Pati Jinich knows what it’s like to be a new immigrant in the United States. She came to this country on a visa when she was 24 years old and newly married. Homesick and unable to return to Mexico until her immigration papers were finalized she brought comfort to Texas by cooking the chicken soup of her youth for herself and her husband. The scent gave her rented duplex in Dallas a connection to home.
Today, 22 years later, Jinich is still making chicken soup, but no longer just for her husband. She is now the host of Pati’s Mexican Table, the James Beard-award-winning TV series with a U.S. audience of more than 30 million. Many of the things she makes use chicken soup as the base so she cooks a large pot of it every week, and uses it in her rice, stews and as stock for her bean soups. The chicken soup combines Jinich’s Jewish food memories and her Mexican culinary traditions, two sides of her identity that were each fully realized only once she grew roots in the United States.
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