Tamales-Potato Filling

Merrilee Jacobs: Hi! I am Merrilee Jacobs, with Three Hot Tamales and today, I am showing you how to make Tamales.

Now, for your vegetarian friends and for the ultimate and comfort food, I am going to show you how to make a Potato Green Chilly Cheese Filling. One of the things that I started with was fore cups of diced potatoes. You cook them until they are super soft. And we will add those in here. I had already prepared these. So they are ready to be worked with. I also chopped up a half a cup of onion, one table spoon of garlic, fresh garlic. Here the garlic press works wonderfully well for mincing it just right. Also we throw in two tea spoons of halopinos, diced very fine, over here. Three quarters of a cup of diced green chillies, my favorite, because they make it nice and tangy and add just a little flavor there. Now the halopinos add just a bit of a kick. So if you like a little spicy, you could do a little heavy on the halopinos. And you get that mix just a little bit. We are going to also add two and a quarter tea spoons of either a vegetarian chicken style seasoning or regular chicken seasoning if you would like. I have those put in there, a little salt, just about a half a teaspoon. A dash of cumin, I always wondered what they meant with a dash. It depends on how big your dash is I suppose. But a dash of cumin and three quarters of a cup of sharp cheddar cheese.

Now when you do this, if your potatoes are nice and warm, you have drained them right out of the pot, it has a great effect as far as it starts to melt the cheese in there a little bit. And basically the consistency that you get is a lot like kind of chunky mashed potatoes. You don't want real big chunks in there, because the flavors don't get smelled that well. So just kind of mash as you stir and get it all mixed up, so that when you fill your Tamale, all of the flavors are in every bite. And you don't get like a big chunk of cheese or a big chunk of green chillies or something like that in there.

So then after you mix, just a little while and get it all mashed and all good, you have a very tasty, very much the ultimate and comfort food, potato green chilly cheese filling for your Tamale. A real treat for all of your friends, meat eaters or not.

So now that we have showed you how to make your potato green chilly cheese filling, the next thing is the fun part. Now we get to start assembly or rolling as we call it and we will show you how to cook them.