Specialty Food Magazine

Todo Verde's Ramirez Stays True to Culture By Julie Gallagher Specialty Food checked in with chef Joceyln Ramirez, a best-selling cookbook author, New York Times cooking contributor, and founder of Todo Verde, a plant-forward maker of true-to-culture, non-GMO, Mexican seasonings. Ramirez won SFA's Fancy Face-Off pitch competition at the 2024 Winter Fancy Food Show. Take me back to your early years in the kitchen. Who taught you how to cook? My grandmother was the matriarch of our family who brought all of us together over food and she'd cook for a small army sometimes, whether it was for a baptism, a party, or a holiday, she brought everyone to the table. Whether it was making tamales or a big pot of pozole or any of our specific favorite dishes … She really used food as a way to show love to us and we grew up with not a lot, so food was almost like a currency, a place where we felt like we had it all. We had the most delicious flavors at the table. I've always been super into food and carried that on after my grandma passed. A lot of family will come to me now and say "if we gather for this birthday or holiday will you make x, y, z dishes." So I've kind of stepped up in that role as the food person in the family. Did you always know that food would inspire your career path? No, in fact I was in higher education prior to ever starting a food business. I thought I would always stay in academia and maybe do something in design, which is what my undergraduate degree is based in. But I was always super passionate about food. I used to tell friends that if Anthony Bourdain or Jonathan Gold wrote anything about food or where to eat, I was there ASAP or trying to learn more about it. I didn't ever think food would be a career path. And it wasn't until I started to deal with some preventable health issues along with my immediate family that I started to really look at food more as medicine for us rather than just fuel or fun. So I started to eat more of a plant-based diet … but I also wanted to eat the nostalgic things that I grew up eating. I started playing with recipes that were both my grandmother's recipes but obviously altered for that new lifestyle I was living. When did the business come about? It started at local farmers' markets here in L.A. and I was doing superfood smoothies and agua fresca. I eventually became one of the first vendors at Smorgasburg in L.A., which is a big, curated food festival that happens every weekend. I started doing catering and also was a culinary director for an L.A. Philharmonic venue called The Ford and all these things led to writing a cookbook that launched during the pandemic. That catapulted my recipes and my dishes were being prepared and cooked in a lot of homes. People were sending me DMs and saying "I don't have this ingredient here, can I use this instead." And that got me really interested in creating a product line that made sense with what my cookbook had to offer and what I saw people needed. They needed easier access to all of the ingredients and they wanted to do it really quickly with their busy lives and that's why I decided to launch specifically a taco seasoning. American Taco Tuesday nights veer from the way tacos are enjoyed in Mexico. How are your seasonings helping add authenticity? A lot of people across the U.S. celebrate Taco Tuesday with ground beef tacos with hard shells with cheddar cheese and all the fixings, but when you think about tacos throughout Mexico it's rare to see that style of taco, if at all. You really see a lot of handmade, fresh tortillas typically with a grilled meat or a guisada which would be the star of that dish, followed by some salsa and maybe a little onion cilantro. What I'm trying to do is recreate what we see on shelf to really mirror what I saw growing up eating and what I saw when visiting Mexico. So our Al Pastor, Carnitas, and Tinga Seasonings are true-to-culture flavors and not the spicy or mild taco seasonings that you'd typically see in the store. SUMMER 2024 67 Julie Gallagher is editor of Specialty Food.

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