There's a reason the Salazar family takes home a prize every year at the Tucson Tamal & Heritage Festival, and you can taste it.
There, sitting on wooden chairs in their southside dining room, we demolished a plate of red beef and green corn tamales, unwrapping the light green husks and letting the steam pour into the room. Your fork cuts through the masa so effortlessly. It is soft and supple, yet not custardy like some others. It tastes like loaves of fresh-baked cornbread wrapped in a blanket of fresh grass. In short, the best tamales I've ever had.
Mother and son team Anna Maria and Elias started preparing them about a month before, purchasing raw corn from a vendor on South 12th Avenue and getting the kernels ground into masa. Once the masa and the fillings are prepped, it's a matter of seconds to assemble the tamal.
The two do several different varieties, but their staple is the green corn, which takes its name not from the corn itself but from the roasted green chiles they stuff inside. (So yummy, no salsa required.) But earlier this December, the family also took home a second place prize in the festival's gourmet category for their shrimp tamales. It's the family's 12th award.
Elias has been doing this full time since he got laid off from his job earlier this year, pumping out hundreds of tamales through his catering business Traditional Sonoran Style Tamales. He's also planning to open a brick and mortar restaurant outside of town in 2016.
Instead of giving you a recipe this time, I'm just going to give you a phone number: 520-207-3198. Call it and get yourself some amazing Tucson tamales. Merry Christmas!
