The Vegan Mother-In-Law. An exemplary model of vegan takes on niche Chicagoan cuisine. Described by one Chef Anthony Bourdain as “the evil step brother of the hot dog” and named for the grief and heartburn attributed by well, your mother-in-law. Essentially it’s a tom-tom style tamale slathered with chili and served with various Chicago dog fixins. Or you can serve it in a boat, but then it’s a tamale boat and not a Mother-In-Law. Please yield any questions directly to my email.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and tell me if you’ve ever eaten one of these at Fat Johnnie’s.

The Vegan Mother-In-Law. Pain.

THE VEGAN MOTHER-IN-LAW

prep time: 30 minutes
cook time: 60 minutes

Alright, so that prep/cook time strongly varies on how you decide to put this together. You can buy pre-made tamales and throw them in a bun which honestly, nothing wrong with that choice. Or you can make them from scratch and add a little excess time. There are no wrong answers. But for the sake of this recipe,

We’re going to make tamales and a chili sauce from scratch. Traditionally a Mother-In-Law is made with all cornmeal steamed in paper instead of a corn husk. I wanted to have a bunch of tamales on deck (because you can’t just make like four tamales) so I went the masa/husk route. Feel free to belittle me via email. The plant based meat used will be utilized in the tamale filling and also the chili sauce.

To start, the chili sauce.

What you’ll need:

vegetable oil
white onion
dried fennel
garlic
tomato paste
liquid smoke
soy sauce
salt
pepper
chili powder
smoked paprika
veggie broth
chipotle in adobo

We’ll loop back to the beans and hot dog buns, I promise.

Finely dice up an entire white onion. Half of it will be used for your chili sauce and the rest of it will be utilized later in the pan. Dice up a whole bunch of garlic too. As many cloves as you deem necessary. Grab your dried guajillo and give em a proper scrub.

In a dry pan, add your guajillo on a low flame to lightly toast the peppers. Remove from the pan and add to a pot of salted water. Bring that water to a boil to hydrate the peppers. Carefully remove the peppers from the hot water and remove the seeds and stems. Add your peppers to a blender. Add half of the onion you cut to the blender along with half of the garlic. It’s okay that you didn’t cook these because they’re getting added to a pan later. Add all of the seasonings mentioned earlier to your heart’s content. If you need guidance, do like two teaspoons of each or something. Add your chipotle peppers in adobo to the blender as well.

I recycled this photo from a previous recipe, it’s all good.

Blend all that up until smooth and set aside for a minute. Add vegetable broth if the mixture is too thick. You want a runny consistency but not completely liquified.

Now you have chili sauce that will be added back into the pan later.

The next part of this recipe requires some multitasking. We’re going to get the tamale filling going as well as making actual chili with your brand new chili sauce. For the tamale filling, you can do literally whatever you want. For this recipe, I used plant based meat, potato & black bean. Feel free to go with what I did or customize it to your liking. As long as it has something “beef-like” in it you’re on the right track.

Let’s break this down into two parts. To start, the tamale filling.

What you’ll need:

potatoes
black beans
salt
pepper

Rinse off a few potatoes and add to a pot of room-temp water. You can reuse the water you hydrated your chilis in, I do recommend this. Add your potatoes to the water, add salt and bring up to a boil.

While your potatoes are potating, get out two cans of black beans and rinse & strain them. Set aside for now. Next we’re going to assemble the chili.

What you’ll need:

the chili sauce from earlier
the diced onion & garlic from earlier
olive oil
plant based meat
vegetable broth
tomato paste
garlic powder
onion powder
salt
pepper
apple cider vinegar
bay leaves

Add olive oil into a saucepan or any pan that can withstand an amount of chili. Add most of the diced white onion from earlier. Some of it will get used as garnish at the very end. Add salt to the onion and sweat them out.

Next add the rest of the chopped up garlic and get that cooking til aromatic too.

Once your garlic and onion is beautiful, toss your plant based meat in there with a generous squirt of tomato paste.

Break up everything with a wooden spoon.

Continue to cook out your mixture and add salt & pepper. Let the meat stuff brown and if you need to deglaze, throw a splash of apple cider vinegar in there. You better savor that fond. Add a little of the chili sauce and stir it up nice.

Now here’s where things get fun. Once your meat substance is complete, scrape half of it into a bowl and keep the other half in the pan. Half of this will be used with your tamale filling and the other half will be used as your chili topping.

Get your potatoes out of the water, remove the skin and stick into a bowl with the black beans and “meat” mixture. Add lots of salt and pepper.

Now assuming you didn’t burn the contents of your pan, add a half cup of veggie broth and another big dollop of your chili sauce and stir that up until it’s homogenous.

Toss a few bay leaves in there too if you want.

Let this cook out on a medium flame until it reduces. Then repeat the chili sauce & broth additions and reduce it once again. Do this maybe three or four times. Once it looks like chili, drop the flame to a simmer.

Now you have your chili and tamale fillings ready to go. Now all you need is actual tamales. Again, normally this would be cornmeal steamed in paper but I wanted to make a thousand tamales to freeze for later so I went the corn husk & masa route.

What you’ll need:

masa
vegetable broth
salt
adobo seasoning
olive oil
corn husks
the tamale filling from earlier
baking powder

In a large bowl, add your corn husks and soak them in hot water.

It was the largest bowl I had available.

Let those soak for a while. In another large bowl add 4 cups of masa and a pinch of baking powder. Add a pinch of salt. Make it two pinches. Add some adobo seasoning in there too. Mix that up dry.

Stream in vegetable broth and stir this stuff up until it starts to look doughy. You’ll end up using about 3 cups of broth. Keep that stirring and make sure to scrape the sides of the bowl. Stream in some olive oil and keep stirring. You want the consistency to be somewhat smooth but most importantly, spreadable.

I kept stirring after this but my hands were messy so I didn’t get enough photos.

Now the water you boiled your potatoes and peppers in. If it’s super gross, dump it. If not, you’re going to use that water to boil and stick a steamer attachment to.

When your corn husks are no longer dried, lay them out one at a time on parchment paper and shovel some of that masa in there. Spread to the edges of the husk and then throw your tamale filling on top of the masa. Feel free to YouTube someone else doing this part because my hands were super messy and I can’t afford a nice camera to take videos with.

Rip off a strand of husk, this will be used to tie off the tamales.

So yeah, when you have the dough spread with your tamale filling on top, carefully roll the husk into a…into a tamale shape and fold the bottom toward the middle and tie off with more husk. Seriously, go watch someone do it on YouTube.

Repeat this until you are out of tamale stuff. Assuming you have the steamer attachment on top of your pot, get that water boiling and stack your tamales in there open-side-up. You can use a crock pot or a pressure cooker too but I don’t have either of those.

Drop the flame to medium heat and cover immediately. Let those steam out for about 30 minutes. Check on them then and see if they need more time. Get our your hot dog buns and throw a couple in with the tamales to steam them too.

Pro moves. The tamales needed a little more time.

Moving on!

Finally,

It’s time to assemble this god-forsaken sandwich.

What you’ll need:

hot dug buns (used earlier)
tamales
chili
diced onions
yellow mustard
Chicago dog fixins (sport peppers, tomato, pickle, celery salt, whatever else you want on there)

Get your buns out of the steamer along with some of the tamales. Unwrap the tamales. Throw a tamale into the bun and add yellow mustard and tomato wedges.

Slather some chili atop your tamale and add the rest of your fixins to your liking. Grab some napkins too.

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