The best Phuket cooking classes range from hands-on Thai cooking lessons in state-of-the-art purpose-built cooking schools with dedicated Thai cooking instructors to hotel chefs giving demonstration-style classes in the resort restaurant in between service. You can learn popular Thai dishes that you’ll find all over Thailand or you can ask chefs and cooking instructors to teach you Phuket specialties. We recommend doing the latter. You’ll thank us later!
We’re pleased to see that taking cooking classes are replacing spa treatments as one of the most popular off-beach holiday activities around Southeast Asia and Phuket is no exception. The southern Thailand island is home to some of the best Thai cooking schools and Phuket cooking classes. We lost count of the number of Thai cooking classes we tested out during a month on Phuket researching Phuket cuisine for a story for Australia’s Delicious magazine.
Whether you’re a serious cook or you just want to do something fun to give you a break from the sun, Phuket boasts some of the best Thai cooking classes we’ve done. Even better, Phuket chefs and cooking instructors are all willing to teach Phuket specialties if you’re interested in learning more about Phuket food – as long as you ask nicely and give some advance notice.
Most Thai cooking classes on Phuket offer the standard Thai dishes from Central Thai cuisine with which most people are more familiar – satay skewers, Thai curries, mango and sticky rice. However, in our experience, if you are serious about learning to cook Thai food, you just have to ask the cooking school or hotel and they’ll be happy to teach Phuket specialties. Just give them as much notice as possible and book a private class, and they should be happy to oblige.
The Best Phuket Cooking Classes – Our Picks, All Tried and Tested
These are our picks of the best Phuket cooking classes on the island of Phuket, all tried and tested. Note that many of Phuket’s newer resorts boast professional purpose-built Thai cooking schools with dedicated Thai cooking instructors. However, at older resorts cooking lessons are often taught in the restaurants between breakfast and lunch service or lunch and dinner service. The exceptions were two of the best Phuket cooking classes at Paresa and Anantara.
Most Thai cooking classes begin with either a visit to a local market or, if the hotel isn’t close to a local market or there isn’t a market on that day (small markets move around the island of Phuket so may only be held locally one day a week), the cooking instructor or chef will provide an introduction to produce and ingredients in the cooking school, restaurant, or, at their own farm or kitchen garden if they’re lucky to have one.
The dishes you learn to cook are generally the food you’ll eat for lunch, so go easy on those chillies if you’re not familiar with Southern Thai food. The best resorts and top cooking schools tend to encourage you to taste the dishes you cook as you’re going and then the kitchen staff will make you a spread of fresh dishes you enjoy over lunch.
All of the professional Thai cooking schools provide recipes (some on paper, others will email the recipes later), most provide a certificate and an apron, and perhaps an additional gift, such as a bag of spices or a tote bag (Spice Spoons). Printed recipes are often provided at the end of the class, which we find frustrating, as we like to read the recipes during the class and make notes on them.
This is mainly because, in our experience, dishes taught by chefs and ingredient measures used can sometimes differ to the written recipe. If you’re serious about cooking, and especially learning to cook Thai food, and you fully intend to go home and cook the dishes you learnt, do ask for the printed recipes at the start of the class and explain you want to take notes as you go.
Recipe, Paresa
Easily one of the best Phuket cooking classes we sampled, Paresa Resort’s hands-on half-day Thai cooking class is held in a sleek, dedicated cooking school called Recipe, located beneath the restaurants and boasting brilliant ocean views. The purpose built facility is outstanding with a good-sized kitchen with two ovens and individual, mobile, marble-topped benches.
The class begins with a drive to Banzaan Market, a wonderful example of a local fresh food market, for an introduction to Thai ingredients. The quality of instruction by our teacher, Hoon, was first-rate, with Terence prepping and cooking everything alongside Hoon.
Here, all the dishes were made and then we sat down to enjoy them as a meal at a communal table, where we were offered wine and beer to go with our Phuket classics – bai liang pad khai (stir-fried melinjo leaves with egg), pla kra pong pad (fish with sweet and sour sauce), and khamin, geang poo (crab meat curry).
The food was absolutely delicious, the recipes easy to follow, and Hoon’s plating was artful and contemporary (no carved fruit on the side). The apron, which you get to take home, was also one of the smartest.
Paresa also offers daily classes in Japanese cuisine (two hours, covering fish filleting, sashimi cutting, rice preparation, sushi rolling, and tempura making with an optional sake tasting afterwards), Italian pasta-making (two hours on the basics of dough making, tagliatelle cutting, ravioli folding, risotto boiling), and chocolate-making (full day master class with three classes to choose from).
www.paresaresorts.com
Spice Spoons, Anantara Phuket Layan
Another of the best Phuket cooking classes, Spice Spoons at the Anantara Phuket Layan is ran by legendary Thai cooking instructor Chef Pitak Srichan. We met the chef a decade earlier when Terence did a Thai cooking class at the Four Seasons Chiang Mai, when Pitak ran the school there.
As you’d expect, the instruction is of a very high standard here, too. It’s also very hands-on, with guests doing everything the chef does.
In Phuket, the half-day experience begins with a trip to the lively Banzaan Fresh Market, also called Thepkrasattri Market, to buy fresh seafood, vegetables, herbs and spices, as much as to learn about Thai ingredients and a thorough introduction by Chef Pitak to different vegetables, herbs and spices.
