LOOK – Colorado legalizes selling homemade tamales, comedian George Lopez is here for it

For generations, abuelas and home cooks across Colorado have been selling tamales, burritos and other homemade food to their neighbors, friends and whoever was lucky enough to know the right person. The only problem? Technically, it wasn’t legal. The state’s cottage food law, passed in 2012, only allowed the sale of shelf-stable items like baked goods, honey, tortillas and pickled vegetables, nothing that required refrigeration, and nothing with meat. Which meant tamales, the backbone of Colorado’s underground home food economy, existed in a legal gray area. Until now.

Governor Jared Polis signed the Tamale Act (HB26-1033) into law on June 4, officially expanding Colorado’s Cottage Foods Act to allow home cooks to sell foods that require refrigeration and include meat, explicitly including tamales, burritos and tortas. The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Rep. Ryan Gonzalez (R-Greeley) and House Majority Leader Monica Duran (D-Wheat Ridge), was deeply personal for Duran, who said she grew up watching her abuela and mom sell homemade food to make ends meet. Sellers must complete a food safety course, can sell one type of temperature-controlled food with up to five variations (think pork, chicken, beef, green chile and cheese tamales), and there’s a $10,000 annual revenue cap. It’s not a free-for-all, it’s a smart, regulated pathway for the home cooks who’ve been doing this forever to finally do it legally.

And nobody was more excited about it than George Lopez. The comedian, who has deep ties to Latino culture and has never been shy about his love of tamales, posted a quick one-liner about the law, and a video telling fans “this isn’t my opinion, it’s the truth” while breaking down his personal tamale philosophy, from meat selection to preparation, and telling his followers to “drop your tamale plugs below.” He followed it up with another post declaring “I’m not turning down some bomb-ass green chicken tamales,” which is essentially the mission statement of the entire Tamale Act in one sentence. The videos went viral, racking up tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments from people sharing their own tamale sources, exactly the kind of underground economy the Tamale Act is now bringing into the light.

So if you know someone in Colorado who makes incredible tamales, burritos or tortas at home they can now legally sell them to you. As Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez put it: “People already sell prepared food, like tamales, pupusas and baked goods, to their friends, family and neighbors. This law creates a pathway for this to happen in a safe and legal way.”

George Lopez couldn’t agree more. And neither could your neighborhood tamale plug.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by George 🇲🇽 Lopez (@georgelopez)