Why don't fast food Mexican restaurants have tamales on the menu?

Not sure where you live, but I think it’s regional.

In Texas, Taco Bell is Mexican food in the same way McDonalds is a steak house. Technically the ingredients are the same, but they are completely different.

Traditional Mexican restaurants sometimes have tamales, but they’re labor intensive, and tough to keep consistent, so most don’t bother.

A big part of it is the “fast food” concept. Tamales are not quick to make. They are fairly labor intensive.

Glad you discovered them! Now try to find you some real, honest homemade ones but be warned, you will never be able to go back to the frozen ones.

I bought my last one off a street vendor and have to say I don’t know what was in it but was without a doubt one of the top five I have ever had.

I think my sons ex makes some excellent ones. They run about $14.00/dozen and when she makes them, she makes a ton of them both for herself and for sale. I don’t think she has ever had any leftovers.

Part of the reason is what @funkdaddy and @rojo said. And it’s also because a lot of times it isn’t eaten with your hands, it is common to eat a tamale with a fork, unwrapped with a mole poured over it.

Making tamales is an economy of scale thing. It requires a lot of time invested into it even though the process is fairly simple. You have to start in the morning and roast your meat in a crockpot for several hours in the chile, then you need to soak the corn husks, then make the masa, then making the mise en place for all the other fillings. Once you have that all together then it’s a conveyer belt system to get them all assembled and put them in the steamer. This is why tamales are traditionally a holiday food because of the time it takes and it’s a communal event for the women that help make them.

Steam them too long they dry out, not enough and they’re mushy and undercooked. Serve them too hot then they’re hot mash, too cold and they’re stiff. Maintaing them is a pain in the butt so they’re too touchy to be served on a fast food level, and you wouldn’t like the taste anyway.

My mom makes it with shredded beef in red chile sauce with a strip of potato, a slice of chile, and a green olive. She doesn’t make the sweet kind but the strawberry, pineapple rasin, and sweet corn are amazing.

Where I live I can’t recall ever going to any Mexican food restaurant that didn’t have ‘em

Because making tamales is not a fast process. You haven’t lived until you’ve had good ones (not microwaved!).

Tamales aren’t something that lend themselves to mass production. They really need to be made to order, which takes more time than fast food franchises often allow, and doing them right takes more cooking skill than many fast food workers have.

That said, you can get a decent tamale from a taco truck. Somewhere between Taco Bell and full-on Mexican restaurant is the humble taqueria; we have a ton of them around Seattle, many of them being permanently parked trucks. Too slow to qualify as “fast food”, they can still get you a well-made tamale in a reasonable amount of time (under 10 minutes) for cheap.