Costco Del Real Foods Pork Tamales Review

I love tamales! So when I spotted these tamales at Costco I knew that I needed to try them. Honestly I have never tried any store bought tamales. In the past, I have only ever purchased tamales from Mexican restaurants or homemade ones. 

While I do think that homemade tamales are delicious, sometimes they can be hard to find for purchase, or you have to order them in advance. 

After trying these tamales, I can honestly say that they are a great alternative when you can’t buy fresh tamales. 

Costco Tamales

• Costco item number 817974
• $18.79 USD
• Pork tamales with red sauce.
• Bag includes 15 tamales.
• Gluten free 
• No preservatives
• Made with stone ground corn

I found these tamales in the refrigerated section near the deli. 

Inside The Bag

Inside the bag are 3 smaller bags that each have 5 tamales in them. The large bag for $18.79 comes with a total of 15 tamales. 

About Del Real Foods 

On the back of the bag there is more information about the Del Real Foods company.It talks about how the company creates authentic and fresh Mexican foods from the highest quality ingredients. 

They also strive to help protect the planet by conserving water at their processing facilities and using sustainable wraps on their tamales. 

Nutritional Information

A serving size is one tamale which has 300 calories and 13 grams of protein. Here is the full nutritional information from the bag. 

How to Cook the Tamales? 

The tamales are fully cooked and can be heated in just minutes. The heating instructions on the back of the bag have options for heating in the microwave or using the steam method. 

The microwave method takes about 75 seconds and the steam method takes about 8-10 minutes. Here is a photo of the full heating instructions from the side of the bag. 

Cooking the Tamales

Since I was going to be cooking the entire bag of tamales I decided to bake them instead of following the instructions on the bag. 

I follow online instructions for baking the tamales. I preheated the oven to 325 degrees, removed the tamales from the plastic bags, and tightly wrapped them in foil. 

Then, I placed the foil wrapped tamales on a baking sheet and baked them until the internal temperature reached 165 degrees. Online, it said to bake them for 15-20 minutes, but I ended up actually letting them bake for about 45-50 minutes. 

Finally after about 45 minutes I checked the tamales and the internal temp was 165 degrees. I believe that it took longer since I was baking so many tamales at once. 

If you are going to bake them, I would recommend you set the timer for 20 minutes, and then just keep checking the temperature until it reaches 165 F. 

After the tamales reached 165 I removed them from the oven, let them sit for a few minutes, and then removed the foil and paper wraps from the outside of each tamale. 

Taste 

I honestly thought that these pork tamales were very good. The filling was a more spicy than I expected but it wasn’t too spicy. 

The corn masa and meat were moist and not too dry. I thought that the ratio of the corn masa to the meat and sauce filling mixture was perfect. 

The pork in the center was shredded and mixed in with the flavorful red sauce. Eating these tamales definitely satisfied my tamale craving. 

Final Thoughts 

Overall, I really enjoyed the Costco Tamales. They exceeded my expectations and were delicious. They had the perfect amount of corn mesa and a flavorful red sauce and shredded pork mixture in the middle. 

While I will always prefer to buy local handmade tamales, when you can’t get homemade tamales, these are great option!