This Fresno mom’s tamales have gone viral on TikTok. See why she’s over a million likes

This story is part of the Central Valley News Collaborative — a bilingual, community journalism project funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and with technology and training support from Microsoft Corp. The collaboration includes The Fresno Bee, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, Radio Bilingüe and the Institute for Media & Public Trust at Fresno State.

A steaming pot of tamales saturates Fresno resident Cristina Leon’s kitchen with the aroma of warm maize mixed with earthy and smoky spices.

To assemble a tamale, she scoops the masa, or dough, and spreads a thick layer of it onto a corn husk before stuffing it with a mixture of flavorful meat or cheese. Her Michoacán-style tamales include savory fillings made of pork in salsa verde or salsa roja and jalapeño con queso. She often serves them with a piping hot cup of champurrado, a traditional corn and masa-based drink made with hot chocolate, cinnamon, and vanilla.

“I love to cook,” Leon, 55, said in Spanish. “God gave me a great gift. People who try my tamales always ask me for more and love eating them, especially now during Christmas. ”

Leon has been making tamales during the holidays since she was a kid in Pinal Grande, a rural town in the Mexican state of Michoacán. But it wasn’t until recently that her favorite culinary practice started gaining popularity on social media. It’s all thanks to her 23-year-old son, Ruben Vazquez, who makes short, amusing TikTok videos of Leon cooking.

The pair uploaded their first post in October and have since made 28 videos. In the three months since Vazquez launched their account, his mother has become a viral sensation, accruing more than 56,000 followers and gaining millions of views.

TikTok has not just made Leon a local celebrity, it’s also sparked a high demand for her tamales. The mother-and-son duo often set up shop on Sunday mornings on the corner of East Weldon Avenue and North Cedar Avenue in east-central Fresno. Her tamales, which many locals have discovered through TikTok, usually sell out in a couple of hours, Vazquez said.

“Food gets a lot of attention because everyone loves food,” Vazquez said, phone-in-hand while hovering over his mother as she prepared a batch of tamales in their kitchen on a recent afternoon. “Not only is it really fun, but it’s made our bond a lot stronger because I get to learn our family’s traditions a little more.”

Leon’s tamale-making enterprise, fueled by her social media presence, has been booming just in time for Christmas, Vazquez said. To keep up with the demand, Leon wakes up every day around 4 a.m. and begins to prepare and cook all of the ingredients. She makes about 30 to 35 dozen tamales a day, except for Mondays when she takes a much-needed break.

“I have to go to the store and buy all the ingredients, cook the meat and make the guisado. By the time I’m done, I’ve worked 12 hours,” Leon said. “So there’s a lot of work that goes into it.”

Viral TikTok videos showcase Mexican traditions

For many Mexicans in Fresno and beyond, tamales are a staple dish during holiday celebrations and particularly Christmastime, where they crowd the table at family gatherings. The name tamale descends from the word tamal, which means “wrapped food” in the Nahuatl language.

In pre-Hispanic times, eating tamales was a crucial part of rituals and festive celebrations – traditions that continue to this day among many Latino families. The time-honored practice of making tamales dates back to the Mesoamerican period, when ancient civilizations like the Aztecs, Olmecs and Mayans feasted on them before the Europeans arrived.

Leon said she and her son love sharing this important Mexican tradition through their videos.

Vasquez got the idea to launch a social media account for his mom after watching a woman on TikTok make homemade bread.

“My mom cooks really well, so I said, ‘Why can’t she have over a million views and over a million likes?’” Vazquez said. “So we made a video. She had fun, I had fun. We posted it and now it’s turning into a whole possible business.”

Many of the videos feature Vazquez asking his mom a question about what she’s cooking. In one video, the two cook together while singing and dancing to the song “Just the Two of Us” by Bill Withers and Grover Washington Jr. Others showcase how to eat a tamale or where to buy Leon’s tamales. Vazquez said he likes to incorporate popular music or dance challenges into the videos to attract a wider audience.

“It’s been amazing,” he said. “It’s been really awesome getting to do this with her. We’ve always had a great relationship. I can definitely say she’s one of my best friends.”

In one of her most popular videos, Leon challenges a comment calling her tamales “small.” She holds up one of her tamales to a competitor’s and confidently unwraps her tamale, demonstrating that it’s quite hefty in size compared to the other one.

“You think this is small, let me show you what is small – OK?” she says, unamused.

It’s just one strategy Vazquez said he uses to lightheartedly denounce any “trolls,” while also promoting their business.

“For the most part, there’s a lot of love,” he said. “And there’s always a few trolls, but that’s just social media.”

Fresno tamale-maker continues family traditions

Leon’s passion for cooking runs in her family. She inherited her love of tamale-making from her mother, who taught her to always have a strong work ethic. Like her mother, she doesn’t use any measuring tools for her recipes. Instead, she learned by watching and paying close attention, she said.

One of her favorite memories is learning how to make a unique tortilla recipe made by crushing flour with tomatoes, chiles, garlic and onion in a molcajete, also known as mortar and pestle.

“I remember getting up on a little stool in the kitchen and watching everything she was doing and helping her grind all of the ingredients,” she said. “We still love to cook together and make all kinds of foods.”

Leon takes great pride in sharing her cooking with others, she said, and passing on that tradition to younger generations. In another one of her videos, she explains that “the secret ingredient to great food is love.”

The viral social media videos have allowed Leon to cook up a whole new career. She recently quit her job in a meat packinghouse to pursue her dream of opening a restaurant. She hopes to expand the menu to include other well-known Mexican dishes like birria, posole, menudo, mole and enchiladas.

“I love to cook because it is my greatest passion,” she said. “I want to inspire other people to follow their dreams. You can’t give up and if you fall back down, you have to get back up again.”

This story was originally published December 22, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "This Fresno mom’s tamales have gone viral on TikTok. See why she’s over a million likes."