, corn was seen as a precious, life-giving substance with massive significance. Some sources even say that tamales were sacrificed instead of people after the Spanish invaders outlawed human sacrifices. As such, I like to remember that what I am eating is sacred and something to be respected, not mindlessly shovelled into my mouth while I eye up dessert.

In modern times, tamales are still closely linked to important events: they’re eaten at Christmas, at weddings and birthdays, and other special events… and they’re also a popular street food, eaten every day!

However, for many, tamales are particularly associated with Christmas. The holiday season in Mexico lasts from the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12th to Three Kings Day on January 6th.

Thanks to the long-reaching history and incredible variety of tamales, there is little limit to what you can put in them- some recipes call for rice and beans, while some breakfast tamales include bacon and sausages. There are even sweet tamale recipes made with fruit and sugar! For a more traditional approach, use chicken and pork, as well as vegetables like carrots and peas.

Before making tamales, make sure you do your research on how they are made- both to get the technical parts of cooking right, and to do justice to the incredible cultures they come from.

Why are these TCK Tamales?

A TCK, or ‘Third Culture Kid’ is someone who grew up in more than one country and who has absorbed culture from all of the places they have lived. I was born in the UK, but grew up travelling around South America and the Caribbean, making me a TCK.

My first Christmas in Columbia, I was getting used to the unfamiliar: my family didn’t speak any Spanish, and most of the things in the supermarkets were unfamiliar. We ate a lot of Doritos, because they were the only food we could recognise!

It was at a community Christmas potluck where I first tasted tamales. Tables were piled high with leafy green packages. I had NO idea what they were, but there were some very friendly locals placing banana-wrapped food on everyone’s plate, and growing up among different cultures taught me to never say ‘no’, especially when it came to food. So, I watched to see how everyone ate their tamales, and did what they did. I unwrapped the banana leaf, exposing bright yellow masa, and dug in with my fork.

From the first bite, I was hooked. A perfect mix of spices, meats, and vegetables. I had no idea what it was made from, but the whole dish felt like the gift it was.

Not speaking Spanish, I couldn’t ask what I was eating, what was in it, or anything else! For years I craved another mysterious package on my plate at Christmas, and had no words to ask for it.

Then, in 2017, Pixar released Coco. And there was this scene:

Tamales? I thought. What are those? A quick Google later, and I knew that they were what I’d had all those years ago. But things were different: I was a girl caught in-between cultures (it was easy to look up ‘tamales’, but ‘TCK’ took a lot longer to understand.)

Now I lived in the UK, didn’t travel, and missed the other side of the Atlantic like there was no tomorrow. Not only that, but there was no way I could afford the ingredients for tamales, some of which are hard to find and expensive to ship. I no longer ate meat, adding another layer of complication to the situation.

This October, I moved to London. Outside the tube station at Elephant and Castle, you can find Latin food stores full of the right ingredients. All of them taste like home, even if I still don’t know what most of them are.

So, when our first Christmas in London came around, I adapted several recipes into this: my vegetarian, Columbian-inspired, TCK tamales. Why are these ‘Third Culture’ Tamales?

1. A TCK made this particular recipe!
2. Tamales are shared by cultures all around Central and South America. Much like a TCK, they are different in every country you find them: some are wrapped in banana leaves, some in corn husks. Some are stuffed with pineapple and sugar, while others are full of pork and chicken. All are delicious.
3. Before making my own, I researched Tamale recipes from all around Latin America, from Mexico to Columbia, in order to create this recipe. In a lot of ways, it felt like re-tracing my own steps as I grew up: starting with the more well-known Mexican variety, moving into familiar Columbian flavours before researching Panamanian traditions and combining them into something delicious. This cultural mix suits my own nostalgia, as well as the palates of friends and family this holiday season.

Merry Christmas everyone!