There hasn’t been enough MrsForensicBBQ/ForensicBBQ cook days lately. Days removed from Valentine’s Day, we’re giving you a couples meal. Let’s see what we can do with this idea of mine. I like meat with my meals, and I refuse to give in. This was written into our wedding vows, so she knew what she was getting into. The only thing to match my stubbornness is her stubbornness – who won’t eat ANY of the beautifully seasoned, beautifully cooked meat products that I plate. I gave in.
?⬛Mrs. FBBQ chime-in: What I was getting into was drastically understated. I had no idea.
We both have never had jackfruit before, so today was the day. I’ve read that people use jackfruit as a pulled pork vegetarian substitute… just stop. These are jackfruit tamales, they aren’t “vegan-friendly pulled pork substitute tamales”, so stop trying to vegan my food. MrsForensicBBQ said she’d jump in and comment on this post, so let’s see how the couples post goes!
?⬛Mrs. FBBQ chime-in: News flash, you’ve been vegan’d.
Another gripe – I bought “Authentic Mexican Tamales Kit” in a package, that when I brought it home, didn’t even have any corn husks. What the hell is so authentic about parchment paper in a tamale? This was starting off great – so I roped MrsForensicBBQ into it so we can embark on this culinary disaster together. How’d we do? Let’s find out.
The Prep Table
We had a lot of prep going on for this one. There’s three separate preps for this one: The tamale filling, the masa, and the guasacaca. The filling was by far the most involved – the “authentic masa” was bag, add water (c’mon Melissas). The guasacaca was basically a salsa/guacamole – so that’s a quick one. I’ll try to bring this to y’all logically.
This picture was the tamale filling ingredients. Never have done any jackfruit before, never used liquid aminos.. this was new territory for me. Our friend Jen made us some vegetable broth (blue topped container) so at least we know this part would be good. Opened up the jackfruit, dumped it into the colander and I saw this:
This is the result of canned jackfruit. Looks absolutely awful. Immediately questioned what the hell we were doing with our Sunday afternoon. Let’s power through. Gave it a rinse to rid of the jarred stuff, and then wrapped it in a towel to squeeze out the water.
?⬛Mrs. FBBQ chime-in: I wasn’t sure I could eat this. Looked way too much like meat. I do not like the texture or appearance of meat (this making me not a fan of meat substitutes), so I was hesitant to give this a go. But, in the spirit of trying new things, I repeated the mantra in my head, “This is a plant, This is a plant.” I also trust Mr. FBBQ, so I left the prep and cooking of this to him.
I mean, it’s getting better. Still looks like a disaster. Wasn’t happy with what we were doing. MrsForensicBBQ wasn’t either because it reminded her of the meat consistency. I immediately reminded her this was absolutely no meat I’d ever cook and we were going to embark on this journey together. Gave this a little bit of a shred, wrapped it up in that towel again, and gave it a another good squeeze to rid it of residual water.
Yep, that’s our base. I’ll concede that it at least looks like a shredded pork/chicken – but it smelled like nothing. Like air. We’ll fix that. Won’t be the only anti-vegetarian, anti-vegan sentiment I’ll share this post. The rest of the tamale filling resides in the “PROCESS” part of the post, so let’s show you the prep that goes into the guasacaca.
Guasacaca sounds fancy – but I’ll say it’s green sauce. Thinner guacamole. Above, the bag has the onions, the jar has the cilantro/parsley – it’ll be good, no doubt. Since it’s all going into a food processor, there isn’t much prep. MrsForensicBBQ had used 1/2 an onion for the tamale prep, the other half is going into this – I pieced out the cilantro/parsley – but it’s all gonna be blended. Super quick, super easy… more importantly, super fresh.
Here’s me ragging on Melissa’s again. Nondescript bag, add water. I’ll take full blame for buying the product – but damn… ain’t nothing authentic about this thing. MrsForensicBBQ is already looking up how to make legit masa – and I love her for that. So there’s your masa prep, white bag.
The Process
Now that everything is about prepped, let’s get to the cooking. MrsForensicBBQ was a little too happy to wield the knife during our joint-cook – so she put a dice/mince on the ingredients. Mrs. FBBQ chime-in: I’ve become a pro at mincing and dicing and slicing.
?⬛Mrs. FBBQ chime-in: Yes, I am a cat mom. In case you haven’t figured out by the cat cameos in my posts.
First step was to get a saute on the celery, onion, and pepper. We weren’t trying to get them burnt up, just softened enough to continue with the cook. We use this deep pan for so much – so set the heat no higher than medium and let’s get aromatic. After about 5 minutes, add in the garlic, liquid amino, cajun seasoning, tomato paste, and a couple cranks of the salt (that I managed to break).
After a couple minutes of letting that magic meld, we dumped in the vegetable broth and stirred in the jackfruit. It was at this point, I came around and thought we’re going to be okay with the jackfruit. It looked okay, it smelled great in the kitchen… Optimistic, let’s keep going.
