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La Cuisine Paris
Paris, French baking. If the thing you most want to master is the croissant, book this one. The three-hour class takes you through laminated dough, pastry cream and shaping, and covers croissants, pain au chocolat and pain au raisin. Proper croissants take more than six hours, so some dough is prepared ahead and you still finish with warm pastries; whatever you cannot eat over coffee goes home with you.
Classes are taught in English near the Hôtel de Ville, in kitchens laid out like a home kitchen rather than a restaurant line, which makes the techniques easier to repeat. The macaron class is the other big draw: two shell styles and four fillings in three hours. Popular sessions sell out, so book early.
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La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese
Bologna, fresh egg pasta. This is the serious one. Founded by Alessandra Spisni, the school trains professional sfogline, Bologna's hand pasta makers, on a three-month course with compulsory attendance. Holidaymakers get a concentrated taste of that teaching in one day.
The Saturday Tortellini Day gives you about three hours on the filling, the dough, rolling the sheet by hand with a rolling pin, then cutting, filling, shaping and sealing, taught in Italian and English. Separate days cover sfoglia on its own and lasagne alla bolognese. It is a working school rather than a party, so arrive on time and ready to concentrate. The pay-off is a skill that needs nothing at home but flour, eggs, a board and a rolling pin.
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Amal Targa Centre Cooking Classes
Marrakech, Moroccan home cooking. For your tagine lesson, head out to a garden kitchen where the fee does some good. Amal is a non-profit that trains women in its kitchens and helps them into work, and its classes help pay for that training.
At the Targa centre you choose your dish when you book: a tagine, or couscous or pastilla for a little more. The morning starts with your teacher and the spice box, moves on to building the tagine or folding the pastry yourself, and ends with eating everything you made, with a traditional tea ceremony along the way. The recipes come home with you. Classes run weekday mornings from 9:30, and a shorter baking class covers msemmen flatbreads and ghriba cookies if you would rather bake.
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Shashi Cooking Classes
Udaipur, Indian vegetarian home cooking. This is the class to take if Indian food at home has never tasted like it does in India. Shashi teaches in her own small family kitchen in the old city, usually to groups of three or four, so you get real attention rather than a place at the back of a room.
You cook from scratch: masala chai, potato and onion pakoras, a vegetable pulao and Shashi's own base for masala curries, which she calls her magic sauce and which is the most useful thing you will bring home. The session lasts about four hours, and at the end you sit down at Shashi's table to eat what you have cooked. Measurements are by pinch and handful, so take notes as you go.
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Thai Farm Cooking School
Chiang Mai, Thai cooking. The detail that sells this farm school is the mortar: everyone gets their own, and you pound your own curry paste. Once you can do that, most Thai curries are within reach at home.
The day starts with a stop at a local market, then a drive to the family's organic farm about 17 km out of the city, where you walk the beds and pick some of the herbs and vegetables you will cook with. Each guest has an individual cooking station, so nobody is just watching. You eat on a terrace looking over a fishpond to the mountains, and a digital recipe book with photos comes with the class. Choose a half day in the morning or evening, a full day, or the seasonal day that adds rice planting.
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Paon Bali Cooking Class
Ubud, Balinese cooking. Puspa runs this class in her family home in Laplapan village, and the morning session earns its early start with a traditional market visit and a walk through the rice fields to see how the Subak water system feeds them.
The key lesson is base gede, the spice paste behind a great many Balinese dishes. Learn it properly and satay, curries and vegetable dishes become possible at home with one jar in the fridge. Be honest about the format: reviewers describe some steps prepared in advance and some dishes cooked in pairs and then combined, and one found the menu repetitive because so much shares that base. As a relaxed, sociable introduction rather than a technical workshop, it is hard to beat. Vegan menus exist.
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Red Bridge Cooking School
Hoi An, central Vietnamese cooking. This is market-to-table in the most literal order. You tour the Hoi An market, take a boat of about 25 minutes along the river to the school, walk its herb garden, and only then start cooking.
The chefs demonstrate each dish first and you then make it yourself, a format that suits nervous cooks well. One reviewer describes steaming rice paper batter and making a traditional shrimp pancake, both techniques that travel home easily. The half-day class runs every day of the year. A longer deluxe day adds an organic farm visit and four dishes, and a two-hour evening class in the Ancient Town covers three dishes if your days are already full.
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Haru Cooking Class
Kyoto, Japanese home cooking. Skip the sushi workshop: this is the class for the food Japanese families actually eat on a weeknight. Taro Saeki has taught from his own home in the Shimogamo area since 2010, with no more than eight guests at a time cooking together.
The standard menu is four seasonal vegetable dishes plus a wagyu dish, built around a soup and everyday sides such as furofuki daikon, simmered in dashi and topped with sweet miso. Learning a good dashi is the real take-home. There is a vegetarian menu, but note that its stock uses fish flakes, so it is not strictly vegetarian. Classes are on weekdays, usually from 1pm, and bookings open four months ahead, which is about how early you need to plan.
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El Sabor Zapoteco
Oaxaca, Zapotec home cooking. For a full day in a real Oaxacan kitchen, this is the one. Reyna Mendoza teaches in her own home in Teotitlán del Valle, a Zapotec village about 30 minutes from Oaxaca City, and transport from the city centre is included.
The day opens with a welcome cup of chocolate and pan dulce, then a walk round the village market to buy ingredients. Back in the kitchen you prepare a starter, a main dish and a dessert yourself before sitting down together to eat, with a drink and mezcal. Classes run on Tuesdays and Fridays from 8:30am to 3pm, with four to twelve students. If a particular mole is the reason you are going, ask about the menu when you book.
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SkyKitchen Peruvian Cooking Classes
Lima, Peruvian cooking. Lima is where you learn ceviche, and SkyKitchen's classic menu gives you Peru's best-known dishes in one go: causa, ceviche, lomo saltado and picarones. That is a cold potato starter, raw fish, a wok-fired beef main and fried doughnuts for pudding, so you leave with a genuinely varied repertoire.
You can book the class on its own or add the extras that make it special. The fruit tasting runs through more than 35 Peruvian fruits, and the market tour starts at Surquillo Market No. 1 before the cooking. Other menus cover ají de gallina and pastel de choclo, or seafood beyond ceviche, and vegetarian versions can be arranged. Check the cancellation terms before you pay, as some booking sites treat sales as final.
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