Vegetarian Corn and Black Bean Tamales

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Day 4.

I’m making vegan corn and black bean tamales because it’s Tamale Tuesday! Hooray! To help in menu planning, I sometimes try to assign a certain type of meal to the days of the week.

Taco Tuesday is one I loosely stick to, simply meaning I do something Mexican on Tuesdays. This week, I’m making tamales. Tamales seem a little daunting.

I’ve had corn husks for nearly a year because I keep putting this off. But they’re so good, it has to be worth it. I hope. The recipe is vegan by the way. This was sort of accidental. It just didn’t happen to call for any dairy. Hoorah for the vegan readers!

Vegan Corn and Black Bean Tamales

Ingredients

Basic Tamale Dough

Makes 12 Tamales
2 cups Masa Harina
2 cups Boiling Water
11 tablespoons vegetable shortening, chilled
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/4 teaspoons cayenne pepper
1/2 cups vegetable broth/stock, chilled

Corn and Black Bean Tamales Filling

Makes Filling for 12 Tamales
2 cups Black beans
1 cups Corn
1/2 teaspoon “Bacon” salt
1 1/2 cups of Chili Sauce (recipe follows)

Chili Sauce

6 Cascabel/Guajillo Chili Pods (These are the dried long red chili that you can find in most super markets)
4 cups warm water

Cranberry Orange Sauce

(optional)
11/2 cups whole cranberry sauce
1 cup Mandarin Oranges chopped and drained
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup pecans
4 tablespoon of the Cascabel/Guajillo Chili Sauce (recipe above)
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Method

Tamale Dough

In a mixer with paddle attachment mix the Masa Harina, cumin, and cayenne pepper. Add the boiling water in a steady stream to the mixing bowl while the mixer is on medium speed. Continue to mix until the dough forms a ball. Continue to mix for five minutes.

Transfer the dough ball to a clean bowl and refrigerate the dough for one hour.

Returning the dough to the mixer, beat the dough on medium to high for five more minutes.

With the mixer running add the vegetable shortening 2 tablespoons at a time and mix well with each addition until the entire shortening amount has been added and the mixture is smooth. 

Combine the salt baking powder and chilled veggie stock, slowing adding the mixture to the dough while the mixer is running.

Mix until thoroughly combined.

Chili Sauce

Take the stem off and remove all the seeds

Soak the chili in warm water for about 15 minutes, then pour the chili and the water into the blender.

Blend until the sauce becomes thick.

Cranberry Orange Sauce

Mix well and bring to a simmer.

Serve warm.

The Corn Husk

Soak the Corn Husk in warm water about 30 minutes.

Take the Corn Husk from the water and place it on a towel then pat the

Husk dry.

Tear enough strips of husk to tie the tamales.

Black Beans

In a skillet add the beef, bacon salt, corn and black beans.

Add 1 1/2 cups of Chili Sauce and mix well. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook until most of the liquid has been reduced.

I did not get to the store to buy the chili pods, and I was making this for myself and the toddler, so I opted to do 1 teaspoon of chili oil and 1 cup of salsa instead of the chili sauce. It was still good.

I actually skipped making this sauce, though it looks delicious, and substituted the disastrous Cranberry-BBQ Sauce mixed with about 1/2 can diced tomatoes (undrained) and the brown sugar and pecans.

I am a big believer in salvaging what you can from your epic failures.

I took the meatballs out and froze them, then I salvaged the sauce for this dish. But then again, I had enchilada sauce as a backup, just in case it was still bad.

Here’s the original Best Cranberry Sauce Ever recipe if you’d like to substitute that for the “whole cranberry sauce” and Mandarin oranges here.

Assemble the Black Bean Tamales

Spread the dry Corn Husk with a fairly thin layer of the masa dough. Place about 1 tablespoon of the filling down the center of the masa dough. Roll the tamale and tie the tamale with a strip of corn husk.

Steam the Black Bean Tamales in a steamer for 1 hour. Make sure the lid to your steamer is tight. I don’t have a steamer, at least not a separate one. Mainly that’s because I don’t steam a whole lot and Alton Brown told me to use multi-taskers in my kitchen.

So, I had the option of the on the stove steamer insert for a pasta pot or the steamer insert in my rice cooker. I chose the rice cooker because the lid is a lot tighter. It worked great! Remove the Tamale and let them dry on a cookie sheet for at least 15 minutes before serving.

Serve the Corn & Black Bean Tamale with the Cranberry Sauce with a garnish of cilantro. I put the sauce on the side for serving and also offered an enchilada-type sauce for those who didn’t want the festive cranberry sauce.

Original recipe can be found in Miz Helen’s Cottage.

Instant Pot Method

Once your black bean tamales are assembled and ready to cook, pop them in the steamer basket.

Pour 1 cup of water into your instant pot, and insert the steamer rack. Arrange the tamales, open-side-up, vertically in the instant pot. Leave a bit of empty space to allow the pot to properly pressurize.

Cook on high pressure for 20 minutes. Allow pressure to naturally release. Remove the tamales and allow them to dry on a sheet pan for about 15 minutes before serving.

The Results

OK, this was so not as bad as I expected as far as difficulty for the recipe. If the baby hadn’t started crying during the tamale-rolling, it would’ve gone great. As it was, I messed up somewhere or another or my corn husks were just too small. I ended up with about 3/4 cup of leftover dough even though I made about 15 tamales.

If I’d wanted to wait on more husks to soak, I could’ve made a few more tamales. Instead, I put the dough in the fridge and threw the 3 or 4 tablespoons of filling into the cranberry sauce. But oh my goodness, they were yummy. I did a little experimentation here and made half with “bacon-salted” meat and half with just the bean and corn blend.

They were both good. I think I may use my leftover dough to try another experiment with the “grain-meat” chorizo sausage. The sauce was even pretty good. Though if you didn’t have a kitchen disaster to clean up, I’d bet Miz Helen’s sauce is better.

Mine’s a little too sweet, I preferred my tamales plain or with salsa. Maybe it’s just too far past Christmas for cranberry sauce tamales. But boy were they good. Definitely worth the work, which was not nearly as bad as I’d built it up to be.

I made Tamales for “Taco Tuesday.” Do you have any themes to help you menu plan? Maybe Italian on Thursdays and Asian food on Saturdays? Let me know what you do to help menu plan, or just for fun each week!

This post is inked at Real Food Wednesday, Works for me Wednesday, What’s on your Plate?, No Whine Wednesday, Gold Star Wednesday, Ultimate Recipe Swap Thursday, Recipe Swap Thursday, Friday Favorites and Recipes I can’t Wait to Try.

The Super Easy Vegetarian Slow Cooker Cookbook

Want vegetarian and vegan recipes you’ll love? Check out my first cookbook! I’m so excited about it and I hope you’ll love it. You can find more information about it right HERE.