Food
Thai Cooking Classes in Bangkok
A cooking class is one of the few Bangkok experiences you keep using when you get home. The good ones share a few specific features.
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A Thai cooking class is one of the few things you do in Bangkok that keeps paying off after you get home. A good one teaches you how Thai cooks balance sour, sweet, salty and spicy, and gives you three or four dishes you can make again. A poor one is a demonstration you watch from the back of a room.
Classes vary a lot. These are the features that separate them.
What to look for
- A market visit. The best classes start at a fresh market, where the teacher explains ingredients you'll cook with — galangal, kaffir lime leaves, different chillies, palm sugar, fish sauce.
- Your own cooking station. You should cook every dish yourself, not share a wok with three others.
- Small classes, so the teacher can correct you as you go.
- Pounding your own curry paste. It's hard work, and it's the most useful thing you'll learn.
- A choice of dishes, ideally including a curry, a stir-fry, a soup or salad and a dessert.
- Recipes to take home, ideally with substitutions for ingredients you can't find abroad.
- Dietary options: vegetarian, no pork, allergies — ask in advance.
What a typical class looks like
- Half-day (around four hours) is most common, in the morning or afternoon.
- Market visit, then back to the kitchen.
- Four or five dishes, cooked one after another and eaten as you go — come hungry.
- Common dishes: green or red curry with homemade paste, tom yum or tom kha soup, pad thai or another stir-fry, papaya salad, mango sticky rice.
Choosing between classes
| If you want… | Look for |
|---|---|
| The full experience | Market visit, own station, curry paste from scratch |
| A short, fun activity | A shorter class with fewer dishes |
| A class with children | Family-friendly classes with simpler, less spicy dishes |
| Vegetarian or vegan cooking | A class that advertises it, not just one that "can adapt" |
| A specific cuisine | Classes focused on regional food, such as northeastern (Isaan) dishes |
Where classes are
Cooking schools are spread across the city, with many in Silom, Sukhumvit and near the Old Town. Check how long it'll take to get there at your class's start time — morning classes often start early, and some schools offer hotel pick-up.
What you'll learn that's useful at home
- Balancing flavours: tasting and adjusting a dish for sour (lime, tamarind), salty (fish sauce), sweet (palm sugar) and hot (chilli) until it's right.
- Curry paste: how to pound one from scratch, and how to tell when it's ready.
- Prep and order: Thai stir-fries cook in a couple of minutes, so everything has to be chopped and ready before the wok is hot.
- Substitutions: what you can swap if you can't find holy basil, galangal or kaffir lime leaves at home.
Tips
- Book a day or two ahead — popular classes fill up.
- Eat a light breakfast. You'll eat everything you cook.
- Tell them your spice tolerance. In a good class, you'll learn to adjust heat to taste.
- Photograph your ingredients at the market so you can find them at home — many are sold in Asian supermarkets abroad.
For what to eat while you're in Bangkok, see our Bangkok food guide, and for a guided way to taste more, Bangkok food tours.
where to next?
- Bangkok Food GuideBangkok rewards curiosity more than reservations. This is the overview: what to eat, how ordering works, and which part of the city to go to for which kind of meal.
- Bangkok Food ToursA good food tour can teach you more about Thai food in three hours than a week of guessing. A bad one is an expensive walk. Here's how to tell them apart.
- Bangkok With KidsBangkok is easier with children than its reputation suggests — if you plan around heat, keep mornings for sights and use the rail system instead of road traffic.