Vegan Tamales that even a 3 and 5 year old have fun making and everyone enjoyed eating.  While visiting my vegan cousins they took us out to eat at a friends house and it turned out to be a vegan tamale cooking party.  It was a blast.

The Masa filling:

  • Masa corn flour,
  • salt,
  • sugar (this I believe was the instructor’s secret ingredient)  – I have also heard that some regions of the world really like their tamales very sweet.  I can go with less sugar and it is still good.
  • oil

Process:

  • Cook and stirring constantly over heat until it is like mashed potatoes.

Cooking the masa on the stove

cooking the masa
cooking the masa

Made some masa in advance for the party

masa for a party
masa for a party

Now creating the tamale, which is probably the funnest part.

Here they mixed the spicy red sauce or a little tomato sauce seen above (in the picture with the masa on the stove) with firm tofu and heated until cooked and spiced.

spicy tofu
spicy tofu

Here are all the ingredients we used:

tamale ingredients
tamale ingredients

Building the tamale

  1. starts with a piece of parchment paper and
  2. then a banana leaf is laid on top of that. (Note on the banana leaf – the frozen ones are difficult to use and should be avoided. They are also cut to size.)
  3. Now the masa – not too much or you can’t close the tamale.
  4. Use the banana leaf to make a small indent to hold the filling items
  5. Filling items included: tofu, garbanzo beans, raisin, capers, olives and potato
tamale fillings
tamale fillings

Wrap the parchment and banana leaf together.  Fold over width size in thirds and then fold over the ends to hold everything in as my 5 year old did below.  She was going through a princes phase.

5yr old folding tamales
5yr old folding tamales

If you are having a party it might be a good idea to mark the tamales, so you can find the one you made.  My 3 year old demonstrates.

 

marking parchment paper
marking parchment paper during parties

Stocking the pot with tamales.  You put a few banana leafs on the bottom to protect the tamales from direct heat. Then start stacking the tamales vertically until the pot is full.

banana leaf in pot
banana leaf in pot starting to stack
full pot of tamales
full pot of tamales

Then you add the water to the tamale pot.  Enough water to steam

add water to tamale pot
add water to tamale pot

Cover the pot with a banana leaf before you put the pot cover on

tamale banana leaf cover
tamale banana leaf cover

The final banana leaf is actually the timer.  When the leave turns dark it is done. The picture below shows the color change in the leaf but it is not quite done yet.

banana leaf color change - see the difference between cooked and uncooked leaf
banana leaf color change – see the difference between cooked and uncooked leaf

The whole leaf will turn dark and not just the lines you see here.

Quoting my 5 year old

Isabella says she will make them and I can eat them.

That works for me. 🙂

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR