One of the number one things to do in Thailand if you love food is take a Chiang Mai cooking class. After travelling around Thailand for 2 months, I can whole-heartedly say that the food in North Thailand was some of my favourite. There’s such a huge and wide variety of cultural influences up here from China, Laos, Myanmar and the independent Lanna kingdom, but also the local hill tribes like Karen and Hmong. Each culture brings with it its own flavours, and combined with the fresh produce of Northern Thailand, this culminates in the melting pot of food that is Chiang Mai.
Now, there are so many different cooking classes in Chiang Mai that it can be difficult to pick one. What makes it harder is that they all have 4.7+ stars on Google, each with about 50 reviews, so they’re all pretty credible. In the end, we went with Asia Scenic as per our hostel’s recommendation and because they offered dishes that interested us like Khao Soi. The best advice for picking a Chiang Mai cooking class is to look at their websites and pick based off the dishes they offer. Most classes offer the standard Pad Thai and Green Curry, but not all offered Khao Soi or Laab, so we chose Asia Scenic.
Table of Contents
What’s Cooking?
We were here for the full day (there is a half-day variant) and so we had 7 different dishes to cook from seven categories:
- Stir Fry
- Spring Rolls
- Curry Paste
- Curry
- Soup
- Salad
- Dessert
In each category, there are multiple options and you can see the full menu here.
The great thing about this particular Chiang Mai cooking class is that you can cook exactly what you want. So, if everyone else in the group wants to make a Pad Thai but you want to branch out to a Pad See Ew – that’s ok, you can do that here. And then, if you’ve made some friends in the class, you can taste their dishes too!
For my menu, I chose Hot Basil Chicken Stir Fry, Khao Soi Paste and Curry, Tom Sab Soup, Spicy Chicken Salad and Mango Sticky Rice.
Market Tour
Similar to our cooking class at Coconut Lyly in Cambodia, the class began with a market tour.
At 8:45 am, Gayray, our instructor from Asia Scenic, drove us from our hotel to a local market near Ta Pae gate in Chiang Mai. We followed her through the market as she talked about all things Thai food; how to tell our ginger from our galangal and the differences between your Pad Thai, Egg and Pad See Ew noodles.
She also introduced us to the five key flavours of Thai cuisine: salty, sour, sweet, spicy and bitter. Each Thai dish is made up of two of these flavours, but often more. By mastering the art of balancing these flavours, you are able to create beautifully harmonious Thai dishes.
Whilst we were at the market, we also decided on our menu plan for the day. We marked what we wanted to cook on a piece of paper, and Gayray handed our menus to a market assistant who bought all the ingredients we needed.
Farm Tour
Following the market tour and with ingredients bought, we headed to Asia Scenic’s Farm to start our Chiang Mai cooking class. The farm was about a 30 minutes drive from the market, offering a peaceful and green setting that would be hard to find inside Chiang Mai’s old town.
Before we began cooking, we had to get just a few more ingredients from the farm. Gayray led us around Asia Scenic’s farm, teaching us about different herbs and vegetables that they grew. Lemongrass, holy basil, sweet basil, limes and rice were just some of the things they grew here. We picked a good amount of hot basil for the stir fry as well as some butterfly pea flowers to dye our sticky rice.
It’s worth noting that this farm wasn’t just for show. Many of the Asia Scenic staff had come from Myanmar, and so during COVID, they weren’t able to get back home. With no home and no money coming in as cooking classes were suspended, the staff were able to stay and live off the farm, maintaining and growing it until the cooking classes began again.
Let this Chiang Mai Cooking Class Commence!
1: Meang Kum (Welcome Snack)
One more final thing before we start cooking – the welcome snack! Remember those 5 key flavours in Thai cooking – sour, sweet, spicy, salty and bitter? Well, this snack put those teachings into practice.
In front of us was a plate with seven ingredients – bitter leaf, peanut, lime, coconut, ginger, chilli, shallot and tamarind syrup. We made the snack by taking one of the leaves and adding a little of each ingredient to it, topping it off with a little tamarind syrup. Each ingredient sang out on its own – from the sweet-sourness of the tamarind syrup to the crunchiness of the peanuts.
