Last week our homeschool group met up to learn how to make Panamanian tamales. The process of making tamales is a very long process, so if you ever receive a tamal, know that it is a labor of love!
The lady helping teach us how to make them had done some prep work in the days before we met. She cooked the chicken, ground up the corn, made the seasoning, and gathered the leaves.
When the kids arrived, we began by prepping the leaves. They each had to be washed and stripped from the fat stem. These were bijao and plantain leaves.
They were wrapped together and put in boiling water. The paila is a large bowl that they are cooked in. They are cooked over an open fire. These were placed in a bag to make it easier to turn them.
The kids then got the chance to mix the mixture for the tamales. Their hands were scrubbed before we began this process. Ha! This is corn masa, some of the guiso seasoning, oil, chicken stock from cooking the chicken, and some of the ground up onions and peppers. The kids really thought this was fun, but they got tired after a little bit. It's a big process to make sure all of the masa is well mixed.
After the leaves were cooked and softened, and the masa was totally mixed up, the tamales were put together. You put a cooked bijao leaf as the leaf to be wrapped around the tamal in the cooking process. The masa is added and the chicken as well as the culantro, onion, pepper mix to the top.
After that, the leaf is folded over the mixture. Then the top, plantain leaf is folded around the other leaf and mixture. It makes for a nice envelope to hold the tamal for cooking.
When the product is all packaged up, string is tied around it to ensure it doesn't fall apart while cooking. All of the items are cooked, but the final cooking process adds flavor from the leaves and makes the masa a little more solid while cooking.
The tamales were placed in a bag and put in the boiling water where they cooked for 50 minutes - turning them to ensure they were cooking evenly. To get to this point, it can take hours! Our group made 80 tamales, which was enough for everyone to have a couple.
The final product was tasty and the kids really enjoyed the process.
Have you ever had a tamal before?