The class was held in the resort’s beautiful restaurant, Dee Plee (southern Thai for ‘chili’), pictured, above, which overlooks the beach and a small island.
While Dee Plee’s menu features traditional Phuket dishes, such as khanom jeen Phuket (fermented rice noodles with curry), nam prik goong siap (a spicy prawn dip with green chili peppers, garlic, shrimp paste, fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar) and khanom bia Phuket spring rolls, the cooking class menu offers Thai standards.
Terence made krathong thong (‘golden flowers’; crispy cups holding prawns with a mix of vegetables), tom yum gai (spicy chicken soup with lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime), gaeng kiew wan goong (Thai green curry with shrimps), and khao niew mamuang (mango with sweet sticky rice in coconut cream).
Not only do you get to take home an apron here and eco-friendly tote bag, but the Spice Spoons recipe card pack was the most professional of all the schools. Classes in fruit and vegetable carving are also offered.
phuket-layan.anantara.com
Thai Culinary Cooking Class, Trisara
The excellent Thai Culinary Cooking Class at Trisara was taught in the resort’s restaurant by one of the hotel’s Phuket-born chefs – because as we discovered during our month on Phuket, most hotel staff aren’t from Phuket but are in fact from the poorer Northeastern Isaan region.
The class was hands-on, with Terence prepping everything under the direction of the chef. The quality of instruction was in-depth and the recipe booklet by far the most thorough, with ten pages of ingredients with photos and detailed descriptions – super handy for newcomers to Thai cuisine who want to seek out products when they get home.
While Trisara can teach participants Thai standards if they wish, once again we put them to the test and requested Phuket specialties. We learnt how to cook kra dook moo bai cha muang (sour broth with pork spare ribs and garcinia leaves), and pad pak meang (sautéed local meang leaves with garlic and dried shrimp).
We also learnt to prepare mee sapam goong (Phuket yellow noodles with kale and prawns in soy sauce), and por pia sod (fresh vegetable and pork rolls with a sweet tamarind chilli sauce). It was a fun and while we ate as the dishes were cooked, guests can choose to eat at the end of the class if they wish.
trisara.com
The Boathouse Thai Cooking Class
There’s no purpose built cooking school at The Boathouse either. Cooking classes are taught in the light-filled, ocean-side Boathouse Wine & Grill restaurant on a long table set up for the chef with chairs for participants to watch. A sous-chef is on hand to assist and, like Trisara and The Surin’s cooking classes, guests can get as hands-on (or not) as they like.
In response to our request for Phuket specialties, the chef created a programme of a whopping six dishes – even the very best Phuket cooking classes (Paresa, Spice Spoons) had taught 3-4 dishes, which is fairly standard at all cooking schools.
Here we learnt to make tao hoo tord (deep fried yellow tofu with bean sprouts), tom som pla (sweet and sour fish soup with tamarind sauce), gang som goong (spicy sour curry with prawns), pad mee sapam (those Phuket-style stir-fried yellow noodles and seafood again), moo hong (braised caramelised pork belly), and khanom bua loi (sweet rice flour dumplings in coconut cream).
The chef was incredibly well organised, though, beginning with moo hong, which takes the longest time to cook to get to melt-in-your-mouth texture, then making the super-fast deep-fried tofu, which we got to snack on, an easy soup, the curry, noodles, and dessert.
Whilst it was a lot of food it was a good demonstration of how simple some Thai dishes can be to cook and how important planning is in the kitchen. The Boathouse also provides participants with a lovely apron and recipes. Classes run from 10am-2pm and the dishes serve as lunch.
www.boathouse-phuket.com
Other Cooking Experiences We Recommend
There are no dedicated cooking schools at these resorts, but you can still get some Phuket cooking lessons.
Andara
The Andara Resort does things a bit differently. The chef can teach cooking classes at Silk, the resort’s traditional Thai restaurant, but the thing that’s special about this property is the enormous apartments and villas with fully equipped kitchens and dining rooms, and the opportunity to have an in-villa cook – or two, in our case.
While it wasn’t a formal cooking lesson, two lovely local ladies came to cook for us and we got to watch and ask questions. They made goong sarong (deep-fried tiger prawns wrapped in vermicelli) and a wonderful version of pad mee sapam (Phuket’s famous stir-fried yellow noodles and seafood).
Our tip: ask the cooks to go off-menu and make the dishes they eat at home.
www.andaraphuket.com/
The Surin
There’s no dedicated cooking school at The Surin Resort either, however, the chef runs an excellent demonstration-only cooking class in the superb Lomtalay restaurant and is happy to teach Phuket specialties on request.
The chef takes participants on a market tour early in the morning and then they have a break before re-grouping late morning for the cooking class followed by lunch.
www.thesurinphuket.com
Looking for Phuket accommodation? See our Where to Stay in Phuket guide for our favourite spots around the island and in Phuket Town.
Book Phuket Thai Cooking Classes and Phuket Food Tours
Have you had any cooking lessons on the southern Thai island? If so, what do you think are the best Phuket cooking classes? We’d love to get your feedback and suggestions for the best Phuket cooking classes we should try on our next trip.
