This tamal tolimense has cooked rice worked into the dough, as many Tolima recipes do (others layer the rice into the filling instead), which makes it dense and filling. What rarely gets mentioned is that it starts three days earlier: the dried white cracked corn needs 72 hours of soaking, water changed daily, before it can be ground, and that clock can’t be sped up. Tamal day itself is six and a half hours and yields 12 parcels of about 670 calories each.
How do you make tamal tolimense? Soak cracked corn 3 days, grind it and mix with al dente rice and cooked split peas. Marinate chicken, pork ribs and pork belly 2 hours, build each tamal on a flamed banana leaf with dough, meats, potato, carrot and half a boiled egg, tie it with twine and boil upright for 150 minutes. About 390 minutes on tamal day for 12 tamales.
What goes into it
Here the dough is 1 lb of ground cracked corn with 9 oz of cooked rice and 9 oz of split peas, and that’s where its texture comes from: the rice adds starch and a grain you notice in the bite. The filling is three meats (chicken, pork ribs and pork belly) plus potato, carrot and half a boiled egg, almost all going in raw or barely cooked and finishing inside the leaf over the two and a half hours of boiling.
The shape identifies it too: the Tolima tamal is tied round with a topknot on top, while the valluno version is a rectangular parcel. The Bogotá-style tamal differs inside: no rice or egg, a dough of precooked corn flour and chickpeas in the filling.
What to buy
Two things need planning. The corn is whole dried cracked corn, sold as maíz trillado or maíz peto in Latin groceries and online; masa harina makes a perfectly good tamal but a smooth one, missing the texture that defines this version. And the banana leaves, which come frozen in 1-lb packs in Latin and Asian markets and work exactly like fresh once thawed and flamed.
For the meats, bone-in chicken thighs beat breast, which dries out over a two-and-a-half-hour boil, and skin-on pork belly is what gives the dough its fat.
The three-day soak
This is the step that decides whether there’s a tamal at all. Cracked corn is a whole dried grain, and grinding it requires water to have reached the center, which takes 72 hours. With one day of soaking the corn is still hard and the mill tears it into pieces rather than turning it into dough; with no soak, it simply won’t grind.
The water gets changed daily, and that isn’t a small detail: soaking corn ferments, and in my experience, left well past three days (around day five), the dough takes on a sour edge you can taste in the finished tamal. Three days with clean water is the mark.
Tamal day, six and a half hours
Of the six and a half hours, 80 minutes are assembling the twelve, and that’s the part that’s done with company. The rest is marinating, grinding, flaming leaves and waiting: the 2 hours the meat spends in the fridge cover grinding the corn, cooking the rice, peas and eggs, and flaming the leaves.
One thing I learned the hard way: tamales go into the pot upright, packed against each other, with the water covering them. Lying flat they open under the weight of the water and the dough escapes. And the pot doesn’t get opened mid-boil, because the temperature drops and the centers stay raw.
How it compares
If you know Mexican tamales such as green chicken tamales in salsa verde, almost everything here is different: the wrapper is banana leaf rather than corn husk, the dough is ground whole corn rather than masa harina whipped with lard, the parcel is boiled rather than steamed, and one tamal carries almost three times the calories of one of those green tamales. Venezuelan hallacas are closer relatives, though a hallaca cooks its filling first and marinates it a full day, while here the meats go in raw. Puerto Rican pasteles are boiled in banana leaf as well, with a masa of grated green banana and yautía (malanga) in place of the corn.
How to assemble
The leaves and the tie
Pass the banana leaves over a flame for 5 to 10 seconds a side, until the bright green turns dark and matte: that’s when they become flexible and stop cracking. Unflamed, they tear at the first fold.
On the leaf go two big spoonfuls of dough spread into a 6-inch circle, then the meats, potato and carrot, and another spoonful of dough over the top. Fold the sides in, the ends down, reinforce with a second leaf crosswise, and tie with twine, finishing with the topknot.
Assemble loosely: the dough swells as it cooks, and a tight tamal bursts its leaf.
