Bali Cooking Class with Market Visit

Balinese cuisine is one of Asia’s great culinary traditions — complex, aromatic, and rooted in centuries of Hindu ritual and seasonal farming. Our hands-on cooking class in Ubud gives you genuine, lasting insight into this food culture, beginning where all great Balinese cooking begins: at the market.

The class starts with a guided morning visit to a traditional Ubud market, where your instructor walks you through the extraordinary diversity of Balinese ingredients. You’ll learn to identify — and smell — the difference between galangal and regular ginger, discover the role of each spice in a traditional base genep (the aromatic spice paste at the heart of most Balinese dishes), and select the freshest coconut, lemongrass, and candlenuts for use in your cooking.

Returning to the teaching kitchen — typically a beautiful open-air pavilion in a traditional family compound — you’ll prepare a full Balinese menu across five dishes. The class covers the making of the foundational spice pastes from scratch using stone mortar and pestle, correct knife techniques for local vegetables, and the all-important art of banana leaf packaging. Dishes typically include chicken satay with peanut sauce, lawar (spiced minced meat with coconut and vegetables), jukut urap (vegetable salad with toasted coconut), nasi kuning (sacred yellow rice), and traditional black rice pudding with palm sugar and fresh coconut cream.

All dishes are eaten together in a shared meal that is as convivial as it is delicious. Recipes are provided in written form to take home. The class runs for approximately four hours and is suitable for complete cooking beginners — every technique is demonstrated step-by-step and practised under close guidance.

A vegetarian/vegan menu is available upon request, preserving all the authentic flavours of Balinese cooking.