Chiang Mai Lanna Northern Thai Cooking Experience with Locals

Yes, you do 90% of the work yourself, and it is AMAZING!

I live in Chiang Mai and take every friend who visits us to experience the joy of Lanna cooking at LoveChiangMai Cooking School! If you are lazy and just want a 30-minute cooking "school" where you will mix precut/premade ingredients into a bowl and in 10 minutes have an amazing Thai dish - this isn't for you. There are other cooking courses designed for lazy people who don't want to actually learn anything. If you want to spend 6 - 8 hours getting down into the nitty-gritty, if you want to go to the market and learn what spices/fruits/vegetables make Lanna cuisine unique, if you want to learn what meats and fish to select, if you want to learn the difference between different varieties of rice, if you want to get some exercise pounding your own curry paste from scratch, if you want to take the time to slow simmer dishes, if you want to grind your own rice into flour, if you want to truly LEARN traditional Lanna cooking techniques in a hands-on experience, then LoveChiangMai Cooking School is what you are looking for. When Teacher Lin says you will do 90% of the work, she means you will do 90% of the work! Her 10% is demonstrating techniques and providing instruction, but students actually do all the work. Nothing is pre-portioned. Nothing is precut. Nothing is premashed or premixed. The only thing prepared for you is your work station: apron, hat, cutting board, knife, mortar and pestle, and charcoal stove or gas burner. Everything else is on you, and it is GLORIOUS!

via Tripadvisor

Highly recommend for people who want to learn and understand Lana Thai food.

Great experience! Loved that she took you shopping and showed you around the market. Really appreciated that you actually chopped and sliced and pounded and measured ingredients. Also took the time to have you taste your food as spices were added to understand how each affected the flavor. Ate so much we were stuffed!!

via Viator

Very nice cooking class

We had a very nice cooking class with Lyn. She responds very much to the wishes of her students and adjusts the pace. You can cook in peace and Lyn explains everything very precisely and gives assistance. The choice of dishes is very wide and it was hard to make a choice. The day began with hotel pickup and market tour. On the market tour, you will explain a lot of products and let the participants taste. The cooking class started with the preparation of the basic ingredient for many dishes, you get explained and shown how to make a curry paste from scratch, which is the case with few cooking classes. Curry pastes are produced from the basic curry paste, depending on the dishes. All dishes were very delicious. We've learned a lot. We will definitely come back. Thanks to Lynn and her team🥰

via Viator (translated)

A magical and delicious day of cooking, laughter, and absolutely amazing food

Panphailin (Lyn) is an absolutely wonderful teacher, chef, and person! Anyone considering a cooking class in Chiang Mai should rush to take one of her classes! My mom and I just had an absolutely delightful day cooking, learning, and laughing with Lyn. I used to live and work in Chiang Mai and so was particularly drawn to Lyn’s classes because she celebrates and spotlights Lanna dishes that I love, but don’t know how to make. Lyn is such a warm, caring, and curious person and we quickly fell into conversation and story telling as we wandered the aisles of a nearby local food market (South Gate Market which is one of my favorite markets) collecting ingredients for our feast. She was wonderful about explaining more unusual ingredients and having us taste a few and meet certain vendors she is friends with in the market. She centers her cooking classes around what you want to cook - offering a wide range of traditional lanna dishes. And then as we walked through the market together we ended up adding another two dishes cause we got excited about certain fresh ingredients! Back at her beautiful home surrounded by a lush garden we got to work chopping and pounding and cooking. Lyn is a fantastic teacher and she wove stories of her childhood into our cooking. We ended up spending hours laughing, talking, cooking and then feasting. And oh what a delicious feast we created — Sai Oua Sausage, Lanna style Laarb, a chicken curry and mushroom soup, sticky rice, and steamed curry fish in banana leaves! We then jumped back into the kitchen to make two delicious desserts to cap off a day of feasting. Lyn is a true entrepreneur and such a kind and generous person. She also opened two restaurants spotlighting and celebrating Khao Soi - I am off to try them today! I came away with a much stronger understanding of northern Thai cooking skills and a confidence to cook some of my favorite Lanna dishes in my own kitchen! I can’t wait to return to Chiang Mai and take another class with her!

via Tripadvisor

Lanna cooking class - not your cookie cutter cooking class!

My wife and I booked the Lanna Cuisine cooking class with Love Chiang Mai Cooking and Touring as we wanted to try something we felt would be more authentic to Chiang Mai's culinary heritage vs. the typical cookie cutter papaya salad/green curry/mango sticky rice type classes that seem to be ubiquitous throughout the country. Lin picked us up on time in the morning and brought us to a very local market, where she explained many different ingredients (even ones we were not going to be using during the class), asked the vendors to let us sample unfamiliar items, and even picked up some durian for us to try for the first time (side note: yes it smells a little funky, but it's not nearly as off-putting as YouTube videos and travel shows would lead you to believe, and we found that it's actually quite nice to eat!). It was clear from the get-go that Lin had a big and fun personality as she joked with us and the vendors as we moved through the market. We then went back to Lin's cooking school on her property about 20 minutes' drive outside Chiang Mai where we cooked the following 8 dishes from scratch - 1), Sai Aou - Chiang Mai Sausage (delicious and just as good/better than from street stalls) 2.) Northern Thai red curry with Pumpkin (served with ant eggs which provided a nice texture!) 3). Abb Pla - Grilled Fish wrap in banana leaf 4). Tom Yam Jin Kai - Chicken Northern Thai style spicy soup 5). Kaow Soi Kai - Chiang Mai noodles with chicken (we had some incredible Khao Soi at various markets and stalls in Chiang Mai, but this one may have been the best of them all!) 6). Naam Prick Noom - Green Northern Thai chili dipping paste (delicious!) 7). Kai Muang Nung - Locals Chicken Steamed with curry paste 8.) Kaeng Hung Lay" - Pork belly Burmese style curry (delicious and much better than a version of this dish we had tried on a very good food tour at a local restaurant the night before). Overall we loved the food and the opportunity to prepare the curries from scratch while hanging out with Lin, who is hysterical, exceedingly knowledgeable about Lanna cuisine, and genuinely humble and welcoming. At the end, she provided us with an awesome booklet of recipes, including the dishes we prepared along with many additional Lanna and more typical/mainstream Thai dishes. We look forward to using it for years to come to prepare authentic thai dishes! If in Chiang Mai, this is a highly unique, once in a lifetime must try experience if you want to take a deeper, off the typical tourist path dive into Chiang Mai/Northern Thai cuisine! Note: if you are considering this class, you should be aware of the following: * you will be doing a LOT of chopping and pounding with a mortar and pestle - it's a real cooking class! * you will be potentially using or sampling some ingredients you may be very unfamiliar with and will need to keep an open mind (e.g. ant eggs for one curry, optional sampling of water buffalo skin from the market etc). * this class will take up pretty much a full day if you are cooking a lot of main course dishes as many dishes are slow cooked

Response from the operator: Thank you for your nice review, it was a nice experience to sharing and cooking with both of you. Hopefully we can cook together in the future. Best wish, Panphailin Puntira (Lyn)

via Tripadvisor