2: Stir Fry – Pad Kra Proaw (Stir-Fried Chicken with Hot Basil)
Pad Thai, Pad See Uw and Pad Kra Proaw are just a few of the stir-fried dishes you can cook here.
Now the main point Gayray wanted us to remember was that every stir-fried dish uses a similar method. So, teaching us one stir fry, should give us the skills and knowledge to make all other Thai stirfries. The difference in each dish comes from different ingredients, herbs and seasonings – the method remains the same.
What’s the method then?
- Make sure you’ve prepped all your ingredients for stir fry. This means chopping your ingredients into small pieces so they can cook quickly and having your seasonings ready next to your cooking area.
- Heat up a wok with oil.
- Fry your aromatics like garlic and chillies.
- Add your proteins.
- Throw in your vegetables.
- Toss with your seasonings.
- Serve with garnishes.
Using this method, I made Pad Kra Proaw (Stir-Fried Hot Basil with Chicken).
In a wok, I fried garlic and chilli until fragrant. To this, I added my chicken, which I fried for a minute before adding my vegetables – carrot, baby corn and onion. I followed this up with my seasonings – sugar, fish sauce, oyster sauce and a touch of water. Gayray explained that Thai people rarely used soy sauce to add a salty element to their dishes, instead opting for Thai fish sauce. I cooked this for a further minute before turning the heat off and adding the hot basil, using the residual heat to soften it.
How did it taste?
A combination of salty from the fish and oyster sauce, a little spicy and a little sweet. The hot basil cut through with its fragrant and fresh liquorice-like flavour.
3: Por Pia Tod (Spring Rolls)
Everyone loves a spring roll, but especially if they’re homemade.
First, we made the filling using the stir fry techniques we learned earlier. We stir-fried chicken with beansprouts, carrots, garlic, chilli, tofu and glass noodles, making sure to cook out all the water to avoid a soggy spring roll.
Once the filling had cooled, we drained it of any extra water and then began to wrap our spring rolls. We placed some of the filling in one corner of the square rice paper and rolled the paper about halfway. Then we brought the sides in to make an open envelope shape, brushed the sides with egg and carried on rolling to seal the spring roll.
With our springs rolled, we then fried them in the wok until golden brown, taking 10-20 seconds.
How did it taste?
Crunchy, crispy and savoury -everything you would want from a spring roll. These rolls were moreish and with the sweet chilli dip, they became addictive.
4: Curry Paste – Khao Soi
There were five different curries we could pick from; red, green, massaman, panang and Khao Soi. The other day we had just had an excellent Khao Soi in Doi Pui as recommended by Mark Wiens, so we had to learn how to make it.
The Khao Soi curry paste used a red curry paste as a base with the addition of curry powder, so first, we had to make the red curry paste. This was a mixture of various aromatics like galangal, turmeric and chillies, which we pounded in a Thai-style mortar and pestle until we reached a smooth texture. Then to this, we added curry powder.
5: Curry – Khao Soi
With paste made, it was time to make Khao Soi. Now, Khao Soi isn’t as well known as the red and green curries from Thailand, but it still tastes amazing. Generally found in Northern Thailand, Khao Soi is a curried noodle soup, typically served with deep-fried egg noodles, lime, onion and pickled cabbage.
To make the Khao Soi, we cooked the curry paste we made earlier in coconut milk until fragrant. Then we added the chicken, simmering the mixture until the chicken was cooked all the way through. We adjusted the seasoning by adding some palm sugar and fish sauce. Once we were happy with the taste, the curry was ready.
We poured the curry into a bowl filled with boiled egg noodles, topped it with deep-fried noodles and served it with pickled cabbage.
How did it taste?
Khao Soi was definitely one of my favourite curries during my travels in Thailand, and this one was no different. The broth was so rich with that freshly pounded curry paste and coconut milk. The sauce coated the noodles, so you got a mouth full of flavour with every bite. The deep-fried noodles added a satisfying crunch and the pickled cabbage gave a contrasting sourness that cut through the spiced flavours in the Khao Soi.
6: Soup – Tom Sab (Hot and Sour Soup)
Each soup you could make in this Chiang Mai Cooking Class was pretty similar, with each differing by a few ingredients.