Who this recipe is for
- If you can buy ground corn → you skip the three days; ask for “masa para tamal” at a Latin market and start at the marinade
- If it’s your first time → make six instead of twelve and assemble with help; assembly is what takes the time
- If you can’t find banana leaves → frozen ones work identically; foil is a last resort and costs you the aroma
- If you want it lighter → more rice and less corn, at 12 oz rice to 14 oz corn, gives a looser, lighter dough
- If you’re making 24 → double it and use two pots; packed into one, the tamales in the middle stay raw
What goes wrong
Skipping the soak. The first of these 5 mistakes has no fix: the corn won’t grind and there’s no dough. Three days, water changed.
Not tasting the dough. Once it’s tied there’s no rescuing it. Cook a teaspoon in a pan and taste.
Packing it tight. The dough swells and bursts the leaf. Loose parcel, firm knot.
Boiling them flat. They open and the dough escapes into the pot. Upright and covered with water.
Opening them straight from the pot. The dough is soft and collapses. Twenty minutes of rest.
What to serve it with
In Tolima the tamal is Sunday breakfast, with Colombian hot chocolate and a white corn arepa, and at celebrations it appears beside lechona, the region’s two big dishes. In December it shares the table with natilla and buñuelos. One 670-calorie tamal is a complete breakfast for an adult; half a tamal with a cup of aguapanela is what a child gets.
Storage
Cooked and unopened, tamales keep 4 days in the fridge, within the safe window for cooked dishes, and should be chilled within 2 hours. Frozen they keep 3 months, always in their leaf, which is the best packaging there is.
To reheat, 30 minutes in boiling water from frozen or 15 from the fridge, until the center reaches 165°F (74°C), the safe mark for reheated leftovers; check it with an instant-read thermometer. In the microwave, 3 minutes with the leaf on and a cup of water beside it, and the same check. What doesn’t work is reheating them opened: the dough dries and hardens.
Questions people ask
Why does the corn soak for three days? Because it’s a whole dried grain and water needs that long to reach the center so it can be ground. Any less and the mill tears it into pieces instead of making dough.
Can I use masa harina? You’ll get a different tamal. Masa harina gives a smooth, uniform dough; soaked ground corn gives one with body and grain, which is the Tolima texture. If you use it, count on about 1½ lb and less broth.
Why is there rice in it? It’s what sets it apart from the valluno and Santander tamales. Many Tolima recipes mix the cooked rice into the dough, as this one does; others layer it into the filling. Either way it adds starch and a grain you can feel.
How long do they boil? Two and a half hours, upright, covered with boiling water. Less than that and the centers stay raw.
How many calories in one? About 670 per tamal (one twelfth of the recipe), calculated ingredient by ingredient from the corn, rice, split peas, meats, eggs and vegetables in the recipe. That counts all the fat in the pork belly and ribs; some of it ends up in the cooking water.
Can I freeze them raw? Yes, though I prefer freezing them cooked. Raw ones need 3 hours from frozen instead of two and a half.
Nutrition
Per tamal (one twelfth of the recipe), calculated from the recipe’s weights: about 670 kcal, 60 g carbohydrate, 34 g fat of which 11 g saturated, 31 g protein, 10 g fiber, 3 g sugar and 730 mg sodium. The fat is counted in full, without subtracting what the pork belly releases into the water over two and a half hours, so what reaches the plate is somewhat less.
It’s a complete meal: corn and rice supply the carbohydrate, the three meats and the egg the protein, and the split peas most of the fiber, at 22 g per 100 g dry. That’s why in Tolima a tamal is breakfast in itself and not a side to anything.
Tamales are one of the few dishes that forced me to learn patience. The first time I misjudged it and ground the corn on day two: the dough came out lumpy in a way you could feel in every bite, and I had to explain it at the table. In Venezuela the hallaca has the same assembly-line logic and the same make-many-at-once habit, but it’s another dish: there the filling is cooked first, here the meats cook inside. What holds in both countries is that nobody makes them alone. Josnaisis.