New Orleans Cooking Class: Louisiana Recipes & Wine

★★★★★★★★★★ 4.94 (1,325 reviews) 96% rated it 5 stars

Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/14

Duration3h

GroupUp to 10

LanguagesEN

Mobile ticketAccepted

You'll Cook Dinner, Then Sit Down and Eat It

You spend three hours cooking an authentic Louisiana meal alongside an expert chef in a small group, with wine and beer included throughout. You choose your menu (bisque or gumbo, shrimp and grits or jambalaya, bananas foster or pralines), do all the prep and cooking yourself, then sit down and eat what you've made. You leave with your apron, printed recipes, and the ability to actually make these dishes at home.

Step-by-step itinerary

Hands-on Louisiana cooking class

Join small cooking class
Cut, season, and prepare meal
Cook starter, main, and dessert
Enjoy wine, beer, and meal
Take home recipes and apron

The Experience

The moment you realize you're actually holding a knife and about to cut into a crab for bisque — not watching someone else do it on a screen — something shifts. You're in a New Orleans cooking class with maybe eight other people, standing at one of five cooktops, and your chef is not performing for you. They're teaching you. The class runs three hours, and by the end you've made a full meal from scratch: a choice of yam-crab bisque or gumbo to start, then either BBQ shrimp and grits or jambalaya for the main, and bananas foster or pralines for dessert. You do the cutting, the seasoning, the stirring. The wine and beer flow — Abita Amber (local), red, white, whatever you want — and nobody's rushing you through it.

What makes this different from watching a cooking demo is that you're not an audience. The chef guides you through each step, but your hands are the ones doing the work, which means you actually understand why the roux needs to be that color, why the shrimp goes in at that moment, why the timing matters. Groups stay small — maximum 10 people, which means the chef can actually see what you're doing and correct it if you're about to wreck the gumbo. If you're coming solo, you'll be paired with someone else, so there's no awkward standing around. After you finish cooking, you sit down together and eat what you made. That meal tastes different when it's yours.

You take home the apron (it's got the New Orleans School of Cooking logo on it, worth about nineteen dollars on its own), a printed copy of every recipe you made, and the muscle memory of how to actually do this stuff. The class works for people who've never cooked Louisiana food before and for people who grew up eating it but never learned to make it themselves. Dietary requirements? Tell them when you book, and they'll work with you. The dress code is casual — you're going to get a little messy, and that's the point.

What’s included

Your three hours include instruction from a professionally trained chef, all ingredients and cooking equipment, a full meal you prepare and eat together, wine and beer (Abita Amber, red, white, plus non-alcoholic options like iced tea, lemonade, and coffee), your New Orleans School of Cooking apron, and printed recipes for every dish you made. The class is wheelchair accessible, and public transportation is available nearby.

Good to know

Wheelchair accessiblePublic transport nearby

Operated by New Orleans School of Cooking

Is this one for you?Book this if you want to actually learn how to cook Louisiana food rather than just taste it, and you'd rather spend three hours in a kitchen with a real chef and a small group than watch a video at home. The hands-on format and the meal at the end are what make it stick.