Tamales run in the Salazar family going back at least five generations.
Recipes have been handed down from mother to daughter, grandmother to grandson.
Each generation adds its own twist; a pinch more of this, a dash of that. Subtle changes, nothing that dramatically changes the magic that has taken the family to tamale glory at the annual Tucson Tamal & Heritage Festival over the past decade.
For the past 10 years, the mother-son team of Anna Maria and Elias Salazar have put their green corn, red chile and traditional sweet tamales up against those of dozens of other tamale creators. They’ve walked away with 11 trophies, most for their traditional green chile.
“We like sharing our tamales with the community,” said Elias Salazar, 42, who said they are still using his grandmother Rita Villa’s recipes that she used decades ago when she sold tamales to neighbors to make ends meet.
The Salazar family will compete once again on Saturday, Dec. 5, when Casino del Sol Resort and Casino hosts the 11th Annual Tucson Tamal & Heritage Festival.
The family members have been preparing for Saturday since early last month. They needed the running head start: Salazar said they hope to bring at least 100 dozen tamales with them. And even though he said he can assemble a tamale from corn husk to masa top layer in a matter of seconds, getting to that point takes a lot of work.
The Salazars do everything by scratch. They start with buying fresh Elfrida corn off a south-side street vendor named Señor Chema, who sets up his truck at South 12th Avenue and West Irvington Road. That’s also where they get their roasted Hatch chiles.
Salazar said he cleans the corn, putting the husks in the freezer so they remain green, then shucks the corn before returning to Chema to have the kernels ground fine enough to make into masa.
The tamale-making sessions take hours, so the family turns on the radio — this time of year its Christmas carols 24/7 — to break up the silence. Or they spend the time telling old stories.
“My mom tells stories about her childhood,” Salazar said, then laughed as if recalling a poignant memory. “You hear things you never heard before.”
He has his own stories to tell, he said, including one of when he was a boy and his grandmother sent him and his cousins around their south side neighborhood going door-to-door selling her fresh-made tamales and tortillas.
“I must have been 8 years old and … we made signs and I remember that my sign had a picture of spoon and a fork and in the middle it said ‘Tamales for Rent’,” he said.
Salazar said he is the fifth generation of his family that has taken up the tamale tradition. He said that after years of mulling over the idea, he and his mother, who is 65, have decided that they will open a tamale restaurant in 2016.
