Megan Scott

Megan's experience with food and cooking began in her mother's and grandmothers' (and great-grandmothers') kitchens, where she first learned about the magic and hard work that happens at the stove. From a farming family, Megan grew up shucking corn and snapping beans. As a result she has a deep respect for the work that goes into the food that ends up on our plates.

Megan's career began with a three-year stint in college as a cheesemaker's apprentice on a farmstead goat dairy. She fell in love with the process of cheesemaking, from milking the goats to selling cheese at the farmer's market, and to this day she is cheese-obsessed. After her time at the dairy, Megan dabbled in baking and pastry, working as a baker at a natural foods grocery store, owning her own small baking business, and becoming an assistant pastry chef at a fine dining restaurant in Portland, Oregon.

From 2010 to 2019, Megan co-authored the ninth edition of Joy of Cooking with her husband, John Becker. In the course of the exhaustive revision process for the 91-year-old cookbook, Megan and John developed over 600 new recipes, tested and tweaked over 1,200 legacy recipes, researched and revised hundreds of pages of reference material, copy edited the resulting 1.2 million-word manuscript, and went on an 11-city publicity tour. This experience not only gave Megan a thorough education in editing food writing and recipes but also heavily informed her understanding of the wants, needs, hopes, and struggles of home cooks from all walks of life.

While working on the Joy project, Megan was also the culinary director at a food-focused creative agency where she led a team of recipe developers, food stylists, and culinary production specialists.

Megan received a BA in French Language and Literature from the University of North Carolina at Asheville.