I chose to make Tom Sab, which is a clear soup made using typical Thai aromatics like lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal and chillies, resulting in a hot and sour soup.
The soup started with a base of chicken stock, to which we added lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves and chillies. In this broth, we simmered our chicken, followed by shallots and mushrooms. Once the chicken was cooked, the soup was ready for seasoning. We added lime juice, sugar and fish sauce to taste.
How did it taste?
Really spicy. I told Gayray that I wanted “Thai-level” spiciness, and she told me to add two red and three green, as well as chilli powder and jeez my mouth was on fire. It was too spicy, even for Gayray.
With maybe two fewer chillies, the soup would have been perfect. The soup was light and refreshing with the sourness from the lime, the salty-savouriness from the fish sauce and a little sweetness from the palm sugar.
7: Salad – Laab (Spicy Chicken Salad)
I had the option to make a glass noodles salad or a papaya salad but I opted for laab, a kind of stir-fried chicken salad, similar to the Pad Kra Proaw I made earlier, but with an abundance of coriander.
To make the Laab, I heated a little water in a wok and added minced chicken. Once cooked through, I added shallot and seasonings like sugar, fish sauce, chilli powder and roasted rice powder which gave the chicken a slight nuttiness. I then took the chicken off the heat, and tossed it with spring onion, coriander and sawtooth coriander that we foraged from Gayray’s garden, earlier in the day.
How did it Taste?
If you’re looking for a high protein meal then wow this is amazing, especially if you love coriander. The various seasonings turned the chicken into the perfect salty and savoury salad, and the roasted rice added an interesting nutty depth to the dish. Then BAM, you get the flavours of coriander and the bite of the spring onion, brightening up the whole salad. Nice one.
8: Dessert 1 – Glauy Tod (Deep-Fried Banana)
Ok, actually I got to make two desserts. The beauty of this Chiang Mai Cooking Class is that each person can pick what they want to make. So even though I chose to make sticky rice with mango, I was still able to help make deep-fried bananas whilst my rice cooked.
To make this popular Thai dessert, we first made the batter for the bananas. In a bowl, we mixed wheat flour, rice flour, grated coconut, water, sugar, sesame seeds and salt until it reached a smooth consistency. We then coated banana slices in the batter before frying them in oil until golden brown.
How did it taste?
So simple, but so good. Biting into the addictively crunchy and coconutty batter unveils the soft, sweet and oozing banana. I guess deep-frying makes anything taste good, but it certainly took these regular bananas to a whole new level.
9: Dessert 2 – Khaw Neaw Ma Maung (Sweet Sticky Rice with Mango)
Another popular Thai dessert, and one that I had a number of times at food markets all over Thailand – Mango Sticky Rice. Although, this was with a twist: butterfly pea sticky rice.
Earlier in the day, we had picked butterfly pea flowers from Asia Scenic’s farm, which we would use to give our sticky rice a blue colour. First, we had to extract the colour from the flowers, by boiling them in water until the colour seeped out into the water.
Then, when we were making the sticky rice; a combination of rice, coconut cream, sugar and salt. We added a small amount of the butterfly pea water, stirring until the rice turned a vibrant blue colour.
To go with the dessert was also a sweetened coconut sauce that we made by reducing coconut milk with sugar.
We then plated this dessert with some dyed and non-dyed sticky rice, the coconut cream sauce and a perfectly ripe mango.
How did it taste?
This is one of those quintessential, rich Thai comfort foods. It’s like a pure coconut, mango and sugar overload, but the flavours go so well with each other. After having already had seven different Thai dishes, I found it a little difficult to wolf down a full plate of mango sticky rice, but my mouth was happy that I did.
Booking the Class
You can book a Chiang Mai cooking class at Asia Scenic via the booking form on their website. On the booking form, you can specify whether you want the class to take place in Chiang Mai or outside on the farm and whether you want the half-day or full-day experience. All experiences include the market tour.
Price: ฿1200 / £28 / $34.50
Address: 31 Rachadumneon Soi 5, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand.
Thanks for Reading!
Make sure you check out this Chiang Mai cooking class at Asia Scenic when you’re in Thailand!
