Making Hot Tamales
Directions and step-by-step photos below. To view a how-to video check out our youtube channel and watch “Making Appalachian-Style Hot Tamales”.
Ingredients:
Makes 36-40 tamales. The recipe can be halved.
Breading: Mix together with a pastry cutter in a big bowl
12 cups meal (5 lb bag self-rising meal)
1 tsp salt
2 cups Crisco (shortening)
Bring to a boil:
2 3/4 cups tomato juice (I use salt-free)
2 cups water
Pour the liquid into the meal mixture, mixing thoroughly and let set 30 minutes. The meal mixture will need to be fairly moist to be able to shape it. If the meal seems too dry or if it dries out as you’re working, sprinkle water over it to keep it moist. Keeping your hands moist helps as well. However, you do not want it to be soupy.
Meat Mixture: Mix in another large bowl
Hot: Mild:
2 lb ground beef 2 lb ground beef
(chuck or round) (chuck or round)
1 lb sausage – hot 1 lb sausage – mild
1/2 cup Crisco 1/2 cup Crisco
1/2 cup chili powder 1/4 cup chili powder
1 tbsp cumin
3 tsp +/- hot pepper flakes
(or more to taste)
Set up: From right to left – the ground beef, sausage and spices (this batch was hot). Large crockery bowl – meal, Crisco and a little chili powder (optional). Pot of tomato juice and water. A flat cookie sheet for wrapping the tamales, a cake pan with warm water, soaking the tamale papers, with the strings precut. A baking sheet for the finished tamales. (I keep the cookie sheet on a towel because invariably I dribble water everywhere!)
Note: I use tamale papers (available at some grocery stores as well as online) because they are cheaper than corn shucks, easier to use, and easier for the customer to prepare the tamale at home.
Put the tamale papers in a pan with warm water (I use a 12×18 cake pan). Cut pieces of cotton string about 8’-9” long.
Take a “golf ball” size ball of meal mixture and make into an oval “bowl” shape in your hand, pressing it out as thin as possible, while still holding it all together.
Take about a “walnut” size ball of meat and shape it oblong to fit into the bowl of meal. Work the meal around the meat until it is equally covered. (Pinch off excess meal so as not to make the breading too thick. Also, keeping your hands damp helps to shape the ball.)
Take a tamale paper out of the water, and working diagonally on a flat cookie sheet, begin to roll the tamale up in the paper, folding the edges in as you go, then tie.
Tamales ready to boil.
Boil tamales 45 minutes from the time that the water comes to a full boil.
Tamales all finished! Let them cool and then freeze.
Tie a string around the middle.
Note: the tamales will expand somewhat when they are boiled due to the self-rising meal. So, don’t worry about making them too small. Practice makes perfect!
Take about a “walnut” size ball of meat and shape it oblong to fit into the bowl of meal. Work the meal around the meat until it is equally covered. (Pinch off excess meal so as not to make the breading too thick. Also, keeping your hands damp helps to shape the ball.)
Meal and Crisco Meal mixed Meal and meat mixed
with tomato
juice
Newman Valley 
Is the meal you use corn meal
Yes Jan, corn meal. Our local store is Food City, and I just use the store brand.
Hello, I was wondering if you could provide me with the names of some grocery stores / chains / suppliers for tamale paper. I used to live in Tennessee. My family relocated to Illinois when I was a teenager. For years we visited Tennessee and stocked up on tamale paper. In Illinois, specifically the Chicagoland area, there are only corn husks available. I checked on Amazon and the closet I could find to the tamale paper I was familiar with was parchment paper. I would appreciate your assistance. Thank you, Nancy Kathy Zahorchak
Ms. Zahorchak, I am so sorry for the delay in replying to you. I have been covered up with work, and then simply forgot that I had a question. We get our tamale papers at a local grocery store – Food City. I don’t know if you could purchase from them online or not. I’m sorry that I can’t be more help. Since I have not had to purchase them online, I haven’t checked anywhere else.
Hi Mrs. Newman, I am so excited to find your recipe and video for Appalachian hot tamales. I have been searching for several years now for a recipe for how to make the hot tamales I have grown up on here in Knoxville, Tn. We always bought from someone and never had a recipe for them. I found a lot of tamale recipes but never the type that we loved as kids growing up here in East Tennessee. Just sent a text to both my sisters and told them my fortune in finding your blog and video and definitely planning to have a tamale rolling party. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and recipe. I have always wanted to make my own and now know how to because of you! Truly a blessing and answer to a little tamale prayer!
Linda, thank you so much for your comment. If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at bnprayerlogue@cs.com By the way, we get our tamale papers at Food City, and we use the Food City brand of meal for making them. Good Luck!
Such memories! I was born in Knoxville. Moved to Georgia when in middle school. My parents would spend all day in the kitchen to turn out an old favorite! My daughter talks about them all the time but since she is now a vegetarian not much hope. Maybe we can try plant based “meat”.
I have also made them with black eye peas. That is pretty good, too. I have the alpha-gal allergy and can’t eat beef, pork or venison any more, but I make mine with ground turkey or chicken now. They’re not as good as the original ones, but still pretty good.