TAMALES HOT

Tucked away on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River, the Delta is an agricultural region whose highways and byways are lined with soaring flattened fields of vibrant crops awaiting harvest. It’s home to the hip-swaying blues where local legends like B.B. King and Muddy Waters once strummed melodies in small wooden juke joints and a place where crispy fried chicken, fresh sweet corn, and skillets of cornbread grace lunch tables seven days a week. But take a leisurely drive down any worn Delta road, and you’ll likely happen upon one of the region’s most iconic dishes: the hot tamale.

Made of tender, slow-cooked meat and cornmeal wrapped in a corn husk and simmered in savory spiced broth, the hot tamale is a Mississippi Delta staple that has peppered the region for longer than anyone can remember. Yet its origin is often a subject of debate. Some believe soldiers fighting in the U.S.-Mexican War brought the recipe back to the American South in the late 1840s, while others hypothesize the hot tamale’s roots lie with the Native Americans. Most Southern foodways experts, however, believe the it was brought to the region in the early twentieth century when Mexican migrant workers came to harvest cotton.

Mississippi was the epicenter of cotton production during that time, and because cotton was a labor-intensive crop, an influx of laborers came to Mississippi. It’s thought that Mexican workers brought tamales for lunch and ate them in the fields alongside African