10 tips for a successful cooking class
What do you do if you are passionate about cooking and want to share your cooking skills with others? You organize a cooking class! The food industry greatly felt the repercussion of the pandemic and the public safety measures that were implemented to curtail it. Since many professional chefs saw their kitchens close, they reoriented their passion and cooking skills to virtual cooking classes or private events.
By teaching cooking skills or various cooking techniques, professional chefs were able to continue bringing delicious recipes to the table of their clients thanks to culinary platforms like MiumMium. It’s one thing to be a professional chef, but it’s another to be a teacher who transmits his kitchen skills to others.
What is a cooking class?
Cooking classes are fun and educational experiences where you learn different cooking skills and techniques. They can be part of a culinary school program or simply be a one-time experience to learn life lessons including discipline, organization, problem-solving and time management.
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10 tips to organize the perfect cooking class
Here are 10 tips to organize the perfect cooking class:
- Conceptualize your cooking process
- Offer virtual cooking classes
- Listen to potential clients
- Gather all the necessary supply
- Consider the cooking skills of students
- Make the ingredients easy to visualize
- Choose a theme
- Recipes with long preparation
- Go over personal and food safety
- Improvise!
1. Conceptualize your cooking process
Cooking classes generally last about 2 hours, so everything must be thought out and rehearsed to ensure a great learning experience. If the class is to practice basic cooking skills, for instance, knife-wielding skills, then the chef must think of a recipe that will concentrate on this particular aspect of cooking. If French cuisine is the topic of the class, then a chicken braised with wine could be a delicious recipe to learn.
To continue on the idea of the chicken braised with wine, not only does it teach the cooking process for this particular dish, but it also shares key particularities of French cuisine, such as cooking with wine and plate presentation.
2. Offer virtual cooking classes
Personal chefs who offer cooking classes in both face-to-face private events and online cooking lessons are much more in demand as they are more accessible. Virtual cooking classes open up a world of opportunities for private chefs, as anyone around the globe who stumbles on their class can consider booking their service.
3. Listen to potential clients
Professional chefs who make themselves available to discuss their cooking class with those interested have a higher conversion rate. By listening to the potential clients and understanding their preferences, private chefs can adapt their offered classes to give unique and personalized private events.
4. Gather all the necessary supplies
Print out copies of the recipe you picked, so everybody in the class can follow along and keep it for later use. Don't forget to bring all the ingredients, utensils, and equipment you will need to make the dish from scratch.
5. Consider the cooking skills of clients
It is essential to know your clients' kitchen skills. If they are more of a Chef Boyardee kind of cook who still needs to sharpen their basic cooking skills, there is no use in teaching them how to make a cordon bleu. Of course, if the client is adamant about learning a certain dish, the class might need to be prolonged or reconceptualized to be adapted to his cooking skills.
6. Make the ingredients easy to visualize
You will feel much more comfortable if you have everything at hand when you need it and don't have to run around the kitchen searching for something. It’s no wonder that in cooking shows, hosts always have a small bowl for every single ingredient to accomplish their delicious recipes. Being able to visualize the measurement of all the ingredients helps memorize the cooking process that goes behind a dish.
7. Choose a theme
Choosing a theme helps you keep your menu cohesive and is a great conversation starter. For example, personal chefs can conceptualize seasonal cooking classes where they only use fresh ingredients that can be found at the local farmers’ market as a great way to attract potential students who care about the environment.
8. Recipes with long preparation
Recipes that require lots of preparation are superb to perfect cooking techniques and kitchen skills. To learn how to work safely with a knife, there is no better lesson than cutting 15 big carrots, 10 onions, and 5 rutabagas.
9. Go over personal safety and food safety
Another area that often gets overlooked is safety – both kitchen safety and food safety. Even if you've taught kitchen safety in a previous class, you must review this subject each time you meet, as different recipes present different hazards. For instance, if you are cooking with rum, the bottle shouldn’t be left near the stove and you should teach your clients how to deal with a flaming pan. Washing the knives after contact with certain proteins is also imperative!
10. Improvise!
Professional chefs know how to improvise if the moment calls for it. For example, if when arriving at your client’s home you see a bottle of wine that won’t pair well with the dish of the cooking class, this could be a learning experience for your students they didn’t expect!
How to start teaching cooking classes
To start teaching cooking classes, all you need is to conceptualize a cooking process that you know clients would benefit from. You can then register as a personal chef on the MiumMium platform to start offering cooking classes and organizing private events like dinner parties and other occasions.
MiumMium, the largest private chef marketplace on the web, allows consumers to explore menus, research chefs, and book unparalleled at-home culinary experiences. The process is simple: users pick a date, choose a menu and invite their friends. These private events are a phenomenal opportunity for professional chefs to network and share their talents.