Holiday tamales got wrapped into Texas tradition
For much of her life, Juan y Balderas hated making tamales.
It took her family three days to make enough for extended relatives back in her native Mier Y Noriega, Mexico — days spent painstakingly slaughtering pigs, mixing the masa, grinding pork shoulder, rolling up corn husks and steaming dozens upon dozens of the creations over an open flame. She tried to avoid the process asmuch as possible, learning only tomake the masa from her grandmother so she could skip the more laborintensive parts.
Itwas only after she married Michael Balderas and helped build the Balderas Tamale Factory in CyFair from a hole-in-the-wall kitch en to a holiday cult favorite that she realized how important they could be. Even with the COVID-19 pandemic, she believes the shop will sell close to the 20,000 dozen they sold last holiday season.
“People like them so much they’ll come back,” she said. “I think it’s starting to become a tradition here in Texas for the tamales.”
For many families, it’s been a Christmas and cold-weather tradition for generations.
Patrons line up across Houston and Texas waiting for restaurants and tiny kitchens to ring up their orders of tamales for the holiday season, sometimes waiting for hours toget their hands on the foilwrapped packages.
The food’s holiday connection can be traced back to Spanish conquistadors, said Melissa Guerra, a professor of food history at the Culinary Institute of America in San Antonio who runs the Kitchen Wrangler blog. Before the Europeans’ arrival, Indigenous people across north, central and south America had long used corn husks as a means for cooking.
“If you didn’t have a clay pot, a wet corn husk would have been the perfect vehicle for a little cornmeal paste, berries — whatever they had,” Guerra said. “You could steam it in there orput it over a fire to make something.”
When the Spanish brought a horde of domesticated pigs to the Americas, they began using the cooking method in conjunction with hogs they would fatten and butcher for Christmas dinners,
Guerra said. The fusion of the Indigenous and Spanish culinary cultures created the tamales that most Texans enjoy today, although the dish varies widely across Central and South America. Some, like the Veracruz-style Zacahuil tamales, can be so large they have to be baked in banana leaves over an open flame. In Michoacán, Mexico, sweet rice-based canary tamales have become a popular dessert.
The Balderas-Tamale Factory makes San Antonio-style tamales, each of which is about as long as a small hand and a little wider than a half dollar. They’re loaded with savory and sometimes spicy filling using a variety of meat or bean choices, although the most popular are pork and spicy pork. The recipe comes from Juany’s father-in-law, who started the original namesake in the Round Rock area.
“We don’t think there is a right or wrong way to make them,” said Alyssa Baldera, Juany’s 28-year-old daughter. “Every culture, every grandmother makes them differently, and so we respect that we continue to make our style.”
Juany’s husband, Michael, hadn’t planned to go into the restaurant business but caved after working for nearly two decades as a machinist. The couple started the Houston iteration of shop with just a kitchen, and Juany would sell their tamales on the street.
Eventually, Michael built a bar and bar stools from which to sell breakfast tacos in addition to their tamales. As their business grew, they bought a space next to the kitchen that could seat a few tables, and then another parcel. Eventually they outgrew their first location altogether, moving to their current 5,300 square-foot location off of Jones Road while keeping a warehouse factory near their old shop.
The holidays have always been a blur of tamale-making since Alyssa and her sister, 27-year-old Arianna, can remember. Even now, the family hardly stops working to sleep for the three days leading up to Christmas. There’s too much to do.
“There are days we don’t even sleep,” Arianna said. “We stay here, we unpack them, load them again, cook them and then unpack them again, maybe two or three times a day.”
Lines stretch around the block during their busiest days, with some customers waiting for hours before they make it to a cash register.
Though the kitchen buzzes with activity in the last weeks of November and throughout December, it feels more empty now. In April 2019, Michael died after battling an illness, leaving his wife and daughters with the restaurant and a lifetime of lessons and memories.
“We made it through with everything he taught us. I’m so grateful for everything he did teach us and knowing we could do it,” Arianna said. “He’d be pretty proud.”
“People like them so much they’ll come back. I think it’s starting to become a tradition here in Texas for the tamales.”
Juany Balderas of Balderas Tamale Factory