Kurt Birkenhagen
Online education is flourishing. The field brings to mind online colleges and webinars. It also includes an exciting, innovative new area—online cooking classes.
Now, you can learn to cook all sorts of exciting dishes in your own home. You can even take one-on-one classes via web conference in your own kitchen.
Personal Online Cooking Classes
Holistic health coach (and friend of the blog) Julia Sarver works remotely with clients all over the world. Sarver can help you plan a health-oriented diet and exercise plan, and then sort out your pantry and teach you recipes via video conference.
Sarver says that she actually prefers online video meetings to in-person cooking classes, because it helps her clients open up.
“Sometimes the conversations about weight, food, and health can be really emotional,” she says. “I’ve actually found that people open up more if we’re having a [remote] conversation. It creates a little bit of distance between them and me.”
Chef Silvia Blanco offers personal online cooking classes that focus on her background in Mediterranean cooking, especially Italian food. She even offers a gluten free Mediterranean cuisine course.
Chef Vicki Bensinger has been teaching culinary classes since 1992, and has taught in-home classes since 2004. She knows her stuff. Recently, she’s started streaming public online cooking classes via Periscope. She’s also available for one-on-one sessions.
The Chef and the Dish is a startup that organizes personal online cooking classes with chefs from all over the world. Learn how to make paella from Seville, Spain’s Chef Ana Lopez, or make pasta with Rome’s Daniela del Balzo.
With personalized online cooking classes, you’ll have the opportunity to develop a relationship with a culinary mentor. You’ll be able to send them questions and share your latest exploits via email or social media after you’re done with the class, and you’ll be confident that a master chef is helping you out.
Webinar Cooking Classes
If you don’t need a personal coach or counselor, there are dozens of webinars that will show you how to prepare certain recipes or learn specific types of cuisine. These are a few of our favorites.
Cook Smarts is a scalable program that has features including cooking classes, diet plans, and premade meal kits that are delivered to your home. Allrecipes, Rouxbe, and Craftsy were early leaders in the cooking webinar field, so they have a deep library of pre-recorded technique courses. Each will teach you new skills that you can incorporate in your everyday cooking.
America’s Test Kitchen has lessons that will teach you how to create specific recipes. It’s the web version of the popular TV show. The site and the show are outgrowths of Cook’s Illustrated magazine.
If you’re already an accomplished home cook, but you want to take your skills to the next level, consider Escoffier Online. It’s a cooking school that offers the same certificate you would earn by attending a culinary academy, but you don’t have to quit your job or schooling to do it. Take the classes on your own time, at your own pace.
No experience is required to take most of these courses—or to start your own cooking class. Check out our tips on starting a webinar if you think you have what it takes to be a cooking instructor.
