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Have you ever attended cooking classes abroad?
This is one of my favorite ways to get to know a country from inside!
If you love food as much as I do, you’ll be blown away by how amazing such experiences are.
Usually, you get to spend time with a local family on their kitchen learning how to cook traditional recipes. You engage in all the processes, understand the ins and outs of how exactly they do everything, and sometimes get to know some family cooking secrets followed for generations!
During our last trip to Sri Lanka, I made sure to spare some time and attend a local cooking class – and it turned out to be one of the highlights of that journey! Even though the food is different and everything seems foreign, a few hours of cooking as a part of the local family truly make you feel at home.
For some reason, the result is never the same if you just follow a written recipe for the first time. It’s how they put everything together what makes it so special, not the ingredients themselves. And some little tricks here and there!
How To Attend International Cooking Classes Without Leaving The Comfort Of Your Own Kitchen
These days every company is trying to adapt their business model to the quarantined world so people can make the most of their services while staying safe at home. Booking portals are no exception!
As people haven’t been physically traveling for a while now, a popular booking portal Airbnb found another cool way to let the customers experience new things. They recently introduced online experiences, the number of which is growing every day.
Whether you’ve always wanted to make your own Italian pasta or are just curious about Portugal tapas, you’ll definitely find something interesting among those experiences!
In a way, it’s even better than offline classes. You don’t need to spend a ton of money on tickets, accommodations, and other unavoidable travel things. No need to meet anyone in person and look for a way to get to their house. You actually don’t waste time at all! Just connect to your host through an online meeting room and enjoy your class right away.
In case you don’t know what Airbnb is, it’s originally a great safe place to book apartments all over the world. A couple of years ago they added travel experiences to complement accommodations, and now they brought it to a whole other level by introducing experiences online.
If you are not on Airbnb yet, signing up through my link gives you a discount for both the first accommodation and experience!
Now that we’ve cleared this up, let’s check out those cooking classes!
1. Make Swedish Pastries With A Professional Baker
Imagine the whole house smelling like cinnamon, soft fluffy buns immediately attracting your attention when you enter the kitchen and with the first bite life gets a tiny bit better… If this is how they see it, I can easily relate to all this Scandinavian hygge idea!
Learn the concept of traditional Swedish Fika with a professional event caterer. Immerse yourself into Swedish culture and you’ll end up not only with a bunch of freshly-made fragrant pastries but also with a tiny positive shift in your state of mind.
Duration: 1.5 hours
2. Learn Most Popular Portuguese Tapas Recipes
When it comes to making tapas, who can be a better person to learn from than someone who owns a tapas restaurant?
This masterclass is brought to you by a woman who has opened a Portuguese tapas restaurant in Lisbon. I’m sure she knows all about different kinds of tapas and can teach you as if you were one of the new cooks in her restaurant!
During these 1.5 hours you get to know a couple of the favorite tapas recipes as well as some secrets of professional Portuguese cook. This is not just some housewife calling you from the kitchen, this is a whole new level!
Duration: 1.5 hours
3. Cook Local Dishes With A Morrocan Family
How much do you know about Morocco?
This class lets you inside a Morrocan house where you’ll prepare some local dishes together with a family. They’ll show you step-by-step process and exactly how they cook food for themselves at home every day.
Get a taste of this unique culture… literally!
This cooking class is also suitable for children. Show them some foreign culture while preparing new dishes together! Such a great way to take them abroad without all the hassle!
Duration: 1.5 hours
4. Make Your Own Authentic Pasta On This Italian Cooking Class
Have you ever tried to make your own pasta from scratch?
Even if you did, I’m sure it was nothing like the one these two charming Italian guys can teach you to make! They are obviously in love with their local cuisine and will help you become a more confident cook in your own kitchen.
They also got a reward as the “most loved Airbnb experience” and claim to have learned all the knowledge from their grandmas. To me, this sounds like a promise of engaging in a real authentic Italian cooking process!
Duration: 2 hours
If you also enjoy opera, consider this pasta making experience instead (or both)!
5. Teach Your Children How To Bake Cookies
Out of ideas for indoor activities for kids at home? Consider baking!
This cooking master class specifically aimed at parents with 2-7 years old children. It’s only an hour, so the process won’t get long and boring for your little ones.
You start from scratch, engaging your children in each phase, and end up with delicious cookies to eat together as well as some advice on storage and modifications.
Maybe it’s time for kids to stop watching cartoons all day and learn a new useful skill! This cooking class might even teach them some teamwork in the background. With that said, if you were looking for fun activities for kids, you’ve just found one!
Duration: 1 hour
6. Take A Mexican Cooking Class And Learn To Cook Salsas
Everyone loves Mexican food, I’m sure you are not an exception!
Why not spare an hour on one of the most boring quarantined days and attend some local cooking classes in Mexico? Thanks to Airbnb you don’t need to leave your home to do that these days!
At this highly engaging event, an educated Mexican cook will teach you how to make delicious Mexican salsas. She makes this process easy, fun and quick and even sends you the recipes afterward.
You’ll learn three ways of preparing salsas on this cooking class and end up with a lot of new ideas to diversify your daily ration!
Duration: 1.5 hours
7. Make The Perfect Chinese Steamed Bun
Do you like Chinese food? If the answer is yes, you’ve just found your next international local experience!
When tired of the usual and sometimes boring home activities why not to do something completely different for once? Like making some Chinese buns, for example.
This cooking class will teach you to make authentic Asian food at your own kitchen no matter where you are in the world at the moment. After attending this event you’ll add a new dinner idea to your reserve as well as some soft and fluffy Chinese steamed buns to your table!
Duration: 1.5 hours
Which cooking classes you would like to attend? Tell me in the comments below!
Well, this was a lot of fun even writing about! My mouth watered many times while I was researching these events to pick the best cooking class ideas for you. I hope you found it useful and added something to your list of fun quarantine activities!
Let’s bring some unique foreign local traditions to our lives and make this hard stuck-at-home time a bit easier and more positive!
Pin this for times when you are bored at home and looking for cooking classes as a way to have some fun and learn a new skill.
2 comments
Now I’m very hungry! I think taking an online cooking class is a brilliant idea. They all look great and it’s hard to choose a favourite, but I think if I had to pick one, I would go for the Moroccan one. When I went to Morocco a few years ago, I was unlucky with the restaurants I picked and mostly had very bland food. I think it didn’t help that I was on a very tight budget, so I only went to the cheapest places. But I’ve heard great things about Moroccan food and would love to learn more about it.
Sorry to hear that! Morrocco sounds great, I would love to visit one day. Maybe next time try to choose small local restaurants that are owned by a local family – they are usually much cheaper, but portions are huge and the food is authentic. This worked perfectly for us in Sri Lanka! The trick is to look for 5 star reviews on Tripadvisor – not those with hundreds of 4+ star reviews, but those with a handful of reviews, all of which are 5 and look real (written from different countries at least).
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