Marisa McClellan

About Me

Marisa McClellan is a food writer, canning teacher, and farmers market devotee who lives in Philadelphia. Her first cookbook is Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round. Find more of her jams, pickles and preserves at her blog, Food in Jars.


Latest Stories

How To Make Tomato Paste
Spread it onto bread, fold into omelets, or eat spoonfuls with ricotta.
Aug 31, 2023
7 Tips to Make Sure Your Jam Sets Up
I am an equal opportunity fruit jam eater. I am just as happy with the loose, sloshy batches as I am the ones that have a firmer consistency. I love to use the runny varieties to flavor plain yogurt or as a sweetener for green smoothies. The slightly overset batches are perfect for serving with cheese plates or as the filling in a thumbprint cookie.
Dec 6, 2022
How To Make Apple Butter: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Guide
Customize your way to the most delicious apple butter possible.
Sep 30, 2020
Dilly Beans Are the Ultimate Pickle-Lover's Snack
And they make a great Bloody Mary stirrer, too.
Feb 3, 2020
Small Batch Recipe: Garlic Dill Refrigerator Pickles
I believe in the power of a good pickle. Toss baby greens with a bit of crumbled cheese and a slices of pickled beet and call it dinner. Drizzle olive oil over pickled cauliflower and it becomes a quick appetizer for guests. Nuzzle a couple of dilly beans alongside your hot dog instead of relish for a crunchy pucker. Truly, there isn’t much that a pickle can’t do to jazz up or round out a meal. Here in the US, pickles are inextricably linked to cucumbers.
Jan 29, 2020
Learn This Easy Recipe and Never Waste Vegetables Again
Weeknight Preserving
It's not just for cucumbers — and it's not just for hot dogs or hamburgers.
Aug 23, 2019
If You're Not Making Tiny Batches of Jam This Summer, You're Missing Out
Weeknight Preserving
It's so fast, needs nothing special, and makes you look like a HERO.
Aug 23, 2019
This Late-Summer Zucchini Relish Recipe Upgrades Everything It Touches
Weeknight Preserving
Pile this onto sandwiches, cheeseboards, and yes, hot dogs, too.
Aug 10, 2019
This Summer, Freeze All the Things! (But Read This First.)
Weeknight Preserving
Before you put that fresh fruit or veggie in the freezer, read this.
Aug 8, 2019
This Freezer-to-Oven Fruit Crumble Is the Easiest Summer Dessert
Weeknight Preserving
You can use any fruit in your freezer.
Aug 8, 2019
How to Make Sauerkraut: The Original, Cheapest Probiotic
Weeknight Preserving
It's incredibly easy to make and you can do it for a fraction of the cost.
Aug 7, 2019
Spiced Plum Jam (Thanks to an Easy Formula)
Weeknight Preserving
Savor the best of summer with this simple recipe.
Aug 6, 2019
Why Cucumbers Are the Wrong Thing to Pickle First
Weeknight Preserving
Want to pickle? Do not start with cucumbers. Our week of Weeknight Preserving with Marisa McClellan kicks off.
Aug 6, 2019
An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Canning
Weeknight Preserving
With the right tools anyone can learn to can food in an afternoon.
Aug 5, 2019
Small Batch Recipe: Strawberry Thyme Jam
Last spring, I attended a party at which the dessert was an enormous tray of ripe, local strawberries. The berries were artfully arranged around a jar of honey from nearby hives. And though the berries were plenty sweet all on their own, our host encouraged us to dip the strawberries in the honey before taking a bite. The combination of strawberries and honey was a revelation. Within minutes, I started imagining a strawberry preserve sweetened with honey.
Jun 14, 2019
This Is My Favorite Popcorn Popper and Here’s Why
Last year I discovered the Lékué popcorn maker and, in a moment, my lifelong search for the perfect popcorn popper came to an end. Now, until this collapsible silicone popper came into my life, I hadn’t been aware that I was questing for an ideal popping solution — but I was. There are a few things I don’t like about most popcorn poppers: They take up a lot of space, they are often hard to clean, and they always leave unpopped kernels behind.
May 1, 2019
Ways To Use Your Canned Tomatoes All Year Round
All week long, I’ve been talking about summer tomatoes and the various ways to preserve them so that you can eat them all year round. And truly, I think that there’s no better gift to yourself and your family than a pantry shelf full of home canned tomatoes. However, new canners often find that once they’ve put all that work in putting up those tomatoes, they have a hard time getting themselves to open up those jars and eat the fruits of their labor.
Aug 15, 2014
5 Tips for Making Small Batches of Tomato Sauce
When it comes to preserving tomatoes, most people think that you have to go big. And while it’s true that during late summer it’s easy to get your hands on Romas and San Marzanos by the boxful, there’s also nothing wrong with thinking small. Here are a few tips for scaling down those big-batch recipes to turn just a few pints of tomatoes into delicious sauce.
Aug 13, 2014
Recipe: Rotel-Style Tomatoes
Rotel tomatoes are canned tomatoes with a little hint of heat. A Southern favorite, the spice comes from green chiles that have been fire-roasted, diced and stirred into the simmering tomatoes. Rotel tomatoes are a vital ingredient in queso and make a delicious addition to tortilla soup. The only downside to developing a dependency on Rotel tomatoes is that they can often be tricky to find if you live north of the Mason Dixon line, like I do.
Aug 12, 2014
The Very Best Tomatoes For Canning (And Why)
Over the last few years, we’ve been taught to believe that the very best tomato is an heirloom tomato. And while many of those gorgeous, homely heirlooms are definitely best for salads, sandwiches, and no-cook pasta sauces, they are actually not the best choice when it comes to canning. The reason has everything to do with water. Part of what makes those heirlooms so delicious is their juice. However, when you select a tomato for canning, you want more meat than juice.
Aug 11, 2014
5 Ways to Give Your Pickles Better Texture
Are your garlic pickle spears limp? Do your dilly beans droop? Hopefully these tips will help you make crisper, better textured pickles! Use fresh produce. Vegetables are at their very crispest and firmest when they’re fresh from the plant. Though it’s not always possible to pickle things the day they were picked, the sooner you can get your cucumbers, green beans, and okra pods into the jar, the better texture your finished pickles will have.
Aug 9, 2013
Why Strawberry Jam and Cucumber Pickles Are the Worst Ways to Start Canning
Over the last five years, I have taught lots of people to can. I’ve written many thousands of words about canning online, I’ve taught hundreds of hours of live classes, and I have answered countless questions about food preservation in both person and in writing. All that interaction has led me to the following opinion: People start canning with the wrong recipes. Nearly all of you choose to start your canning career with strawberry jam and cucumber pickles.
Aug 7, 2013
Small Batch Recipe: An Adaptable Chutney
During my early childhood years, my family lived in Southern California. Our house was tiny, but the backyard was a huge, tiered thing that sloped upwards to a two-story garage and an alley that served all the homes on the block. That property was a wonderland to a small child and nothing was more magical to me than the fact that we had three productive plum trees. My sister and I would pretend we were pioneers and the plums were our harvest.
Jun 19, 2012
Why Small Batch Canning Is Awesome: And What You Need To Get Started
When I first started canning, I made huge batches of jam. Between the cleaning, peeling and chopping, I’d be dripping with sweat and every inch of my kitchen would be covered in sticky fruit residue. Despite the fact that each jamming session took hours and hours, I did it that way because that’s just how I thought canning was supposed to be.
Jun 8, 2012