Latina Chef, Marcela Valladolid of The Kitchen

Marcela Valladolid is currently one of five chefs on the Food Network show, The Kitchen, which premiered in January 2014. She says she enjoys the show’s collaborative format, finding it a bit more exciting than being a chef on her solo show, Mexican Made Easy, which, if you look at her career overall, isn’t so surprising: Marcela has always been a team player. On The Kitchen, the chefs have natural conversations, offer different perspectives on food and cooking, and are able to showcase their personalities along with their cooking styles. The different voices on The Kitchen bring the show to life, and Ms. Valladolid adds an essential flavor to the mix.

Valladolid specializes in bringing the artistry of traditional Mexican cuisine to a wide audience; in 2009, she published a cookbook, FRESH MEXICO: 100 Simple Recipes for True Mexican Flavor. Since then, she has teamed up with Safeway Stores on her own line of ready-to-cook Mexican meats and tortilla chips—each designed to make Mexican cooking easy and delicious. Beyond this, she has a tequila line, a dinnerware line at Macy’s, and a food line at Vons.

Born July 19, 1978, in San Diego, California, and raised in Tijuana, Mexico, Marcela feels the influence of her Latin culture in all she does, both in and out of the kitchen. True, she studied in prestigious academies (the Los Angeles Culinary Institute and the Ritz Escoffier Cooking School in Paris) and made her name competing on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, but she has been sharing her love of traditional cuisine since her first job, working at her aunt’s cooking school in Baja, Mexico. She has made it her mission (and her business) to celebrate and promote Mexican food—but not just any Mexican: authentic, family fare that can be prepared at home in the U.S., with common, inexpensive ingredients.

It is with pride that we call Marcela Valladolid an inspirational Latina!