Chiang Mai: Full-Day Cooking Class & Local Market Tour

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1/50

Duration6h

GroupUp to 9

LanguagesEN

PickupAt your hotel

Cook Five Thai Dishes in a Home Kitchen Surrounded by Rice Paddies

You spend a full day learning to cook five Thai dishes in a countryside home, starting with a real local market tour where you pick ingredients and taste street food. The instructor guides you through making curry paste, soups, stir-fries, curries, and desserts, then sends you home with a recipe book. Hotel pickup from downtown Chiang Mai is included, and the class runs about 20 minutes outside the city center.

Step-by-step itinerary

Full-day cooking class and market tour

Pick up from town
Visit fresh local market
Food tasting at market
Receive menu checklist
Walk around market freely
Travel to home with organic garden
Make curry paste from scratch
Cook appetizer and soup
Cook stir fried noodles dish
Cook curry and dessert
Receive recipe book

The Experience

The morning starts at a local market on the outskirts of Chiang Mai—not the tourist version downtown, but the one where Thai families actually shop. You'll walk through stalls of fresh herbs, chilies, and vegetables with your instructor, tasting as you go, and picking out the exact ingredients you'll cook with later. The market sits about 20 minutes from downtown or the airport, which means you see real vendor life instead of the staged version. Before you leave, there's time to wander again and buy anything else that catches your eye.

After the market tour, you head to the instructor's home in the countryside—a place surrounded by an organic garden and rice paddies next door. This is where the actual cooking happens. You'll start by making curry paste from scratch, which sounds simple until you're grinding chilies and garlic by hand and realizing how much work goes into that one component. Then you move through five dishes across the day: an appetizer and soup, a stir-fried noodle dish, a curry, and a dessert. The menu options let you choose what appeals to you—Tom Yum or Tom Kha for soup, Pad Thai or Drunken Noodles for the stir-fry, Green Curry or Massaman for the main, Mango Sticky Rice or steamed banana cake to finish. Everything can be made vegetarian, vegan, or pescatarian if you let them know when you book.

The instructor has been teaching this cooking class for 11 years and worked in the food industry for 19 years before that, so there's real knowledge here—not just someone walking you through steps. You get a recipe book at the end, which actually matters because you'll want to make these dishes again at home and won't remember every ratio. Hotel pickup and drop-off in downtown Chiang Mai are included, so you don't have to figure out transport, and all the ingredients, coffee, tea, and beverages during the day are covered.

What’s included

Your day includes hotel pickup and drop-off from downtown Chiang Mai, a guided tour of a local market outside the city with food tasting, all fresh ingredients for cooking five dishes, instruction from a professional Thai cooking instructor with 11 years of teaching experience, beverages including coffee and herbal tea throughout the day, and a recipe book to take home. Vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, and gluten-free options are available upon request.

Operated by Benny's Home Cooking Chiang Mai

Is this one for you?This works well if you want to learn real Thai cooking techniques in a home setting rather than a commercial kitchen, and prefer picking your own ingredients at an actual local market instead of a prepared class setup. The full-day format and included market tour mean you're not arranging transport or sourcing ingredients yourself.