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Hey @tekobo your post made me laugh….I too have a hard time comprehending @Syzygies post and find myself reading them over so I can hopefully understand and learn from them!!!! Both of your post made me think of many topics for discussion. I’ll comment on a few of them. Freezing masa / tamale dough. I tried an experiment once where I froze a small quantity of prepared masa for tamales……my results at the time were NOT favorable. If my memory serves me right it seems like the texture was funky / not like it was before and I never went that way and scrapped that idea. Freezing tortillas, I do this often with our family tortilla recipe which uses flour and cornmeal and they are fine this way…not as good as fresh but still very good. I have not done this with homemade masa tortillas but am intrigued to try this knowing you’ve had success with this. Tamales - Fully made tamales freeze well. Our standard family recipe calls for 7lbs of masa and we yield about 100-120 tamales from this. We will vacuum seal these and if you steam them when reheating they are almost as fresh as when coming out of the original kettle. Masa is pretty forgiving so I think there is a pretty good range of viscosity that will still yield good tamales. Many years ago (mid 1970’s) my father went to Mexico to visit family. During the visit we learned a trick that we believe makes our masa lighter / or more fluffy. I will cook a cup of rice in microwave with a higher ratio of water to rice then typical. We also add some beef boullion to the water. Once done we add a little more water and blend this and add this straight into the masa. Don’t tell my family I shared this secret with you!!! I also have a recipe for taking fresh sweet corn, cooking and making this into a masa of sorts for a sweet tamale…..still working on this one but just shows you wide ranges of corn for making masa. Tamale fillings - Yes you can put pretty much anything you want for filling in these. We have done a number of different fillings, but it always seems like the family favorite is pork that is pan fried and cooked in homemade mole sauce. One funny story is that many years ago I was watching an episode of one of Anthony Bourdain’s travel food shows where he is somewhere in Mexico. In the episode (that is somewhat tequila fueled) Anthony is sampling an Iguana tamale….with a tail sticking out of the end of it…..he leans into the camera and quietly says……this is the worst tamale I have ever eaten!!!! Buying me a McLauren Spider……..Ha Ha. Many years ago we had a school / church auction in which we put up a Mexican dinner for a party of 6 that ended up in the voice auction. I was a little apprehensive ……thinking that it would fetch maybe $250 - $500….. I was shocked that we sold it for $1,200 and because it did so well they immediately asked if I would do it again….we ended up selling 2 more at $1,200 so we raised $3,600 for the kids….so to speak! Needless to say I felt very much under pressure to cook a much larger menu than I was originally thinking. No I could not cook up a meal worthy of a McLauren Spider……but hey if you want to send me one I will not turn you down!!! On a bit of a high today, as we had a video call to meet our first grandchild as my daughter lives out of state! Looking forward to meeting her soon!!! All the best, Paul

Hey Tony, I was able to source the Pimento wood right from Amazon. It’s pretty pricey but for my smoking pot I don’t use a lot so I pretty much have a 10 years supply…..unless I end up opening up a Jerk Shack!!! Cheers

@tekobo -- new toy you need to up your breadmaking game. Note the photobombing grains in the back, ready for milling.

So I did the jerk chicken cook yesterday. The smoke pot filled with Pimento wood, Pimento leaves and allspice berries worked great! I did the marinade as mentioned and I think I need to kick up the seasoning and flavor a bit. Otherwise the texture and cook went very well in spite of the very crappy weather here yesterday!!! I look forward to continuing to work on the marinade and seasoning. Cheers, IMG_4468.mov

I’ll stick with the opinion of the guy who designed it. But that’s just my opinion lol