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With quarantines and stay-at-home orders affecting restaurants and consumers alike, we're all preparing a lot more meals at home these days. Even though we can't host our usual cooking classes at The Cookie Cups, we still want to share our love of cooking with our customers.
Now is a great time to sharpen your culinary skills with your families. Whether you’re a beginner home chef or a seasoned pro, here are a few of our favorite online resources for learning how to cook.
1. America’s Test Kitchen Cooking School
The team behind America’s Test Kitchen have compiled over 200 step-by-step videos on a variety of recipes and skills. Courses are categorized by skill level, type of instruction and main ingredient or recipe type, so you can easily find anything you’re looking for.
To more effectively engage learners, these courses also include quizzes and exercises, note-taking features and a shared photo gallery. Pricing begins at $20/month.
2. BBC Food
BBC Food is a great free resource for everything cooking-related, from recipes to techniques to nutritional advice. We especially love the Techniques section, which offers a glossary for beginners, as well as text and video instructions for various cooking and baking skills. These techniques range from basic chopping to assembling a tiered wedding cake, so there’s something for every skill level and area of interest.
3. Dinner Tonight
This free resource from Texas A&M offers instructional recipe videos, weekly technique demos, and advice on meal planning and healthy living. These recipes are geared toward individuals and families juggling busy schedules, so they’re quick and cost-effective while also providing nutritional value.
4. Food Network Kitchen
Food Network Kitchen features weekly live lessons from its top chefs, pre-recorded classes and instructional videos, and an extensive recipe library. The subscription also offers a selection of commercial-free Food Network shows, as well as the ability to order ingredients from online grocery services.
The service costs $6.99/month and is available for iOS, Android and Amazon devices.
5. Kitchn Cooking School
If you’re looking for a more long-form experience, The Kitchn has created its own virtual cooking school to help broaden your kitchen horizons. This free, curated series of 20 videos covers everything from basic techniques to mastering various ingredients – and includes homework for you to put your newly acquired skills to use.
6. Udemy
Udemy is an online learning platform with classes on various topics, including an extensive collection of culinary courses. These a la carte courses range from basic skills and broad-stroke information, all the way to advanced techniques and deep dives into specific food and drink categories.
All courses come with a 30-day money back guarantee, so feel free to explore your options!
7. YouTube
YouTube has free videos for nearly everything, and learning to cook is no exception. From brushing up on the basics to trying out elaborate new recipes to anything in between, you’ll be sure to find a video or channel that meets your needs.
Some popular culinary channels include Binging with Babish (specialty: recreating foods from films and TV), Epicurious (featuring kitchen tips as well as fun cooking videos), and Bon Appetit (videos ranging from “how-to’s” to gourmet recreations of classic treats).
With classes for every budget and experience level, we hope you find a class you love and pick up some new culinary skills during this time at home.
We’d also like to thank our customers for supporting us, and we hope to see you all in-store soon! Until then, you can find us on DoorDash or check out this blog post to find out how to continue supporting The Cookie Cups from home.