• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Everyday Southwest
  • Home
  • About
    • Contact Us
  • Recipes
    • Authentic Mexican Food Recipes
    • Baking
    • Best Pumpkin Recipes for Desserts, Dinners & More
    • Cinco de Mayo
    • Desserts
    • First Courses
    • Healthy
    • Holiday desserts
    • How to
    • Light and Healthy
    • Main Dishes
    • Party Food and Snacks
    • Popular Posts
    • Side Dish
    • Southwest Pantry
    • Super Bowl
    • Vegetarian
  • Cookbook
  • 200 Appetizers
Home » Sweet Potato Tamales with Pecans and Chipotle

Sweet Potato Tamales with Pecans and Chipotle

Sweet Potato Tamales with Pecans and Chipotle are a perfect sweet potato dish for your holiday or any day of the week. This spin on Authentic Mexican Tamales is sure to please the vegans in your life but, shhhh… no one else will know.

Easy Sweet Potato Tamales with Chipotle and Pecans PLUS they are meatless!

 

Who says sweet potatoes must be smashed into a casserole dish and covered in toasted marshmallows? Try rolling the sweet potatoes into tamales with toasted nut filling and smokey chipotle seasoning.

Tamales are quite a bit of work. But, these are much faster and easier. The nice thing about them is, you can gather friends and family around the table to help share the work and make lots of great culinary memories in the process. Even small kids can spread masa on a corn husk! You never know – tamales could become one of your new family traditions.

The chipotle and Southwest spices go so well with the sweet potato tamales that you might decide to use them in other sweet potato recipes. And don’t forget the pecans – or hazelnuts – in the center!

Donna Kelly’s original recipe posted Nov 24, 2009. She now blogs at ApronStrings.com

I have adapted her recipe for vegan and edited the post on Dec 11, 2017

 

 

To Assemble the Sweet Potato Tamales:

  • Rinse corn husks in cold water and soak for at least 2 hours.
  • Mix Sweet Potato “Masa” as directed.

Spread Sweet Potato Masa on Corn Husk

  • Spread masa on the corn husks evenly.
  • Leave at least one to two inches of corn husk all around the masa to create a border. This border will allow the corn husk to seal in the masa when the corn husk is wrapped around the filling and steamed.

Sweet Potato Tamales with Nut Filling

  • Add Nut filling to the center of the Sweet Potato Tamales.
  • Bring the sides of the corn husks together and seal in the masa.
  • Fold the bottom of the corn the corn husk up to seal the bottom
  • Tie with a strip of corn husk, if desired.
  • Place tamales upright in a steamer over steaming water.
  • Cook as directed.

 

 

 Sweet Potato Tamales with Pecans

 

Print the recipe for Sweet Potato Tamales with Pecans and Chipotle

 

Sweet Potato Tamales with Chipotle and Pecans

Donna Kelly
5 from 3 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 1 hr
Cook Time 1 hr
Total Time 2 hrs
Servings 12

Ingredients
  

  • 1 - 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes
  • A little canola oil spray
  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup vegetable broth
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 - 1/2 cups dried instant masa flour
  • 2 tablespoons tapioca powder
  • 1 - 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons chipotle chile powder
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 2 ounces diced pecans or hazelnuts toasted
  • Corn husks for wrapping soaked in water

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  • Cut sweet potatoes in half and place cut side up on a baking sheet. Spray with a little oil and bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until fork tender. Remove from oven and let cool. Remove skins and mash finely with a potato masher or food processor. You should have 2 cups mashed sweet potato flesh. Place in a mixing bowl.
  • Bring to a boil the butter, sugar, broth and salt. With mixer on medium, mix in the broth mixture with the sweet potatoes until smooth. With mixer running, add in chile powder, cumin, masa, tapioca and baking powder a little at a time. Mix until fluffy, about 10 minutes on high speed. Let sit 10 minutes on counter to make sure masa is fully hydrated.
  • Spread 1/3 cup of masa mixture in center of a corn husk, spreading in a square until a little thicker than 1/4 inch. Sprinkle about 1 tablespoon of nuts in center. Roll tamale in hands until masa mixture surrounds the nuts. Fold corn husks up at bottom.
  • Steam tamales until firm, about one hour.
  • Serve immediately.

 

5.0 from 3 reviews
 
 
Print
Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe
#version#

Filed Under: Fall Recipes, First Courses, Side Dish, Southwest Favorites, Sweet Potato, Tamales, Vegetarian Dishes Tagged With: chipotle, chipotle recipe, meatless recipe, meatless tamales, southwest Thanksgiving, sweet potato recipes, sweet potato tamales recipe, tamales, Thanksgiving recipes, vegan tamales, vegetarian tamales

Previous Post: « Lemon Raspberry Tiramisu Parfaits Recipe
Next Post: Kalua Pork Tacos with Pineapple Salsa Recipe »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kelli Miller

    December 14, 2017 at 4:12 am

    5 stars
    I am not a sweet potatoes girl, but my husband wanted us to try this recipe. Amazingly, the spice from the tamales cancelled out some of the sickeningly sweet potato AND the sweet cooled the tamales off a bit. Perfect combination!

    Reply
  2. Corinne

    December 16, 2017 at 5:41 am

    5 stars
    The sweet potato filling in these tamales is genius! The textures and flavor work so well together. This was a hit in our house!

    Reply
  3. Christina

    December 17, 2017 at 6:16 pm

    5 stars
    This was an incredible twist on the classic recipe! Loved it!

    Reply
  4. Julie @ Willow Bird Baking

    December 18, 2017 at 4:56 pm

    These sound so delicious!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Thanksgiving Favorites with a Southwest Twist says:
    November 17, 2012 at 11:39 pm

    […] Chipotle Sweet Potato and Pecan Tamale Recipe (above) […]

    Reply
  2. 10 Sweet Potato Recipes with a Touch of Southwest says:
    November 21, 2013 at 8:14 am

    […] has two Chipotle Sweet Potato Tamale recipes on the blog, one with pecans and one without.  You can’t get much more Southwest than tamales.  You can even make them […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




Rate this recipe:  

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter

Sandy is a former elementary educator whose love for cooking has gone out of control. She has completed a degree in culinary arts and is now a food writer, photographer, cookbook author and co-creator of the popular website Everyday Southwest. Read More…

Mom’s Authentic Mexican Tamales Recipe

Authentic Mexican Tamales Recipe

Corn Pudding with Green Chiles – Southwest Style

Corn Pudding with Green Chiles Casserole

Recipe Categories

Looking for Something?

Copyright © 2021 · Privacy Policy