Jinich, 54, has filmed her Daytime Emmy-nominated cooking show at home in Chevy Chase, MD, for the past 15 years.
James Beard Award-winning chef and host of “Pati’s Mexican Table,” Pati Jinich is serving up a back of house look inside her Maryland home where she films her popular PBS cooking show.
Jinich, 54, typically records the Daytime Emmy-nominated series in the kitchen of her Chevy Chase, MD, home. Though, in the latest installment of Celebrity Sanctuary, she reveals that she’s taking the show farther afield to her home country of Mexico for Season 15, which is due to premiere on Sept. 4.
“I filmed the show in my kitchen for the first 14 seasons, and this new season, which is the 15th season where I go to Coahuila, is the first time where I'm filming everything in Mexico,” Jinich tells Realtor.com®.
It is a fitting move for Jinich, who not only offers viewers a delectable guide to creating some truly incredible Mexican dishes, but also helps to educate them on the country's rich history.
Changing locations has been a key ingredient of Jinich’s career evolution: Born and raised in Mexico City, she immigrated to Texas in 1997, moved to the Washington, DC, area in 2001 to work as a political analyst, and initially turned to cooking for comfort.
“Pati’s Mexican Table” host Pati Jinich is serving up a back of house look inside her Maryland home where she films the hit PBS cooking show. (Pati Jinich) 
Jinich completely remodeled the Chevy Chase, MD, residence into a Cape Cod-style abode in 2010. (Pati Jinich) “When I moved to the U.S., I wanted to share the Mexico I knew, the Mexico I missed,” she explains. “I went in from the hunger of curiosity, hunger of wanting to stay connected to my home country. That's why I wanted to cook its food and share it with the world.”
Jinich fed her passion for food as a side to her policy work until 2007, when she officially changed course and was named resident chef at the Mexican Cultural Institute of Washington, DC.
“I realized that I could communicate with people and understand the world and myself much better through food, and so I switched from political analysis to food writing," she explains.
That began with the launch of her popular food blog, which would later inspire the name and vision for her current series, which premiered in 2011.
"Once I got established [on the blog], I was, like, ‘OK, now I can take on more from this platform of power in food, which opens doors,’” she adds.
The Mexican cooking authority estimates she has since shared more than 650 recipes, including her most requested dish—a shrimp enchilada—and she has also been hired to prepare a number of memorable meals for some very famous faces.
Among the more notable of her cooking jobs was the White House Cinco de Mayo party she prepared food for during President Barack Obama's administration. She also earned ample praise for the public service announcement she filmed alongside "Sesame Street" stars Elmo and Cookie Monster.
Jinich has cooked many memorable meals, including one with fellow PBS stars Elmo and Cookie Monster. (Instagram/Pati Jinich) 
The New York Times bestselling author has a fourth cookbook due to drop on Sept. 15. (Instagram/Pati Jinich) Jinich has also produced two prime-time docuseries, “La Frontera” and “Pati Jinich Explores PanAmericana,” and published three cookbooks.
A fourth one, “Foods of La Frontera,” drops on Sept. 15 and is the latest layer of her mission to “break the preconceptions about Mexico and Mexicans living in the U.S.,” according to the New York Times bestselling author.
“It doesn't try to say, ‘Oh, this is Mexican, this is American.’ It's just the food of the borderlands, which is a food where many cultures and many people and many histories meet, and it doesn't try to categorize things anymore,” states Jinich.
“It just tries to bring the food of a very misunderstood place that has gifted the world so many treasures,” she continues.
“Caesar salad, the burritos, the nachos, the carne asada tacos—all those foods come from the borderlands, and people look down on them. Mexicans are, like, ‘Oh, that's not Mexican food.’ Americans are, like, ‘Oh, that's Tex-Mex, not really Mexican.’ But it's true, authentic, borderland, delicious food.
“The flavor of the new cookbook is the same as the point at where I'm standing today, which is no fear, just unapologetically delicious.”
Whether on location at the border or behind the large kitchen island of her Cape Cod-style home, Jinich’s confidence in her culinary calling is now fully baked into her being.
In this edition of Celebrity Sanctuary, Jinich gives the scoop on the top-to-bottom renovation she and her husband, Daniel Jinich, cooked up for the six-bedroom, six-bathroom, approximately 5,000-square-foot residence where they raised their three sons. Plus, she dishes on how her eclectic design taste makes her sanctuary—her kitchen—an absolute chef’s kiss.
Jinich shares the six-bedroom, six-bathroom, 5,000-square-foot abode with her husband, Daniel Jinich. (Pati Jinich) 
Jinich points to the heavy wood "Mexican sliding doors" as one of her home's eclectic design details. (Pati Jinich) 
The East Coast home features many windows, which let in a lot of natural light. (Pati Jinich) 
Bold paint colors and wallpaper patterns are featured throughout the dwelling. (Pati Jinich) We rented for a while in different places, and then we finally purchased this home in 2009. It was falling down. We took it all the way down [to the studs], because it wasn't salvageable. We tore it down and built it back up and moved in here 2010, and I adore this house to no end.
