Cooking up Thai food – Chiang Mai cooking class

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Gordon Ramsey eat your heart out. After our visit to Chiang Mai this year I feel like I’m ready to take on the culinary world. OK, I may not be quite there yet, especially without someone walking me through a recipe start to finish, but I think we did well. Here’s how we found an amazing Chiang Mai cooking class and what we got to eat.

We only had 3 days in Chiang Mai, which now I realize was not enough time. One day was already set aside for a visit to an elephant sanctuary, but there was so much else to do. We had originally planned on taking a cooking class on our Koh Lanta getaway but our plans changed with so many more options in Chiang Mai.

Read more about our relaxing island getaway on Koh Lanta

Choosing a Chiang Mai cooking class

Our first morning in Chiang Mai we visited a tourist information office. They are everywhere and have lots of leaflets on local activities, but also really helpful staff. There wasn’t any pressure to buy anything or book a certain tour, something we noticed throughout Chiang Mai. Such a welcome change after Bangkok where everybody and their mother wanted to sell you something. Armed with more leaflets on cooking classes than we could shake a stick at, we had to pick one.

Cooking classes can often take a big chunk of your day. There are a lot that went for 5 to 6 hours while you cook up a feast that you’ll never be able to finish. We decided an abridged class would be best. We didn’t need to make more than 4 dishes and found the perfect class through Siam Rice Thai Cookery School. They offered a class that started at noon and went until about 3pm. We would have a bit of time before, and would be finished early enough to do other things later in the day. I emailed them the night before to check availability and they got back to me pretty quickly that there was space. We were booked in.

Siam Rice Thai Cookery School

The cookery school was not near our hotel, but they included a complimentary pick up. Right on time, they took us in a Tuk Tuk a few miles out of town to a rural house with a beautiful garden area. We were taken inside where a dining table was set up, and we were given some tea. Our host for the day, Yam, came to introduce herself and went through our plan for the day. As it turns out no-one else had signed up for that particular class so we had a private class for just the two of us. It’s really nice that they don’t cancel the class due to low numbers and we were grateful for some one on one tuition.

We were given a menu of items we could cook and were told we would be making 4 items each. We didn’t need to make the same thing, but we did need to choose from the same categories. The other good thing is that you can adapt all recipes for spiciness preference, and meat preference. As a vegetarian they were very accommodating and checked right away what I would eat vs. what I wouldn’t eat.

For the longer cooking classes you will make one from each of the 7 categories but ours being the shorter class we were to do a Stir Fried Noodle dish, a Thai Salad dish, a Curry with rice dish and a dessert. However with only two of us we were given the option sub out the Thai Salad for something else. So we decided on the Deep Fried option.

Making Pad Thai

We both chose to make Pad Thai – when in Rome right??! Jeff made his with chicken and shrimp and I made mine without tofu. The ingredients were laid out for us and Yam walked us through each step. She instructed us to check the heat of the wok and what to add when. As a vegetarian I was given mushroom sauce to use instead of oyster sauce, and soy sauce instead of fish sauce.

Serving the Pad Thai came with two options. The first, as a stir fry on the banana leaf. The second was creating a thin crepe-like envelope out of egg to put the Pad Thai in. I went with the easy option, Jeff went with the more complicated option. He did it really well and it looked amazing. The whole thing tasted fantastic. The only thing I changed was reducing the amount of tofu in the recipe as I’m not a big fan of it. I know, worst vegetarian ever!

Spring rolls

Since arriving in Thailand we’d been on what would appear to be the Spring Roll tour of South East Asia. We got them every night as an appetizer. It became the running joke that we had to test them all to find the best ones in Thailand. So when it came to our deep fried option I knew I had to make veggie spring rolls. Jeff went with the fried wontons (probably because he knew he’d get to try the spring rolls anyway).

All the vegetables for the spring rolls were ready chopped, I just had to chop up the tofu (or half of the tofu in my case) and some garlic. Heating the wok, I fried up the garlic, tofu and vegetables, threw in the veggie sauces and glass noodles. That was the easy part. Now I had to construct a spring roll. Yam walked me through what to do with the spring roll wrappers and I’m pretty proud of my attempts. Heating the wok with oil I fried the spring rolls and then chopped them in half to create my Insta-worthy shot

Massaman curry

I love Thai curry, so I was really excited about making my own from scratch. I went with the Massaman curry (vegetarian of course) while Jeff went with the Phanang with chicken. We could choose the number of chilis to put in the curry according to how hot we wanted it. Yam walked us through all of the different spices that made up each of our curries. She also told us about the two curry types we’d chosen and how they would differ. Armed with a mortar and pestle and all the necessary ingredients I began to make my own curry paste.

Every time we thought our curry paste was perfect, Yam told us we needed to mix a little more. My arm was so tired and I was beginning to wonder if making curry was even worth it. Where’s a jar of curry sauce when you need it?! But finally my curry paste was deemed worthy enough for me to stop and gather feeling in my arm again.

I began to heat up the coconut milk with palm sugar and the curry paste in a wok. Adding in the vegetables I continued to cook until it was ready, adding in some peanuts and pineapple. I had been in search of the perfect Massaman curry my whole trip in Thailanad, and I still think the one I made was the best. I’ll be opening my Thai restaurant any day now I’m sure.

Mango sticky rice

If you’ve never had Sticky rice with Mango you haven’t lived. It was my favourite dish when I first went to Thailand 10 years ago and it still is. Such a simple dish: literally rice, coconut milk and mango. It is to die for. Any Brits out there, I can liken it to rice pudding. So without question this was what I was going to learn to make as my dessert. Heating up the coconut milk and palm sugar to start, I added the rice and had to just constantly stir for about 10 minutes. Between this and the curry paste, I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard for my lunch. We served the cooked rice with the mango and despite how full I was from 3 other courses I finished every single bite.

If you love eating, you’ll love this Chiang Mai cooking class

The cookery school has a full day course for 1000 THB per person, or a dinner class for 800 THB. The short course that we did was 3 hours long and cost us 700 THB each. It was the perfect amount of time, and we probably couldn’t have eaten any more food anyway. We were done in less than 3 hours since it didn’t take as long with only two of us. They are accommodating to most dietary requests and the cookery teachers are really nice and engaging. We had a lot of fun.

After making each dish, you go inside to eat it, then head back out when ready to make your next course. There are people in the background cleaning up around you so you always start with a clean work-space and utensils. If you’re ever in Chiang Mai and want to learn to cook some of your favourite dishes, check out Siam Rice Thai cookery school. You even get a certificate and recipe book to leave with and they’ll take you back to your hotel.

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