Ubud Cooking Class & Market Tour with Local Chef

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Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/16

Duration6h

GroupUp to 30

LanguagesEN

PickupAt your hotel

You'll Make Balinese Offerings Before You Cook

You visit a working market in Ubud, select your own ingredients, learn to make traditional Balinese offerings in a village, then cook five authentic dishes under a local chef's guidance and eat them together. Hotel pickup and all equipment are included, so you just show up ready to cook.

Step-by-step itinerary

Market visit and Balinese cooking class

Pick-up from hotel
Visit local fresh food market
Choose ingredients for cooking
Travel to Laplapan village
Welcome by local villagers
Learn to make Balinese offerings
Participate in cooking class
Prepare starters, main courses, dessert
Enjoy meal of prepared dishes

The Experience

The market opens early, and if you've never haggled over lemongrass before breakfast, you're about to learn why the stalks matter. Hotel pickup gets you to the Ubud market while it's still crowded with locals filling baskets with herbs, spices, and vegetables you'll recognize in maybe two of the dishes you're about to make. You choose what goes into your cooking class — tempeh, fish, chicken, whatever catches your eye — and the vendor wraps it while you're still deciding if you can pronounce the names of the sauces.

Then comes the part that surprised me: before the cooking class even starts, you head to the traditional village of Laplapan to learn how to make canang, the small Balinese offerings you see everywhere on doorsteps and shrines. A local shows you how to fold the palm leaves, arrange the flowers, and layer the rice. It's not a performance — you're actually doing it, your hands getting sticky with rice paste, and somehow that fifteen minutes shifts the whole day from "tourist cooking class" to something that feels like you're actually learning how Balinese people move through their day. The locals there don't treat you like you're visiting; they just hand you materials and let you figure it out.

The cooking class itself happens in a kitchen that's open-air enough that you can hear the village around you. You're working alongside a local chef who guides you through five or six dishes — maybe sate lilit (fish skewers wrapped around lemongrass), pepes ikan (fish steamed in banana leaf), a pumpkin soup, tempeh in a sweet-spicy sauce, and something with coconut that you'll want to make again at home. The rhythm is slow enough that you're not rushing, but there's real technique happening: how to grind spices into paste, why the banana leaf matters, what makes the sauce balance. You eat what you cook, sitting down with whoever else is in the class, and the food tastes different when you made it.

The whole thing runs about five to six hours from pickup to drop-off, and the air-conditioned vehicle means you're not melting between the market and Laplapan and the kitchen. Taxes and cooking equipment are already in the price, so there's nothing to negotiate or add on at the end.

What’s included

Hotel pickup and drop-off in an air-conditioned vehicle, entry to the local market in Ubud, ingredients you select yourself, instruction in making traditional Balinese offerings (canang), a hands-on cooking class with a local chef, preparation of five or more authentic Balinese dishes including sate lilit, pepes ikan, green pumpkin soup, tempeh, and coconut-based curries, lunch featuring the dishes you've cooked, all cooking equipment, and taxes.

Good to know

Stroller friendlyPublic transport nearby

Operated by Bali Ubud Tour

Is this one for you?Book this if you want to learn real Balinese cooking techniques and understand how the ingredients work, not just follow a recipe — the market visit and offerings teach you why the food matters before you cook it.