Chef Jenny Martinez Shares Budget Meal Hacks and Incredible Family Recipes (EXCL)

Chef, social media star and cookbook author Jenny Martinez, who has nearly 4 million followers on TikTok, has found a way to successfully celebrate food, family and her Mexican culture. Born in Jalisco, Mexico, Jenny moved with her family to the United States at the age of 4—but she never lost touch with her heritage. 

An 8-year-old Jenny helped and observed her mother making Mexican dishes in their small Los Angeles kitchen, and she’s turned those lessons into quite the empire. “I would help her chop onions and cilantro,” she shared with Woman’s World as our cover girl (get your copy here!)

With a successful cookbook, My Mexican Mesa, Y Listo!, and her own line of goods at JCPenney, The Jenny Martinez Home Collection, the passionate chef has put in the work throughout her life, which hasn’t been without tough times. Married at 17, Jenny became a mom the following year and had to work hard for the life she saw for herself. 

Here, Jenny shares her tips and insights into making each day joyful by embracing the simple pleasures in life. 

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Woman’s World: In your cookbook, there are recipes acquired through generations of your family. What are some memories of you cooking with your mom or grandma?

Jenny Martinez: My mom was the one who got me in the kitchen when I was 8 years old and it was when I was 13 when I didn’t need her help anymore. I guess I mastered my cooking on my own at this age. 

WW: What’s an early kitchen memory?

JM: It’s far before I was 8. My mom was always in the kitchen. She was the one that people always came to when there was a Mexican wedding, a quinceanera, a baptism for her to cook for. Birria is a famous Mexican dish and my mom was the one who always cooked it.

For us, we always had a few events a month that my mom was cooking for, so for me, I would wake up with the smell of the birria on the second floor and would run down, because we already knew we would have some for breakfast with rice and beans. When she was not making birria or any other request that people would ask, she was always cooking for us—like huevos rancheros—and that’s a beautiful memory I would have to wake up to that beautiful smell of food.

WW: Is there a song that still brings you joy every time you hear it that reminds you of these early years?

JM: I would love to listen to Marisela because my older two sisters listened and back in the day, she was such a popular singer. It was always about a bad romance and me at 7 years old, here I am singing my heart out as if somebody had just broken up with me. I would listen to her entire CD, but the one song that stuck with me was “Sin El”—”Without Him.” As a matter of fact, my uncle heard me singing and said you have a good voice, so let me be your manager. My mom was like no, no, no, leave it alone. 

WW: Do you have a legacy or signature dish?

JM: My husband fell in love with me when I was making chile rellenos for him. When I was 16 years old and visiting him at his mom’s house, she had 3 bags of chili pods that you stuff with cheese and create that egg batter. So my mother-in-law said she didn’t want to do that because it was so much work, and I was so used to making these with my mom that I said I can help you. She was amazed at how fast I was able to get these chile rellenos made. My husband has eight brothers, so we had to make two for each. My mother-in-law was surprised and my husband was like okay, let’s get married. 

WW: With readers concerned about money matters right now, what is one habit that can cut a grocery bill quickly?

JM: If you’re buying beef or meat in general, try to get the roast and cut yourself. It’s not really hard. It’s a process, but you’ll save a lot of money per pound. So instead of buying a 16-pound carne asada, you can buy the roast and do it yourself. Also, make your own meatballs at home instead of already frozen. You can even grind your own beef to save money. 

WW: Do you have a budget go-to delicious meal?

JM: It’s always with eggs, especially if it’s breakfast. When it comes to dinner, it’s taquitos. That’s always a budget friendly meal under 30 minutes. I try to teach to use leftover foods right away, like leftover chicken that you shred and put inside a taquito, roll it and fry it. If you don’t have the money for chicken, you can just boil potatoes, add some cotija cheese, add a little bit of sour cream or shredded cheese—Mash it all up and create a potato base, and you make potato taquitos and it’s so budget friendly. Put salsa over it. Shred some lettuce to top it off, hot salsa, avocado.

WW: You offer spices on your website to buy. What are two universal spices that go with pretty much everything?

Jenny Martinez: Chicken bouillon. Some people have started to call me the chicken bouillon queen because I replace sauce with the chicken bouillon and that’s what my mom always does—to this day still. I feel that it gives it more flavor to anything that needs a salt. I replace parsley for cilantro because that’s more known in a Mexican household. I removed turmeric, cayenne pepper. I replaced that with chili powder cause I want to make it my own. 

WW: What snack food reminds you of your childhood?

JM: The street corn, I love that. And the hard candy apples. When we were at the local park—that’s where my dad would always take us because he didn’t have money to take us to Disneyland—so he’d take us to the park. I remember the elote man would always be there and that was my favorite go-to there. When my dad saw the benefit of selling at the park, he literally took his six kids and sold mangoes on a stick. He would put lime and chili powder on them and we would sell them for one dollar. It’s a peeled mango cut into a flower shape, put on a stick, and we’d sell them. That’s how we would make ends meet. I would be the one who sold the most for my dad. And we still have that for a snack. 

WW: What’s your favorite comfort food?

JM: This is something my dad would make rushing to take us to school. Cut tortilla and saute them in oil and put scrambled eggs on them. It’s so comforting every time I have that. And for dinner, we’d have this Mexican pasta soup—sopa de fideo. Really thin pasta with tomato sauce. Those two are my favorite comfort foods.

WW: What would you say you do better in your 50s than you did before?

Jenny Martinez: I have now become a pro at whisking the eggs for the huevos rancheros. I was always in a rush, and now that I’m 50, I know that patience is key, especially when you’re cooking. It’s whisking the egg whites to have those beautiful white peaks. It’s just learning how to be patient, and I think that comes with time and age and experience. 

WW: Can you remember an early struggle or hardship you had to overcome and if so, how did you overcome it?

JM: I got married very young; at 17. My dad had to sign for me. So I was very young, then got pregnant right away and soon realized, shoot, this is hard. It’s not easy, and I didn’t know how my parents did it. It was either going on welfare or work for free until I get a skill and gain the knowledge to go get a job. A lot of people criticized me for working for free, but I struggled. I was eating a lot of hot dogs, mac n’ cheese in a box. Those were my dinners back in the day. I would try and get creative about it, adding a little BBQ sauce to my sautéed hot dogs, and that was our protein.

WW: Besides cooking, what brings you the most joy, especially at this stage in your life?

JM: To be with the family. I feel it’s a great accomplishment that your older kids want to be with you. I see other families and they ask how we do that with our older kids—How do you bring them back? And I say with food! My mom would do it for us. I remember when we all began getting married—I have five sisters and one brother—the way for her to bring us back was every Sunday, she would have meals. So I said I’ll do the same thing with mine because it worked. 

WW: You’ve expanded your brand to cookware and entertaining essentials. How does your culture and heritage reflect in that product line?

JM: I’m so excited with the new line. With the first one we started we had a lot of limitations. Retailers would say they already have the colors in other brands, but I kept on that I wanted the terracotta colors in it, I wanted the blue. The terracotta is pretty much what you see when you go to Mexico. And I said I really needed to have pieces from Mexico, so that was a challenge too. Some of the pieces are handmade, so we cannot mass produce them. The dinnerware, it represents me, represents our culture, represents Mexico, so they finally said yes and it was such a huge hit. In less than a week, we sold out of the dinnerware online. It’s been well received from Latinos and other cultures. 

WW: Fill in the blank—If — is not happiness, then I don’t know what is?

Jenny Martinez: Family.