After the 20 minutes, and a MrsForensicBBQ trip to the market for the lime (guasacaca oversight) – we let this cool. It was time to actually build the tamales. We had a good system going. She spread the masa, put the filling on it – I wrapped it, put it in the steamer, and repeat. Where we might have went wrong is too much masa per tamale. It said we could do 12 of them, we ended up with 6.
?⬛Mrs. FBBQ chime-in: Singing Lime in the Coconut!
It was our first go at the tamale game, but we’re not shy here – we’ll admit our mistakes. We also packed the hell out of these tamales with the jackfruit filling. I actually can’t wait to do this again and grow from what we did on this day. I look forward to making our own masa, actually using corn husks… this was a good primer to see if this is something to do again.
Masa layer 
Add some Jackfruit filling 
MrsForensicBBQ making the base 
Wrapped and in the steamer
All credit goes to MrsForensicBBQ for this hack. She uses this steamer for so much (as you know from her posts). Her idea to flip the second basin and cap the ass end of it worked out perfectly! It definitely fit in with our not-authentic theme for the tamales. We let this roll for about 50 minutes to an hour – so I watched the end of a football game and when that was over, get to making the guasacaca.
?⬛Mrs. FBBQ chime-in: And I did yoga that was rudely interrupted by the end of football.
Allegedly this will keep better than guacamole, but we’ll see how true that is as time passes. Didn’t need to get fancy with any of this, just threw it in the food processor and let it roll. A lot of pictures, a lot of text so far – let’s show you all how it turned out!
The Result
After about an hour in the steamer, it was time to get to eating. We were a little delayed on cooking the rice and beans – mostly the rice – but it all turned out pretty outstanding. As you can see above, the parchment paper worked out just fine for authenticity ?
I unwrapped my tamale on the right, went to unwrap MrsForensicBBQ’s – and the thing fell apart. I salvaged it on mine – being the gentleman I am – and she got a nicely prepared one. She got to topping things off better and it looked far better for the final picture. She topped it with some cheese, some guasacaca – a little more cheese on them beans because why not.
?⬛Mrs. FBBQ chime-in: My not-so-secret cheat on Plant Based:CHEESE
She took hers and went eating. I finished mine off with a fresh jalapeno, some chips for the store-bought salsa and we enjoyed one hell of a meal. Surprisingly, we both really enjoyed this one. She was unsure with the meat-ish quality of the jackfruit, I was unsure of the veggie-ish quality of jackfruit and we found a happy medium. It worked, we ate, we were pleased. We already talked about how we could make it better and I can’t wait to add a second tamale post.
While this is going up around Valentines day, we actually made this before Thanksgiving ?. We’re doing what we can to keep adding awesome, new, different recipes for y’all and I hope you’re still enjoying it. Keep watching to see where we go next!
?⬛Mrs. FBBQ final chime-in: I was hesitant when I saw the look of the jackfruit. I was pleasantly surprised how well this turned out! It was a delicious dinner that I look forward to making more authentically next time!! This was a great joint venture (kinda like our marriage!)
The Recipe
Jackfruit Tamales w/ Venezuelan Guasacaca
Ingredients
Tamales
- 2 Cans Jackfruit ~16oz cans?
- 1/4 Cup Olive Oil ish
- 2 Stalks Celery Finely chopped
- 1 Green Pepper Diced
- 1/2 Onion Diced
- 2 Cloves Garlic Minced
- 3 Tbsp Tomato Paste
- 1 Tbsp Liquid Aminos
- 1 Tsp Cajun Seasoning ForensicBBQ blend
- 1 Cup Vegetable Broth
- 1/4 Tsp Salt to Taste
Guasacaca
- 3 Avocados
- 1/2 Onion
- 3 Cloves Garlic
- 1 Jalapeno
- 1 Cup Cilantro
- 1 Cup Parsley
- 2 Tbsp White Wine Vinegar
- 2 Tbsp Lime Juice
- 1/2 Tsp Salt To Taste
Instructions
Guasacaca
- Add ingredients to food processor. Process food. (Super easy, but that's it!)
Tamale Filling (Jackfruit)
- Empty the cans into a colander and shake loose the juice. Move it to a towel and squeeze out the rest of it. Open up the towel, shred it up, and wrap it again and squeeze some more. We want it as dry as we can. Discard the pieces that wouldn't shred.
- In a deep pan, heat up the olive oil and add the celery, onion, green pepper. Saute for about 5 minutes.
- Add garlic, tomato paste, liquid aminos, cajun seasoning and salt and stir/combine for another 2-3 minutes or so.
- Add the vegetable broth and jackfruit and give it a good mix. Let it cook for about 20 minutes stirring every 5-7 minutes or so.
Tamale Build
- Using the Melissa's kit, mix the bag with 2 cups of water. When it's all pastey like, you're good to go. Follow the directions on the bag (spread thin, 2" from the edges, add filling, and wrap).
- Steam the tamales for about an hour. Unwrap, top with your favorite toppings – definitely the guasacaca – and enjoy!