My epic Tamale fail.

Well i wouldn't call it a COMPLETE failure.. although it was definitely not good. Our friend Dave over at Ridiculous Food Society of Upstate New York did a recent review on a popular brand of canned tamales. and while he wasn't overly impressed with them it got me on that tip. so after work i went and bought some stuff to make some damn tamales as per instruction from some type of southern cooking resource i found on the web. It called for a shredded beef filling in a corn meal dough wrapped in a husk(or wax paper) which you then steam. Well the filling was to die for and i will include a recipe for that because it would be pretty versatile for quesadillas, pizza, omelets even a sandwich. but the finished product was wack:-) too much dough and flavorless, grainy texture that was just not good. i wonder if the amount of work that went into this disappointment will dissuade me from a second trial... i guess we'll see how good those quesadillas are.
So here's the recipe for the filling which was great.
vegetable or corn oil
2 lbs stew beef
1/2 lbs sindonis(or any high quality) loose sweet Italian sausage
3 cloves garlic
1 cup finely chopped yellow onion
1 finely diced jalapeno
i small can fire roasted chiles
1/2 tsp smoked serrano chili powder
1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1-2 cups beef broth(varies)
1-2 cups beer (varies)

Heat the oil till its hot(almost smoking) Add stew beef and sear for a few minutes until you get a decent amount of browning on one side then reduce heat, stir beef and add sausage. Cook for another couple minutes and add your vegetables and seasonings(not the cilantro). Cook for a while(maybe 10-15 minutes until vegetables are soft, and then add your beer and half of your beef broth it should look like theres quite a lot of liquid in the pan but that's ok. cook for another 10 minutes at a decent simmer and then put it all in a casserole dish, seal tightly with foil and throw it in the oven at 350 for about an hour and a half. When you take it out and uncover it, take out all the large chunks of stew beef which should be pretty tender by now, and chop/shred them and add them back to the sausage and vegetables. now that the surface area has increased you can stir it up, add ur cilantro and add enough beef broth to give it the consistency you're going for. if you want you could also add some tomato paste(which would require more beef broth to compensate for its thickening properties) or some chili sauce or salsa. Enjoi`!