Why You Should Take a Cooking Class When You Don’t Like Cooking

I don’t like cooking. It’s time-consuming and I don’t like cleaning up the mess when I’m done. Not to mention the risk in trying out a new dish. I’ve had hours and dollars wasted on food that turned out to be awful when I followed a recipe, but somewhere along the line, created culinary poo. Well, lucky for me, Thailand is very conducive to my distaste for it. I haven’t had to cook once since arriving here (well, except that one time I made scrambled eggs in Mae Wang).The food is so cheap at about $1 a meal, so Jack and I enjoy signature Thai dishes everyday. This leaves our most complicated meal preparation as cereal or toast. (Yes, be jealous.)

Yet, ironically, one of the things on my Thai bucket list was taking a cooking class. Why not, right? Maybe I’m missing some great secret, or maybe I’m just making the wrong food. I don’t know—I’ll give it a try. There are dozens of schools in Chaing Mai alone so after much deliberation (read: pamphlet-perusing), I decided on a place called We Cook. This turned out to be a great choice! The teacher Miw taught with another school for 3 years before opening up her own just 4 months ago. Her priority is one-on-one attention with small classes, using the freshest ingredients, and being totally adorable and hilarious. She also made sure I didn’t masterfully screw up my food. Fantastic!

The day began when a songtaew picked me up at the travel agency where I booked at 8:45. I met an Australian woman, French woman, and German couple I’d be taking the class with that day. First Miw took us to a small market, had us pick out our dishes, and told us a little bit about some of the ingredients we’d be using that day. She let us look around while she bought some of the things we needed.


After we got to the adorable house where we’d be cooking, she had us sit down to enjoy some drinks and snacks while her crew started washing and portioning our ingredients (each of us was only cooking for one).


We had some miang kham, which is one of my favorite snacks, and khao tam mat. Miang kham is an incredible mixture of tiny pieces of toasted peanuts, red onion, fresh ginger, toasted coconut, lime, hot pepper (optional), dried shrimp (optional), and a sweet palm sugar mixture all tucked into a betel leaf. I don’t know anything about flavor profiles, but this one is off the charts! These pics were taken months ago when I first became addicted to fell in love with miang kham. Only 20 baht (60 cents) a bag in Hang Chat!


The khao tam mat are little pouches of bananas and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves. They’re then tied in pairs and steamed. Miw said that for this reason, they’re often served at weddings. Adorbs and delish.

Next Miw took us outside to her garden and talked about some of the herbs and vegetables we’d be using, clipping off leaves and slices for us to try.


Next we headed over to the open-air kitchen to get started.


Overall we learned 6 recipes over the course of 6 hours. You choose which dishes you want, but you can watch others make theirs too. And since they send you home with the recipe book, you don’t have to be taking diligent notes the entire time. The dishes are spaced out enough with some chill time between so you’re not eating yourself sick. The first dish group was stir-fry, where you could choose from pad thai, pad kee mao gai (spicy fried noodles), or gai pad med mamuang (chicken with cashews). First Miw gave us a basic lesson on stir fry, making pad thai.

 I chose the cashew dish, subbing tofu for chicken, as its already one of my and Jack’s favorites, and got right to work chopping and cooking.


After enjoying the fruits of our labor and a short bake in the sun, it was time for the next course, appetizers. The choices here were spring rolls (my pick), yam khai dao (fried egg salad), and som tam (papaya salad). The spring roll filling was prepared ahead of time since it needed time to cool, but it’s basically the same ingredients as pad thai with glass noodles instead of rice noodles and everything is finely chopped. Alright, pack it in and roll ‘em up!


Others in the class made som tam, which involved a lot of pounding.



Eating, sunbathing, time for the next round. This time we’re making curries, soup, and dessert for our big lunch. Curry choices: green, panang, massaman, and khao soi (my pick). Soups: tom yam gung (hot and sour shrimp soup), tom kha gai (chicken, in my case tofu, in coconut milk), or Thai noodle soup. Desserts: khao niow mamuang (mango sticky rice), gluay buatchi (bananas in coconut milk), or gluay tawd (deep fried bananas). Umm, can I make all three pretty pleeeeeeeease?


This class turned out to be a great idea because: 1. I love eating, 2. especially eating Thai food, and 3. everything was delicious (the khao soi wasn’t as good as Pa Pan’s but c’mon she’s been making it everyday for YEARS). They also take care of cleaning the vegetables, some of the chopping, and all of the dishes. Basically, everything I hate about cooking was removed from this experience. I left with a full belly, some leftovers, and a huge smile. Best. idea. ever.