Balinese Cooking Classes in Ubud: What You Cook, the Market Visit, and How to Choose One

Every Balinese class starts with base genep, the spice paste of shallots, garlic, galangal, turmeric, ginger, chillies, candlenut, coriander seed and shrimp paste, pounded in a stone mortar until it is smooth. Once you have it, most of the cuisine is variations on it: sate lilit, minced fish or chicken mixed with the paste and coconut, pressed round lemongrass stalks and grilled; pepes ikan, fish in the paste steamed in banana leaf; lawar, the chopped salad of long beans, coconut and spice, which in its traditional form includes raw blood and in classes usually does not; and the yellow rice, nasi kuning, with turmeric and coconut milk.

A good class makes six to eight dishes and you eat all of them at the end. If the menu is mostly fried rice and satay, it is a tourist menu, not a Balinese one.

Morning classes begin at Ubud's market, or one of the village markets, around 8:00, and it is not decoration: the instructor buys the day's ingredients and explains what they are. You see turmeric root rather than powder, salam leaf, torch ginger flower, the small hot chillies and the big mild ones, and the fresh grated coconut that goes into almost everything. Afternoon classes skip the market and cost a little less. If you have never seen the raw ingredients, the market is the half of the class that stays with you.

Classes run in two settings. A family compound is a home: you cook in the household kitchen or an open pavilion, the grandmother may be pounding the paste beside you, and the class is as much about how a Balinese household eats as about recipes. A purpose-built cooking school has individual stations, aprons, printed recipes and better English; it is more efficient and less personal. Neither is wrong. Families with children and people who want to actually learn the techniques often prefer the school; people who want the afternoon in a village prefer the compound. The listing says which it is.

Look for a class that names the dishes, states the group size and says who teaches. Vegetarian and vegan versions are normal in Ubud and worth confirming when you book rather than on the day. Halal is easy since most classes use chicken and fish. Morning classes are cooler and include the market; afternoon classes fit around a sunrise trek. Most run 3 to 5 hours and end with lunch or an early dinner. Pair a morning class with the Monkey Forest in the late afternoon, or a night one with a dance performance in town.