Wild Boar Tamales

I have been threatening to make home made tamales for years now. Finally did it. I know, it's 'off season", as tamales are traditionally made on Christmas time, but I used my Rival 22-quart super-duper roaster and first cooked the boar ham and then steamed the tamales outside on the patio! No smell, no heat in my kitchen. Yay! I love that thing!

Hubs is a hunter, and I have a whole lot of wild boar taking up prime real estate in my freezer right now. Luckily, the meat came out great for the tamales. Otherwise, wild boar is just too lean to do anything else, honestly. It needs to be cooked to death, shredded and mixed with chile sauce to hydrate it.

I ended up making 2 versions for the masa part: one using prepared masa (basically just masa and broth or water "preparada") and canola oil, the other with the dried bagged masa flour("masa para tamales"), broth and lard. Yep, I said it: LARD. Basically, Pig Butter. My apologies to my vegetarian friends. Honestly, there really wasn't a difference in taste...hubs said the one made with the dried masa was more flavorful and had texture to it. I preferred the texture of the preparada..it was silkier, moister? Both were perfectly acceptable and very similar.

Tamales are basically very easy to make, just time-consuming. As I kept filling, folding, and tying I was thinking: And why did I not just BUY the tamales? But it was kind of fun.

Here's where I found the basic recipe: AllRecipes Real Homemade Tamales  I just substituted a leg of wild boar for the pork loin and cooked it for 6 hours in the roaster, then mixed it with the chile sauce.

Make it a Great Day!
Ann