In order to move into the neighborhood—it's a historic neighborhood—we had to say we're going to build for us, not to resell, and these are the styles we like. So we chose a style in order to be vetted, because what they used to do is, people bought homes to tear down and then the neighbors would tag them historic and then you couldn’t build them.
They told us, “Go to the neighbors’ meeting. Present what you want to do. Explain it’s for you.” We went through [all] the hoops.
And so outside, it's very Cape Cod traditional. It has a porch on the outside in the front with a swing. It has a covered porch in the backyard. It has many windows because I'm obsessed with light.
Inside, it’s very traditional as well, but then it's [also] very eclectic. It has dark wooden floors. It has Mexican sliding doors—heavy wood and hand-wrought iron doors with glass that we brought from Jalisco. It has a lot of light.
It has very bold colors in the walls. ... The year my oldest son went to college, I covered in wallpaper one room because I needed the warmth. Then my second son left for college, and I covered a hallway in wallpaper to get more warmth, and then when my third one went to college.
So I've been adding more and more wallpaper, and the wallpapers that I do are very bright and bold and full of orange trees and flowers and green leaves, and I just love color.
Sanctuary to me is a place where I feel nurtured, a place where I can breathe, a place where I can be creative, and a place where I feel very comfortable on my own, but I can welcome others in.
The James Beard Award-winning chef considers her kitchen to be her personal sanctuary. (Pati Jinich) 
A ceramic Talavera pig that sits atop Jinich's refrigerator is one of many decor items in her kitchen that "has a story." (Pati Jinich) 
Jinich admits the large square-shaped kitchen island is "not great for filming." (Pati Jinich) I'm obsessed with my kitchen. It is the one space where I just live and thrive and love, It’s my favorite place, and it has always been the case, like, the kitchen has always been the place where I've felt the most nurtured, the most cared for, the most comfortable.
If you walk into my kitchen, you will see a very big kitchen island, which is not great for filming a cooking show in it because it's so big and so square.
It has bold Chödron colors on the wall, like burnt plum, and [the range] has 10 burners, which many times I use all at once. It has beautiful Mexican tiles on the backsplash, which my husband and I carried from Jalisco. But it has very modern stainless-steel shelves. I love having my plates outside.
Everything in my kitchen has a story. Like, everything. I have a giant ceramic pig that my husband—we love eating pig—my husband and I brought from San Miguel de Allende. We carried it. It's a Talavera pig. It's right on top of my fridge.
Every single wooden spatula and spoon, I know where it comes from. I have the comal that my mother passed down to me. I have the molcajete that my father-in-law carried with him when we got married and we moved to Dallas, and then from Texas came here. I have bowls that come from different regions of Mexico. Like, everything in that kitchen has a story, so it's truly a magical place for me.
It has lovely windows. It has a big double window that looks onto my plum tree, apricot tree, lime tree, and then my other window looks into my fig tree and my cherry trees. I think I planted these fruit trees, like, 10 years ago and they weren't giving any fruit. Suddenly five years ago, they're just now exploding with fruit, which is my sign that I cannot leave this house ever. It’s just full of warmth.
I designed this not having a cooking show yet, but wanting to give cooking classes. That's why I designed the very square, large kitchen island, because I was planning on hosting eight to 10 people around my kitchen island to teach them cooking.
After we moved into the house is when I started pitching the cooking show. I didn't plan on filming in my kitchen at all when we built it. I was planning on just hosting small cooking classes.
When she's not traveling, Jinich spends the majority of her time at home inside the kitchen and her home office. (Pati Jinich) 
The home office is where Jinich keeps her "books and research and art." (Pati Jinich) 
Instead of filming Season 15 of "Pati's Mexican Table" at her home, Jinich travels to Coahuila, Mexico. (Pati Jinich) I think that that is the reason why my professional lives and my personal lives are so blurred because the people that come and work here, they know how sacred it is [to film inside my kitchen], and they treat it as such.
That is why I think that my content strikes a nerve and touches people. It is so authentic because I am truly inviting them into my personal space, and my community of followers knows it and they don't take it for granted and I don't take it for granted. And so I think that the secret to what I do is that I've been willing and able to make myself vulnerable to those who invite me into their home through the show and through my books.
In fact, when we're filming in my kitchen, I do feel a little bit restricted because they put all of the cameras and lights and things, and you don't want to move things too much because you don't want to make people work too much.
I feel like I love it when people leave, when I get my kitchen back, honestly. It’s like, “OK, now I can I take it back.” I cook there every day.
Aside from our bedroom where I sleep every night, when I'm not traveling, the two spaces in my house that I spend the most time in is [my] office, where I have all my books and research and art, and my kitchen.
I think I spend like 50% of my time [in the office] and 50% of my time in the kitchen. I'm cooking, testing for my cookbooks, for my shows, for feeding my family, for feeding my friends, for feeding myself, and if I'm not in my kitchen, I'm sitting right here [at] this desk.
Honestly, my kitchen is perfect. I mean, I have to continuously fix the oven, the water filter, the whatever it is. Things break down. If anything, maybe I will want a little bit more windows, but there's no space for more windows. I love it exactly as it is.