How to wrap a tamale

Every year a week before Christmas it is a family tradition to get the family together and make tamales. We all gather and have a great time but at the same time we are wrapping and cooking up dozens and dozens of delicious tamales.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. There are so many different tamale recipes, but the way they are wrapped is pretty much the same. While there are a few different ways that it can be down, the main thing is to make sure it is securely wrapped. Here are some useful tips for the next time you wrap a tamale....
2. * Once you have sorted though the corn husks and determined which ones are suitable for use, you then spread the masa on the smooth side of the corn husk with the back of a spoon. Make sure you only cover the top portion of the corn husk with the masa.
3. * Next add the meat, tofu or sauce onto the top of the masa.
   
   * Fold the two long sides of the corn husk towards the middle.
4. * Now you want to fold the bottom portion of the husk up, that should be the part of the husk that has no masa or filling on it.
   
   * You may now choose to be down folding your tamale if you do not want to tie it up. Just make sure that it is secure and no filling is oozing out of it. Make sure that you place it standing upwards on the bottom part that you folded up to prevent the filling from coming out.
5. * If you want to tie your tamale use a corn husk as ties by pulling thin strips of off a clean corn husk. If your ties are coming out to short you can tie a couple together to make it longer.
   
   * Fold the tamale just as explained above. Next tie the tamale with one of the ties you made with the corn husks, place the tie in the middle of the tamale keeping the flap secure. This is the one tie method.
6. * The two tie method is done by following the above process and then placing another tie on the top of the tamale. This securely locks in the filling so that you can stack the tamales on top of each other as you steam it. Otherwise you have to stand them all up in the steaming process. So the double tie process is much more time consuming but allows you to cook more at a time.
7. A great way to tell the tamales apart from each other if you are making more then one filling is to use to off the above three methods. That way it is easy to tell them apart and you do not have to open them in order to see which one is which.