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View all Krabi toursHands-On Thai Cooking Class in an Ao Nang Open-Air Kitchen in Krabi
Cook four classic Thai dishes from scratch with a local chef in an open-air kitchen, starting at the market and ending with the meal you made.
Highlights
- Shop for ingredients at a local Krabi market
- Pound fresh curry paste in a granite mortar
- Own cooking station, wok and burner for each guest
- Prepare four classic Thai dishes from scratch
- Sit down and eat everything you cooked
Full description
Thai food makes sense once someone shows you the logic behind it: the balance of hot, sour, salty and sweet, and why the order you add things to the wok changes everything. That is what this class is really teaching, using four dishes as the vehicle.
It starts at a local market where your chef walks you through the ingredients that confuse most visitors, galangal versus ginger, the four kinds of basil, palm sugar, shrimp paste, and the chillies you should treat with respect. Then it is back to an open-air kitchen where everyone gets their own station, wok and burner. You pound your own curry paste in a granite mortar, which is harder work and far better tasting than anything from a jar, then cook your way through a curry, a stir-fry, a soup and a dessert.
Best of all, you eat what you make, sitting down together at the end with everything you cooked laid out. You leave with a recipe booklet and, more usefully, with the technique in your hands.
Tour Itinerary
The schedule below is a suggested plan and can be adjusted to suit your preferences.
Pickup and market visit
Meet your chef and walk a local market, learning to identify herbs, pastes and chillies.
Kitchen welcome and prep
Settle into your own station, put on an apron and learn knife work and prep basics.
Curry paste and first dishes
Pound paste by hand, then cook a curry and a stir-fry at your own wok burner.
Soup and dessert
Balance a classic Thai soup and finish with a coconut-based dessert.
Sit down and eat
Share the full spread you have cooked and collect your recipe booklet.
Detailed Itinerary
The morning opens around 09:00 with pickup and a walk through a local market, where your chef stops at stalls to explain lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime, palm sugar and the difference a fresh chilli makes. It is a short, practical tour rather than a sightseeing one, and you will use several of the things you handle.
By 10:00 you are at the open-air kitchen with an apron and your own station. Prep and knife work come first, then from around 10:30 the real cooking: pounding curry paste in a granite mortar, tempering coconut cream and running your own wok through a curry and a stir-fry. The chef circulates constantly, correcting heat and seasoning.
Soup and dessert follow at 11:45, and by 12:30 everything is carried to the table and eaten together. You are usually finished and back at your hotel by around 13:15 with a recipe booklet in hand.
Includes
- Guided market visit
- All ingredients and cooking equipment
- English-speaking chef instructor
- Apron and personal cooking station
- Recipe booklet to take home
- Water, tea and soft drinks
- Hotel pickup in the Ao Nang area
Excludes
- Alcoholic drinks
- Extra market purchases
- Gratuities
- Hotel pickup outside Ao Nang
Important information
Meeting point
Cooking school in Ao Nang, with pickup from nearby hotels
Know before you go
- Free cancellation available up to 24 hours before the activity starts
About this activity
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Traveler Reviews
We started at the local market where the chef walked us through galangal versus ginger and made us smell every herb before buying. Then four dishes in the open-air kitchen: tom yum goong, green curry from a paste we pounded ourselves, pad thai and mango sticky rice. The mortar and pestle work is harder than it looks and my arms knew about it the next day.
Each of us had our own wok station rather than sharing, which is why this was better than the class I did in Chiang Mai. The chef adjusted the chilli levels per person and mine came out properly hot. We ate everything we cooked at a long table at the end.
As a vegetarian I was worried I would just be watching, but they swapped in tofu and mushroom and left the fish sauce out of my curry paste. Nothing felt like an afterthought. They also emailed the recipe cards afterwards and I have made the green curry twice at home.
Four hours went quickly. The kitchen is genuinely open-air with fans, so you sweat, but that is part of it. Learning that the paste is just pounded lemongrass, kaffir lime peel and chillies rather than something mysterious was the useful takeaway.
Small group of six so the chef had time for everyone. The mango sticky rice at the end used properly ripe nam dok mai mangoes and coconut cream we watched her warm with salt and pandan. Pickup from our Ao Nang hotel was on time.
Really good class and a friendly chef. The market portion felt a little rushed at maybe 25 minutes, I would have liked longer to look around. The cooking itself and the food we produced were excellent.
My two teenagers did this with me and both of them cooked their own pad thai without much help. The chef was patient about explaining the difference between palm sugar and regular sugar and why the balance matters. We left completely full and took the leftovers.
Best 48 dollars I spent in Krabi. You cook four dishes, you eat four dishes, and you actually understand why Thai food tastes the way it does by the end. Apron and drinking water provided, just wear something you do not mind smelling of garlic.