TEX-MEX TAMALES
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ASSIGNMENT
We wanted to create a product that would enhance the flavor and uniqueness of a familiar product. To give our group an idea of where to start, we chose three countries of origin that are known for having some of our favorite tasty foods.
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Greek food on Auburn's campus has really hit high with the former Go Greek and it's even more mediterranean replacements API and The Olive Tree. Gyros and falafel have become a staple for most students' lunch-time specials. If college students are enjoying these foods, why not make a product that we know will peak their interest? Our group came up with falafel bites, a frozen gyro, Greek salad packs, chicken donuts with greek aioli sauce, and chicken skin with a mediterranean twist.
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TAMALE PERFECTION
The fried tamales did not just happen on their own. This was a creative process that required the food chemistry and kitchen experience to get us to the product for which we were searching.
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In our first attempt, we fried the masa dough which included shortening as a main ingredient. As it turns out, frying most shortening is like frying oil. It could not be done without the dough just crumbling into nothing. Crisco is after all just hydrogenated vegetable oil.
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Once we cut out the shortening, we took what we learned from out batter and breading lab and threw some batter and American Breadcrumbs on the tamales. The batter was simply two raw eggs with some Frank's Red Hot Sauce and the breadcrumbs were American Breadcrumbs. We rolled each tamale in the batter then the breading and fried it. The taste and texture was what we were expecting, like the chicken we fried in lab.
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The only problem was that we were marketing toward a South American population with a only semi South American product. The American breadcrumbs took away from the tamale "feel" as out professor said.
To alter our tamales back to their Latin American routes, we first tried changing the shape. Tamales are traditionally a long log shape. We added back in the shortening and just battered and breaded the outside. With all those ingredients, the longer tamales were huge and difficult to eat, and not to mention, they were loaded with calories. Our nutrition label claimed we had 550 calories from fat. That had to change.
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"A well-rounded tamale that people loved was born."
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Solution: Take out the breadcrumbs, take out the shortening again, and just use the masa harina (corn flour) as a breading. Genius. Without the breadcrumbs we can now say our product is gluten free. and our calories from fat decreased from 550 to just 140. We also need to pick a serving size in our nutrition label and then our calories from fat will be even fewer.
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The final tamales were a hit in the sensory analysis. A well-rounded tamale that people loved was born. They tasted like tamales with the corn flour breading, and were small enough to pop in your mouth, similar to Tyson's Anytizers.
Why did we not think of using the corn flour in the first place? We had only been using wheat-based flour in lab and were not sure of the corn flour chemistry. We did not know if anything would stick to it.
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According to the FAO Corporate Document Repository, the major chemical component of the maize kernel is starch, which provides up to 72 to 73 percent of the kernel weight. Starch is essentially a glue. Starch is the reason cereal sticks to the side of the bowl when you leave it in there too long. The viscoelasticity of starch is what keeps batters in most chicken products adhesive to the meat and breading. About 70 percent of starch is made of amylopectin, a branched polymer of glucose that specializes in retrogradation (gelling) when dissolved. This means that when we pre-dust with the corn flour and dip it in batter, it dissolves and thickens and sticks to the surface, making a cohesive layer of flour and batter, able to pick up the breading with ease.
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Greece
We decided to go with the mediterranean chicken skins. This microwavable product grabbed our attention with it's delicious, snack-able crispiness. We planned on frying chicken skins on a skewer and dousing them with lemon seasoning, chive, and feta cheese. When we got in the kitchen we tested frying the chicken skins versus baking them, since the healthy trend restricts fried products. The baked chicken skins were delicious and tasted scrumptious. However, we were hesitant in making it our first choice. The only really mediterranean aspect of the product was the dressing and even a baked chicken skin tasted unhealthy. So, we moved on to country number two.
Colombia
What countries have always been known for intense flavor and rich in protein? We turned to South America. Colombia to be exact.
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In the back of our minds we all wanted to create a product that targets people our own age. We are rising adults living on our own and most of us are looking for a quick and easy snack to accommodate our busy lifestyles and lack of cooking skills. From Colombia we chose empanadas, machado, pastelillos rellenos, Hayaca, chicken chicharron, and tamales. These foods are packed with the flavors and uniqueness we were looking for, but only one met the package-ability we had in mind
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for our quick and easy snack style we were working toward, the tamales.
Tamales are a cultural art in most of South America. It is a difficult dish to make correctly, a reason the Mississippi Delta has named Greenville, Mississippi, the only place in the Southeast to get a quality tamale. First generation immigrants likely attach their preference to homemade authentic tamales. But what about the second generation immigrants, the ones who are in their twenties on their own? The comfort of seeing familiar product in the grocery isle that is easy to make becomes quite appealing. That is why we created Tex-Mex Tamales.
South Korea
Being comfortable out of your comfort zone is where a lot of great ideas happen. Taking the think-outside-the-box approach, we landed on South Korea.
Our first instinct was noodles. How about an inverted chicken noodle soup? We also chose chicken slices, a twist on a traditional south korean dish. Fried spicy chicken, bimbimbap, and omurice were some of the other ideas that sprang into our heads. But the noodles stuck out the most in terms of creativity. This product, a chicken noodle soup with actual chicken as noodle could potentially be a gluten free food packed with protein and be extremely eye-catching in grocery stores.
In the kitchen, the realty and practicality of these noodles slowly diminished. We had no noodle maker or sous vide machine. The recipe we found online at chefsteps.com required a sous vide machine, something else we did not have. If making this product in the kitchen was this complicated, we imagined the processing in a commercial sense would not be any easier. Nonetheless, we tested the noodles out of sheer curiosity and a willingness to try anything that would set us apart from the other teams' seemingly less creative products. The first time we cooked them, we made our own sous vide with a stock pot and Ziploc Bags.
We cut the chicken into noodles with a knife and placed them in chicken broth with varied vegetables to make the soup complete. What tasted delicious was a physically unattractive mess. The noodles were uneven and lumpy, not pleasing to the consumer's eye.
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The next time we cooked out noodles we received a noodle make from our gracious professor who was interested in the chemistry of our product as we had used tripolyphosphate, salt, and a product called Moo-Gloo, otherwise known as meat glue or transglutiminase to the sausage making industry.
We learned that noodles are not easy. Even with a crank-out noodle maker, the noodles were still uneven and lumpy. Cranking the noodles into the stock pot of chicken broth made them puffy and the color was pale and unappetizing. To change the color and texture to something more dark and crunchy, we fried a batch. Frying the noodles made them only a tad bit chewy. Everyone agreed that they mimicked calamari. For a second we thought we were onto something, chicken calamari. It sounded genius, but it was not our original product idea and time was running out to chose as solid product.
In our sensory analysis, we served the table chicken noodle soup and out Tex-Mex Tamales. As we suspected, the tamales beat the strange looking chicken noodles. Disappointed that our creative chicken noodles got the boot, we welcomed the tamales as our final product and began what we called an all-in approach to make the tamales the best tamales on the market.
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