OUR PRODUCTS FOR TAMALES
Textured Tamale Wraps/ Hojas
One of our main products is a textured, silicone-coated, corn-yellow parchment sheet that replaces the traditional corn husk hoja. There are many advantages to the parchment hoja. We produce a trapezoid shape that mimics the corn husk in various sizes and thicknesses, as well as custom dimensions of squares and rectangles to match your tamales. Our parchment hojas are in wide use nationwide in supermarkets and at Target and Costco
Benefits of Parchment Hojas
- health & cleanliness: there is no dirt, mold, staining, or pesticides to worry about and manufacturing is audited and kosher certified. The coating is silicone without the chromium often used other non-stick applications
- standardization: uniformity, standard count, consistent appearance, no rejects, reliable supply
- handling: uniform size and shape, no pre-soaking required
- environmental: organic material (wood pulp and silicone), sustainable (Forestry Certified), and certified compostable
- carbon reduction: no destruction of virgin tropical forest converted to corn fields in Mexico, no fertilizer used, and no depletion of marginal water supplies
- equity: no exploitation of peasant workers, no child labor, no slave labor, no cartel ownership, and the parchment is manufactured by union labor in France
Uncoated Tamale Hojas
Usually the textured parchment sheet is coated in silicone to keep the masa from sticking to the hoja. Some applications, such as the southern US "hot tamales", where the tamales are cooked in liquid, do not need the coating and we manufacture uncoated sheets for that form of cooking.
Outer Wrap Parchment
Tamales wrapped either in the traditional corn husk or the textured parchment sheet can have an outer wrap of a sheet of plain uncoated white parchment to keep the tamales intact and separated during cooking, as well as for easy handling afterwards, especially when freezing or packaging. We have a variety of sizes available.
Printed Tamale Parchment
We also print parchment sheets to wrap tamales, especially useful for identifying tamales after cooking and for identification in a retail setting. Printing on parchment is a difficult task, since the resilience of parchment means it does not take up food-grade ink well and most printers cannot print on parchment without ink-loss and smearing. We have perfected the process over the years and have a wide set of stock prints. We also make custom prints for our larger customers with their logo or design (minimum of 100M sheets per custom print). Our stock prints include pork, chicken, beef, cheese, strawberry, pineapple (pina), pumpkin, and red-striped and green-striped. We can produce any sized sheet needed.