Best Cooking Class in Chiang Mai
With over 50 different cooking classes available in Chiang Mai, you will not have a hard time finding one. We have tried most of the courses, and the bulk of them are quite similar and cater mainly to beginners, this is not a bad thing as most visitors to Thailand are new to Thai food, and the basics will already help you improve a lot. You will be surprised how easy it is to cook a real Thai feast from scratch. Because there are so many courses to choose from, the quality of the cooking lessons in Chiang Mai is high. That is the main reason why you should choose to do your Thai cooking class in the northern city. Another reason? The farms and rice paddies surrounding Chiang Mai are a perfect backdrop to enjoy a day of cooking while learning about the spices, herbs, and veggies used in Thai cuisine.
Before I continue with my favorite cooking class experience in Chiang Mai, I will explain some basics about Thai food culture below.
Thai Food Culture
Did you know that Thai people greet each other by asking, ‘Did you eat already?’
Thai people love food. Eating is the most important thing to do for most of the population. Every family has its recipes and secrets for preparing the most flavorful soups, salads, and stir-fried dishes you have ever tasted.
But what do most Thai people eat? What are their favorite meals? The following three meals are typical Thai staples, comparable with our every day ‘ham and cheese sandwich’.
Number one must be the ‘Pad Krapao’ stir-fried basil leaves with your choice of meat or mushrooms for the vegans. This simple dish is loaded with chilies, garlic, and a mix of soy, oyster sauce, and a hand full of Thai Basil. Stir-fried in seconds on a high flame and served over rice with an optional fried egg on top. Quick and Delicious! You can find your fix of Pad Krapao at almost every corner of the street in Thailand for as little as 30 Baht.
Number two comes from Isaan and is an all-time favorite of most Thai people. ‘Som Tam’ or ‘Papaya Salad’ is everything that Thailand has to offer in one dish. Spicy, sweet, sour, fishy, crispy, and fresh. I am sure that you have never tasted anything like it. They use green papaya for this dish and finely shred this. Then add lime juice, chilies, fishpaste, dry shrimps or crab, red onion, cherry tomatoes, green beans, peanuts, sugar, and salt in the mortar and pestle and gently pound all the ingredients together. The result is fantastic and... spicy! Eat this together with sticky rice and grilled chicken, and you have a typical Thai meal.
The top three can’t be complete without soup. Thai love their soups and serve one with almost every meal. The soup that I want to point out is different. Tom Yam Noodle. This incredible flavor explosion in a bowl is served at street-side stalls. The soup is full of colorful fishballs, crispy won-ton, rice or egg noodles, and herbs. The flavor in the soup comes from Tom Yam paste. This paste made from grilled chilies, garlic, and oil is also known as ‘Nam Prik Pao’. The original Tom Yam comes in a clear, orange broth, but these days you will see a lot of restaurants adding coconut cream to the recipe, giving the soup a more sweet and milky character.
What do Thai people eat rice for breakfast?
The answer to this question is simple. Thai people eat when they are hungry or when they feel like a snack. And they can eat anything at any time. Don’t be surprised to see students in the morning on their way to school eating barbecued pork and sticky rice. It is their regular breakfast. I notice that most Westerners have problems eating a warm meal for breakfast and even for lunch, but I have to say that you will get used to it pretty quickly and before you know it, you don’t want your cold, dry sandwiches in the morning anymore.
Learn to cook Thai food
One of the best things about Thai food is that it is so easy to prepare. All you need is a knife, a wok, and a wooden spoon. You stir fry your vegetables, meats, and quickly add the spices and sauces to enhance the flavors. It’s such a quick and easy cooking technique. You will learn how to do all this in less than one day at my favorite Thai Cooking Class, Smile Organic Farm Cookery School in Chiang Mai.
Smile Organic Farm
What better place to learn Thai cooking than at an organic farm? Smile Organic Farm is exactly that, a cozy farm setting with a large kitchen in the center. The farm lies in the hills of Mae On, just 30 minutes east of Chiang Mai.
You can choose between a half-day morning, a half-day evening, or a full-day trip. I decided to take the half-day in the evening and got picked up at 3:30 pm by our energetic teacher, Pukki. On the way to the farm, we made a brief stop at a local market where Pukki showed us the different kinds of rice, noodles, and sauces used in Thai cooking. What I enjoyed about this market is that it’s outside of town and we were the only foreigners around.
After we arrived at the cooking school, the staff welcomed us and gave us an apron, straw hat and basket. We followed Pukki into the lush garden and got to taste the different herbs like Coriander, Lime leaf, Thai basil, Holy basil, and Spice basil. I didn’t even know there were so many different kinds of basil! Some courageous people in our group also tried to taste the chilies, so spicy! Pukki encouraged us to pick flowers and herbs to garnish our dishes so we could make some ‘Insta worthy’ meals.
Before we could start cooking, we had to choose the menu we wanted to prepare. I chose green curry with chicken, Tom Yam shrimps, and stir-fried Basil with pork (Pad Krapao Moo). Everyone in our group also made a fried spring roll.
We started with the curry paste and made this all from scratch, very interesting to see how much spices and herbs are going into this paste. After we finished the paste, we continued with the stir- fried dishes and spring rolls. The staff prepared all the vegetables and meat already; we just had to add the right ingredient at the right time to the wok and stir. Easy peasy.
Now on to the best part, eating! We sat down and tried our spring rolls and stir-fried dishes. Our next dish was the green curry and Tom Yam soup. We were using the curry paste that we prepared at the start of the course, to make a delicious curry. I will give you one tip: Be easy on the curry paste! My green curry looked fantastic but was way too spicy. Even Pukki had a hard time tasting it. My Tom Yam soup turned out to be delicious and was the star of the evening. I will make that more often at home for sure.
In the end, we all got a recipe book, and we could bring a doggy bag with our leftovers back to the hotel.
Do you want to learn the basics of Thai cooking during a half day or full day class? Click on the link below to book your Thai cooking class with Smile Organic Farm.