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Mexicantown Restaurants Prepare Thousands Of Tamales For Christmas Meals (Video)

By Edward Cardenas

DETROIT (CBS Detroit) - Kitchen personnel in restaurants, bakeries and tamalerias throughout Southwest Detroit are preparing to sell tens of thousands of tamales for the Christmas holiday.

Tamales, the Mexican delicacy traditionally made with pork and masa and wrapped in corn husks, has become a staple on the holiday menu for many Metro Detroit families.

With the growing popularity, the ingredients used in tamales has diversified to include cheese, beef and sweet tamales, to meet the various tastes of customers.

"It is the busiest and most craziest time of year," Susana Garza-Villarreal, owner of  Tamaleria Nuevo Leon, which sells tamales to customers who take them around the world. "It is a gift people will take to their customers, or to their friends and family this week."

Villareal, whose mother founded the business in 1957 and she took over about four years ago, said she expects to sell about 70,000 tamales over five days for the holidays.

She said that preparations began for the large volume of Christmas sales around Thanksgiving, and have continued seven days week preparing her eight varieties of tamale for customers.

These customers often visit in the days leading up to Christmas to take the tamales home, or to exotic locations around the world. She added that one customer was coming in Monday to take an order of tamales to Cancun.

At nearby Evie's Tamales, three teams of workers are working eight hours a day making seven different flavors of tamales to keep up with demand.

Evie's, which was founded in nearly 32-years-ago, has automated the process to create 25 dozen per hour per machine which mixes the filling and masa.

Once the ingredients are mixed, a small Ferris wheel-like machine chops the mixture before an employee places the filling into a corn husk, packaged into a container for steaming.

"We used to do it by hand, but it was really tedious," said Diana Cooley, who runs Evie's with her sister Irene Garza and also uses a family recipe for their tamales.

Cooley estimated that Evie's sells upwards of 400 dozen tamales a day leading up to Christmas.

Both restaurants recommend those looking for the best selection of tamales to shop early for the best selection.

In addition to Christmas, tamales have also become popular at Thanksgiving and Three Kings Day.

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