For many Denver families, tamales are a beloved holiday tradition. Whether you make them yourselves or get them from one of the many local restaurants that sells them in bulk, there’s nothing quite like a tamale at Christmas time. But what’s the best filling? In this special essay, City Cast Denver producer Paul Karolyi shares his answer.
In the spirit of the holidays, I come to you now with a modest proposal — one with the potential to bring a family closer together or drive it apart. It’s an idea freighted with contested histories, fraught with big feelings, and fit to bursting with saturated fats.
It’s the hot dog tamale.
But I have to tell you the backstory first.
A few years ago, my wife Megan made tamales with a friend because she had never done it before and wanted to try. She grew up in a half white, half Chicano family in northern Colorado and never learned how. As an adult, she has enjoyed deepening her connection to Mexican cuisine. So, the next year she thought, what if the whole Chicano side of the family got together in December to roll a big batch together? We could all reconnect over huge bowls of masa and spend an afternoon together spreading, filling, folding, and catching up on the year that was.
It went great. Everyone loved it, and we’ve been doing it every year in early December. It’s a really nice holiday tradition.
We’re getting pretty good, too. That first year’s batch had a lot of misshapen, under-filled knobby little logs of masa and meat. Now we’re really cooking. At this year’s gathering earlier this month, I think we rolled up over 200 beautiful little ingot-shaped morsels.
Slow-cooked pork is a traditional and reliably delicious filling. Chicken, I personally find hit-or-miss (it tends to dry out). Shockingly, a perennial favorite has become the jalapeño popper — a friend brought this to us a couple years ago. You buy a big can of pickled jalapeños, pop the tops off, scoop out the guts, then fill them with cream cheese and shredded cheddar before rolling them up in the masa-caked hoja. They can be a little spicy and a little lumpy, but I love them.
So that brings me to this past November. Megan had started a group chat to organize everyone’s schedule, and I was sitting there thinking, what else could you put in a tamale? What other flavor combinations would taste nice with masa?
A corn dog is kinda like a tamale, if you squint. What if you cooked up a hot dog and rolled it up inside?
“🤮”
That was the response in the family chat when I threw this idea out there. It wasn’t unanimous, but that was definitely the majority sentiment — even from Megan!
But Megan’s aunt Robin, a bonafide northern Colorado abuelita as of a few years ago, backed me up. “Putting hot dogs in a burrito or a taco is a thing … a real Mexican thing,” she wrote. “And I think it’s something we need to try.”
"I’m going to be so pissed when this turns out to be delicious."
— Megan
I wrestled with the execution for weeks. Should it be just a plain hot dog in there with masa? Or maybe it’d be nice with sauerkraut and brown mustard? Corn dogs are good with bright yellow mustard and maybe relish, but that didn’t seem quite right.
Ultimately, I settled on a Southwestern take on a classic topping combo, playing to the family’s roots in northern New Mexico, and it was a hit!
The flavors all came together in this delicious cheesy, spicy, fatty rich goodness. “They were so good!” Megan’s cousin Emily texted me when I told them all I was going to share this idea with the world. “Sort of like a homemade chile corn dog.”
My hot dog tamales didn’t win over everyone (and some even refused to try it), but I won some converts. Even Megan turned around on the idea, and we’re plotting tweaks to the recipe for next year together.
Yes, that’s a hot dog inside a tamale. (Photo credit: Megan Arellano)
TL;DR: Here’s the recipe for the Chile Cheese Tamale Dog:
Beef franks, cross-hatched and roasted in the oven for a little bit of char. Each tamale gets one full frank. Add diced white onions, shredded cheddar, and a dollop of spicy red chile. Wrap and steam like you would any other tamale, then enjoy!
My only regret is not making more. The only one that survived long enough for me to snap a pic didn’t quite stick together, so maybe upping the masa ratio would be appropriate. The flavors of the fillings were big enough that they could stand up to it, for sure.
“Low key,” Robin texted me when I asked her a couple more questions. “We should make chile dog tamales for New Years!”
So I want to hear from you! Have you ever had a tamale with a hot dog in it? Would you try it? What other fillings would you add?
