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Ubud Cooking Class: Balinese Market & Farm-to-Table

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Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/36

Duration5h

GroupUp to 15

LanguagesEN

PickupAt your hotel

You Start at a Balinese Market Before You Cook

You start your day at a local market buying ingredients, visit a traditional Balinese home to learn how families live, then move to a farm where you harvest spices before a chef teaches you to cook three to four authentic dishes using traditional techniques. Lunch is the food you made, and pickup from your Ubud hotel is included.

Step-by-step itinerary

Visit traditional morning market
Buy spices from local vendors
Visit local Balinese house
Learn about Balinese culture and lifestyle
Explore farm and harvest spices
Choose menu for cooking class
Learn Balinese cooking techniques
Cook authentic Balinese dishes with chef

The Experience

The morning class begins at the market in Ubud's west side, where you'll walk through stalls with your guide and pick out fresh spices and ingredients from local vendors. It's the part most cooking classes skip—the part where you actually see where the food comes from and how locals shop. After the market, you visit a traditional Balinese house to understand how families live and organize their spaces, the way the building sits on the land, what matters in daily life there. It's not a museum stop; it's someone's home, and the guide explains the reasoning behind it.

Then you head to the farm attached to the cooking school. Before any chopping happens, you harvest the spices and vegetables you're about to cook with—lemongrass, torch ginger, coconut, whatever's on the day's menu. A Balinese chef walks you through the techniques: how to use a lesung (the traditional mortar and pestle) to pound spices the way it's been done for generations, not the shortcut way. You'll cook three to four dishes depending on what you choose—satay lilit (chicken wrapped in lemongrass), a soup with young banana plant and Balinese spices, steamed fish in banana leaf, sambal, crepes with palm sugar. The menu rotates, and you can pick vegetarian, vegan, or regular options when you book.

Lunch is what you cooked, eaten at the farm or in the kitchen space. Coffee, tea, Balinese cake, and water are included throughout. The whole experience runs about four to five hours for the morning class. Hotel pickup in the Ubud area is included, and the vehicle is air-conditioned, which matters when you're walking through a market in tropical heat and then working over a stove.

What’s included

Your day includes hotel pickup in Ubud, a guided tour of a traditional morning market where you buy fresh spices and ingredients, a visit to a local Balinese home to learn about daily life and architecture, access to the farm where you harvest the herbs and vegetables you'll cook with, a hands-on cooking class with a Balinese chef covering traditional techniques like pounding spices with a lesung, preparation of three to four dishes (your choice of vegetarian, vegan, or regular menu), lunch featuring the food you cooked, coffee or tea, Balinese cake, mineral water, and air-conditioned transport throughout.

Good to know

Not for heart conditionsNot for back problems

Operated by Lesung Bali

Is this one for you?Right for travelers who want to cook but also understand where food comes from and how Balinese people actually live—the market and home visit are what separate this from a standard cooking class, and they're what make the cooking part feel connected to something real.