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Sharpen your knife skills and add a few pages to the old recipe book. With these culinary classes, you’ll be sauteéing and flambéing like a seasoned line cook in no time.
Iowa City Scratch Cookery
1123 E College St, Iowa City, 319-631-8824
Chef Thomas McCoy offers customers an opportunity to take back their kitchens and ownership of their food. With over 13 years of professional cooking under his belt, McCoy’s goal is to familiarize cooks with their own kitchens and to embrace healthy eating through in-home cooking lessons. These lessons are tailored to the goals, skills and techniques his customers want to learn. Curious about how to clean and cook fresh shellfish and seafood? Intimidated by the dizzying selection and preparation methods for different cuts of meat? Maybe you’re looking to learn how to craft a romantic dinner from scratch. Hire McCoy, and he’ll show up at your door with ingredients and special equipment, ready to get down to business.
Average lessons run about three hours and cost $20 per hour plus the cost of ingredients. In addition to skill-based lessons, small-group classes, demos and special events are also available by arrangement.
Becky’s Mindful Kitchen
2247 Sugar Bottom Rd NE, Solon, 319-325-3464
From the kitchen of her comfortable, renovated farmhouse, Becky Schmooke strives to “connect people to where their food comes from”—and that goes for both children and adults. The three-day children’s summer camp, for example, is an exciting way to engage kids in making their own food. Hands-on cooking isn’t the only thing kids experience, though.
They also have opportunities to play with free-range chickens and learn about the local farms producing their food. Schmooke is enthusiastic about expanding her business, including adding weekly children’s cooking lessons, a brick pizza oven and bringing in a milking goat on her farm. Children aren’t the only ones who can have a good time at Becky’s. She prides herself on creating custom classes for her adult patrons, and encourages anyone over the age of 21 to bring their own drinks. But the best part of Becky’s Mindful Kitchen? You’ll never have to do the dishes!
Kirkwood Culinary Kitchen
1100 3rd St SE, Cedar Rapids, 319-398-1022
In its polished and slick location at NewBo City Market, Kirkwood strives to offer professional culinary instruction to the general public. There’s a lot to brag about here. The facility is less than five years old, there are multiple, spacious cooking stations and the staff of trained professionals comes from many different parts of the world. Matt Murphy, who runs the Kirkwood Culinary Kitchen, stands by the principal that these classes exist, first and foremost, to help create a stronger community. “People let their guard down in the kitchen,” Murphy says, “and they can always bond over food.”
Expect classes that reach a variety of populations−anything from kids camps, adult and child cooking classes, interactive date nights and even corporate team-building classes are offered, covering topics such as comfort food classics, authentic Chinese cooking, canning basics and beyond.
New Pioneer Co-Op
1101 2nd St, Coralville, 319-358-5513
If you’ve been looking for an exciting night out that doesn’t break the bank, the New Pioneer Co-Op’s cooking classes may be right up your alley. Usually ranging between $15 and $35, they offer a chance to learn new cooking skills and engage with the community at an affordable rate. As Genie Maybanks, New Pioneer Co-Op’s class coordinator, put it, “these classes were made to reach every socioeconomic level.”
While it’s expected that eating healthily and sustainably are a big part of the co-op’s classes, Maybanks was quick to explain that they aren’t meant to be lectures. Some popular offerings over the past years have been the history of wine, an entire class devoted to bacon and the long-running pizza-from-scratch class. They are a fun, inexpensive way to engage with the joys of basic home cooking at any stage of life or level of experience.
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