Her first restaurant job was as an intern under Chef
Lydia Shire at the
Harvest Restaurant in Cambridge, MA during the summer of 1976. After graduating from the CIA in the spring of 1977, Moulton returned to the Harvest as its sous chef, a job she held for nine months. In 1979, at the suggestion of
Julia Child, Moulton undertook a postgraduate apprenticeship with Master Chef Maurice Cazalis of the Henri IV Restaurant in Chartres, France. From 1979 till 1981, she was the chef at Cybele's, a Boston restaurant. After moving to New York in 1981, Moulton was hired as the
chef tournant at
La Tulipe, a three-star restaurant. In the interest of starting a family, she left restaurant work and began devoting herself instead to recipe testing and development. Moulton worked for two years as an instructor at
Peter Kump's New York Cooking School (now known as the
Institute of Culinary Education), where she discovered her love of teaching. In 1984, she took a job in the
test kitchen at
Gourmet. Four years later she became chef of the magazine's executive dining room.
Television In 1979, Moulton's television career began when she was hired to work behind the scenes on
Julia Child & More Company, a cooking program on PBS. Her friendship with Ms. Child led eventually to Moulton's job at
Good Morning America, where what started as another behind-the-scenes position ripened in 1997 into on-camera work. By then, she had begun hosting the Food Network's
Cooking Live. Six years and over 1,200 hour-long shows later, that show ended on March 31, 2002. ''Sara's Secrets,'' which began the next day, ran until 2007. “Sara Moulton is a chef, and one of the few people knowledgeable enough to field live phone-in queries, the basis of her show," wrote
The New Yorker's
Bill Buford. "Cooking Live" was nominated as the James Beard Awards' Best National Television Cooking Show in 1999 and 2000. The fourteenth season of "Sara's Weeknight Meals" began airing on
American Public Television in October 2025. The show was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2013 and 2015, while Moulton herself has been nominated three times as Outstanding Personality/Host, most recently in 2014.
Cookbooks and cooking columns Her first cookbook,
Sara Moulton Cooks at Home, was published by
Broadway Books in October 2002, and was meant to counter America's disastrous love affair with fast food by encouraging everyone to cook delicious and healthy food at home and to dine with family and friends. "While rooted in classic French technique, the book also accommodates the American hunger for convenience, novelty and freshness," wrote Mike Dunne for
The Sacramento Bee. Moulton's second cookbook, ''Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals
, was published by Broadway Books in October 2005. It was reviewed by Michelle Green in People'' magazine, who wrote: "Sara has a gift for creating quick, accessible fine cuisine. Why suffer to make a gorgeous meal?" Her third cookbook, ''Sara Moulton's Everyday Family Dinners
, was published by Simon & Schuster in April 2010. Blogging for StoveTop Readings'' in November 2010, Greg Mowery wrote: "If there is a less pretentious, more accessible, and creative cookbook that gets great food on the table in good time with the least amount of fuss, I haven't seen it this year….This new book belongs in every family kitchen." Moulton's fourth cookbook,
Home Cooking 101: How to Make Everything Taste Better, was published by
Oxmoor House in March 2016. Diana K. Rice, in
The Huffington Post, described it as "extremely useful to the home cook. [Looks] like a textbook, albeit...with fabulous food photos and enticing recipes." In August 2012 Moulton began writing a weekly column entitled "The Healthy Plate" for the
Associated Press. In January 2015, she replaced it with a new column called "KitchenWise," which ran through October 2018. Between November 2016 and September 2018, Moulton contributed a monthly column called "Sunday Supper" to
The Washington Post Magazine. From January 2018 through June 2021, Moulton contributed a quarterly column entitled "Maize Graze" to the University of Michigan's Alumnus Magazine. == Awards ==