Tamales are one of the hottest topics in the American food scene, proving that instant meals paired with great flavor never go out of style.
According to Tastewise, a new platform that uses artificial intelligence to track social media, restaurant menus, and digital content to find food trends, social conversations about tamales have exploded by 47% in the past year. did.
The platform revealed that approximately 34,000 U.S. restaurants serve tamales. It is wrapped in masa, a corn dough, stuffed with various meats, vegetables, and spices, and then steamed inside a corn husk or banana leaf.
American Candy Tour: 5 delicious destinations for fun family memories
“The reason we love tamales is very simple,” Texas tamale legend Lucy Rascon told FOX News Digital. “Because it’s delicious.”
Tamales, not to mention the Western Hemisphere’s oldest culinary tradition, enjoy a surprising cultural commonality with all foods today.
Lucy Rascon (center), owner of Lucy’s Kitchen in Vega, Texas, learned how to make tamales from her grandmother as a girl in Mexico. She passed on her family’s traditions to her daughters, Sandy Rascon-Godoy (left) and Liz Rascon-Alanis (right). (Shannon Richardson/Brick and Elm)
Rascon, owner of Lucy’s Kitchen in Vega, Texas, learned how to make tamales from her grandmother who lives in Mexico. Her grandmother probably learned it from her grandmother, and from many grandmothers before her since humans first arrived in the Americas.
“The Aztecs believed that Tzitzimitl, the grandmother of the god Chicomexositl, created the first tamale,” food culture website Tasting Table reported last month.
Archaeologists make ‘amazing’ discovery of Pompeii’s banquet hall
“Although archaeologists have yet to find evidence that the first tamales were made by God, records suggest that the history of tamales can be traced back 10,000 years, and they are still the oldest tamales eaten today. It is one of the ancient dishes.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, a Franciscan missionary from Spain, recorded his first encounter with tamales after arriving in the New World in 1529.
A man cooks tamales during a traditional New Year’s hotpot trip (Paseo de Olla) on the Panse River in Cali, Colombia, January 1, 2023. Researchers believe tamales were first made by indigenous peoples in Central America as much as 10,000 years ago. , one of the world’s oldest prepared foods. (Joaquín Sarmiento/AFP via Getty Images)
“Delicious, delicious, very tasty, very well made…fragrant, with a pleasant aroma,” he wrote.
Ingredients included “chili pepper, salt, tomatoes, gourd seeds” and various meats such as turkey, fish, rabbit, frog, and gopher.
Banana-focused food truck in New Jersey offers frozen fruit treats ‘clean and refreshing’
Yelp.com currently lists the highest-rated tamales in the United States.
Among the stores at the top of the tamale ticker in several major cities is Yolanda’s Tamale in New York City. Senorita’s Tamales in Los Angeles, California. Latin American market in Miami, Florida. and Tamale Boy in San Antonio, Texas.
Click here to sign up for our lifestyle newsletter
But many Texans love the age-old family tradition of tamales served at Lucy’s Kitchen in Vega, a piper’s town of less than 1,000 people on the Panhandle River west of Amarillo.
Chicken tamales wrapped in banana leaves featured at Pupuseria y Panaderia Emmanuel in Houston on Tuesday, April 30, 2013. (Myra Beltran/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
Lucy Rascon has revealed one of the secrets to her tamale popularity. “More meat, less masa,” she said.
Rascon prepares tamales based on sight, feeling and instinct, not recipes.
She then passed on her family’s gifts to her daughters, Liz Rascon-Alanis and Sandy Rascon-Godoy.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“Even though we are both very successful business girls, we still like to cook tamales together,” Rascon said.
Tamales from Lucy’s Kitchen in Vega, Texas. Owner Lucy Rascon learned how to make tamales from her grandmother as a girl in Mexico. Tamales were first made in Central America 10,000 years ago. (Shannon Richardson/Brick & Elm)
“Tamales are a tradition that will never die.”
For more lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle.
