About Sara Foster

Sara Foster is the founder and owner of Foster’s Market in Durham and Chapel Hill, NC. She has authored four cookbooks, including her most recent titles, Sara Foster’s Southern Kitchen and The Foster’s Market Cookbook. A contributing food editor for Cottage Living magazine, Sara previously worked as a chef for Martha Stewart’s catering company. She and her husband, Peter Sellers, live on a farm outside of Durham. @fostersmarket

A grey bowl filled with roasted radishes, sprinkled with thyme.

Roasted Radishes

Roasting these rotund little root veggies turns them docile as anything dug out of the ground can be. Consider them to be dirt candy.

Close up of a pile of zucchini slaw with carrots, squash, and bell peppers, sprinkled with parsley. 2 forks in the background.

Zucchini Slaw Two Ways

Never give zucchini away again with these equally tempting yet uniquely different slaws. You get to choose—rich and creamy or tart and sweet.

Three assembled Thai-style sliced beef lettuce wraps with a bowl of dipping sauce on the side.

Thai-Style Sliced-Beef Lettuce Wraps

Steak marinated in a soy-ginger sauce is grilled, and wrapped with lettuce and peppers, before being wholly devoured. They’re about as cool and fresh as you can get.

Two oval dishes filled with lamb shank shepherd's pie and a spoon resting beside them.

Lamb Shank Shepherd’s Pie

This shepherd’s pie recipe is a touch untraditional, relying on tender braised lamb shank rather than the typical ground lamb. Call us rebels.

A basting brush with chipotle maple barbecue sauce

Chipotle Maple Barbecue Sauce

This indescribably must-have-more-of-this sauce boasts the complex sweetness of maple syrup and the smoky spice of chipotle peppers. Slather it at will.

A platter of pickle-brined fried chicken with pieces of dill pickle, and a bottle of beer.

Pickle-Brined Fried Chicken

Pickle-brined fried chicken?! Oh yes we did! Folks are calling it fried chicken perfection. And you won’t want to skip the Sriracha honey dipping sauce.

A whole deep-fried turkey, garnished with sage, bay, and thyme leaves on a wooden cutting board.

Deep-Fried Turkey

Crisp, burnished skin and moist, impossibly tender meat can be yours. (Yes, deep-fried turkey IS everything it’s bragged up to be.)

A three-layer hummingbird cake with a cake server beside it.

Hummingbird Cake

This Southern classic is an oh so sweet and charming stack of pineapple, coconut, bananas, and pecans slathered with cream cheese frosting.

Fall-Off-the-Bone Baby Back Ribs

The secret to these knee-wobblingly tender little lovelies? Roast ’em low and slow and then toss ’em on the grill for just a short spell. Which means you don’t have to constantly tend a smoker from dawn to dusk.

Small piles of the individual spices that make up Quito's barbecue butt rub.

Quito’s Barbecue Butt Rub

Sara Foster’s barbecue rub, a cheeky mix of paprika, black pepper, salt, garlic, chili powder, and brown sugar, can be massaged into beef, pork, or chicken.