Cookery Holidays

Why go

Food is the quickest way into a culture, and cooking it is better still. A good cookery holiday takes you to markets and farms, teaches techniques you will use for the rest of your life, and ends each day around a table with wine. You come home with recipes, skills and stories.

How to choose

Decide how much time you want in the kitchen. Some holidays are a full week of hands-on classes; others mix a few lessons with sightseeing. Check whether classes are hands-on or demonstrations, the group size, and whether the menus suit you if you have dietary needs. Schools on farms and estates add market visits, foraging and wine tastings.

Our picks

These are our favourite cooking schools, from British institutions to estates in Sicily and Tuscany. Price bands are a typical cost per person for the holiday or course described, excluding flights.

• Ballymaloe Cookery School

  County Cork, Ireland

  ££

  • Cookery school
  • 1 to 5 days
  • All year

  Best for Farm-to-table cooking

  On a 100-acre organic farm, Ireland's most famous cookery school runs short courses alongside its renowned 12-week certificate.

• Rick Stein's Cookery School

  Padstow, Cornwall

  £

  • Cookery school
  • 1 to 4 days
  • All year

  Best for Seafood by the sea

  Fish and shellfish cookery on the Camel estuary, with stays at Rick Stein's rooms in town.

• Raymond Blanc Cookery School

  Oxfordshire

  ££

  • Cookery school
  • 1 to 2 days
  • All year

  Best for French technique with a stay

  Classes at Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, with its famous kitchen gardens; combine with a night at the hotel.

• Anna Tasca Lanza

  Sicily, Italy

  £££

  • Estate cooking school
  • 1 to 5 nights
  • Spring and autumn

  Best for Sicilian food at its roots

  Founded in 1989 on the Tasca d'Almerita wine estate, with lessons using the farm's produce, tastings of estate wines and stays in the 19th-century villa.

• Badia a Coltibuono

  Chianti, Tuscany

  £££

  • Estate cooking school
  • 1 to 5 nights
  • April to October

  Best for Tuscan food in an abbey

  An abbey founded a thousand years ago, now a wine estate, where classes are followed by lunch with the estate's Chianti Classico.

• The Watermill at Posara

  Lunigiana, Tuscany

  ££

  • Food holidays
  • 7 nights
  • Spring to autumn

  Best for A sociable taste of Tuscany

  As well as painting, the Watermill runs Taste of Tuscany weeks with cooking, markets and local producers.

• La Maison Arabe

  Marrakech, Morocco

  ££

  • Hotel cooking school
  • 2 to 4 nights
  • October to May

  Best for Tagines, spices and souks

  One of Marrakech's best-loved riad hotels, with hands-on Moroccan cooking workshops after a morning in the spice market.

• Blue Elephant Cooking School

  Bangkok, Thailand

  £

  • Cooking school
  • 1 day within a longer trip
  • November to March

  Best for Thai cooking in a historic mansion

  Morning market visits and classes in a colonial-era building, easily combined with a wider trip to Thailand.

Price guide: £ Under £1,000 per person · ££ £1,000–2,500 per person · £££ £2,500–5,000 per person · ££££ £5,000+ per person

When to go

Cookery schools run all year, but the produce is best in late spring and autumn. Italy's harvest season, September and October, brings grapes, olives, truffles and mushrooms; Morocco and Thailand are most comfortable from November to March.

Going solo or with a partner

Cooking classes are naturally sociable, and solo travellers fit in easily. Non-cooking partners are usually welcome to join for meals, and estates in Sicily and Tuscany have plenty to explore.

How to book

Our advisors can find the right course or retreat, check the teacher and dates, and wrap it into a complete trip with flights, transfers and a few extra nights somewhere lovely before or after. Speak to an advisor.