Celebrity Speaker, chef, television host, and bestselling cookbook author, Marcela Valladolid has made it her mission to introduce Americans to true Mexican cuisine and to change the commonly misconstrued belief that real Mexican food is too hard to make and the ingredients too hard to find. As host of her own television show on Food Network, Mexican Made Easy, Chef Marcela shares simple recipes that are easy to make quickly but still have the strong, delicious flavors of classic Mexican dishes.

Chef Marcela Valladolid is also a bestselling cookbook author. Her first cookbook, Fresh Mexico: 100 Simple Recipes for True Mexican Flavor, was published in 2009 and gives Marcela’s readers a taste of her home by providing them with authentic Mexican recipes that she cooked with her family while growing up in Tijuana, Mexico. The book was an instant success as it topped the Amazon cookbook list several times in 2009. In 2011 she released a second cookbook, Mexican Made Easy, which serves as a companion book to her TV show of the same name.

During her career, she has been a Food Editor at Bon Appetit magazine, has been featured in People magazine, Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, and on television shows including NBC’s Today Show, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, Chopped, The View, and The Rachael Ray Show. In 2012 she was asked to appear on Iron Chef America where she and teammate Bobby Flay competed against and defeated Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto and Andrew Zimmern. Chef Valladolid was also chosen to compete on the television series The Apprentice: Martha Stewart where she made it to week 11 of the competition before being sent home with just five contenders left. Marcela starred as a guest judge on such shows as Throwdown! With Bobby Flay and Extreme Chef before deciding to sign on as a full-time judge for CBS’s new series, The American Baking Competition, in May, 2013. In January 2014, Food Network’s new show titled, The Kitchen, was released and features Marcela as one of the show’s hosts.