5 Online Cooking Schools to Try
This spring, I’ve been studying for my certification in home preserving from The National Centre for Home Food Preservation at The University of Georgia. This isn’t the first time I’ve taken a cooking course, or pursued higher learning in the name of good food’and I’m fairly certain it won’t be the last.
One of the beautiful things about the Internet is that there are numerous ways to get educated, even in the culinary arts. In fact, if you love cooking, but don’t really know how to do it, the answer might be just a few clicks away.
In addition to the class I mentioned above – which is completely free, and comes with a full certification at the end of the study – there are a few other online schools that I know of. They include:
1. Rouxbe: Perhaps the most well known of the online cooking schools, this video-based program from Vancouver is an excellent resource and has taught many people how to cook well. Reasonably priced, and stocked with a library of excellent recipes, this would be my first choice for an online culinary education.
2. Feast: This video-based cooking platform is for culinary novices. There is no quiz, or fancy cooking jargon, just online classes that will teach you how to feed yourself well.
3. The Epicurious Cooking School: A pay-by-class cooking school in partnership with The Culinary Institute of America. You can take your first course free of charge, and then choose a package of lessons to learn from.
4. Craftsy: What started as an online destination of classes for crafty types now includes cake decorating, pizza baking (free!), and artisan cheese making. Add classes to your account and watch them whenever it’s convenient for you’there’s no schedule to stick to, and an acclaimed instructor teaches each lesson.
5. ChefSteps: If you’re interested in modernist cuisine, there is a free-to-study cooking school where ‘master techniques of traditional and modernist cooking through practical, hands-on demonstrations with detailed step-by-step explanations’ are taught. These are, admittedly, designed to teach more difficult techniques and methods of preparation, but if you’re interested in learning how to make the perfect citrus supreme, this might be your school.
Would you ever take an online culinary class? Have you? What would you most like to learn?
