Barbecue Brisket Tamales
A couple days before Christmas, my sister sent me a photo of her and her in-laws fulfilling a holiday tradition of making tamales. I'm also spending time with my in-laws this Christmas, but am in Houston, where no trip is complete without a stop into one of the numerous fine smoked meat establishments around the city for brisket and all the fixins. Taking those two things in together, I was reminded of thesesmoked brisket tamales I made during the fall and it felt like the right moment to share this great recipe with the world.
The brisket I was starting with here had been smoked earlier in the summer and then frozen and defrosted. Starting with the meat cold made it really easy to dice up nicely into a size fitting for a tamale stuffing. I had nearly four cups of brisket chopped and it looked like it was going to be way more than I needed, but by the time I finished assembling all the tamales, this pile was nearly gone.
I hadn't planned on doing any additional cooking for the fillings for this recipe, but I had charred, rested, and sliced up poblanos for rajas tamales the same day I constructed the brisket ones, and I had leftover peppers that I ended up putting to use in this recipe too. I liked how they worked in the end so well that I wrote roasting the poblanos into the final recipe, but there's two good things to know about this: while I grilled these peppers, you can char them over the open flame of a gas stove or under a broiler if it's easier for you. The second thing is that you can omit these completely and still come out with really stellar tamales if you're not keen on the extra effort the poblanos require.
Whenever I smoke a full packer brisket, I always have so much fat trimmings that I put those to use by rendering them into beef tallow. I thought that tallow would be the perfect substitute for lard in these tamales, so gave it a go. I was worried the tallow would have a stronger flavor than the lard though, so I ended up going in with half tallow and half neutral tasting vegetable shortening to help alleviate my fear. I beat those two fats with salt and baking powder until everything was light and creamy looking to start off the masa mix.
I then added rehydrated Maseca into the fat in three portions, beating the batter between each addition until the masa and fat were well incorporated. I then needed a little more liquid to get the masa into its ideal Play-doh like consistency, so added a quarter cup of chicken stock at a time until it reached that spreadable texture.
Moving on to tamale assemble, I started with placing a water soaked corn husk in my hand, glossy side up (when I could tell which side was the glossy one or not). I then spread a few tablespoon of masa into a rectangle on roughly two thirds of the husk. In the middle of masa I placed a line barbecue sauce, followed by brisket, Longhorn cheddar, and pepper strips. It looked like a lot of filling, but the masa encased it well as I wrapped the husk closed. I repeated this process until the masa was all gone.
I then situated the tamales upright, set on a steamer insert in a stockpot that had a couple inches of water at the bottom. Once I had crammed as many tamales as would fit in there, I set the lid in place, turned on the heat, and let these steam until they were done. It took a little over 45 minutes until the masa looked fully cooked, and I tested doneness by taking out on tamale, letting it rest a few minutes, then unraveling the husk and making sure the masa released completely, plus taste testing because I couldn't resist.
Since these tamales were meant to feature an American barbecue profile, I served them with barbecue sauce, which actually tasted pretty at home with the corn-heavy flavor of the masa. Like American barbecue, these were also some of the heartiest tamales I've ever had. It helped that the filling was meat-heavy, but it was really the strong beefy and smoky flavor that did that job best. The cheese and barbecue sauce both melded together in a fitting manner that went with the dominant brisket, and the reason I liked the poblanos so much was because they injected a noticeable fruitiness to balance the heaviness a tad, and also gave the finished product a little extra tie into its Mexican roots. I'm sure the tamales my sister was making this Christmas were more transitional than this, but this recipe certainly feels like a pretty perfect representation of our respective holiday experiences combined into one.
