Plant-based cooking is very popular now. If you prefer to learn from from ‘moving pictures’, there are a few good vegan cooking classes around. Learning to cook means that even without a recipe, you can knock up something tasty, with whatever you find at the market, or in your cupboard or fridge.
The Happy Pear are identical twins from Ireland who for 20 years have been creating and teaching how to make wonderful healthy plant-based food with real affordable ingredients. Starting with a café, they now have millions of fans on their YouTube Channel, along with best-selling cookbooks, a sourdough bakery, coffee roastery and their own ready-meal range.g school, sourdough bakery, coffee roastery and their own range of ready-meals.
Before cooking, read up on food safety for people & pets (many human foods are unsafe around animal friends).
Made in Hackney (London) is a wonderful organisation that delivers free plant-based food in the community, and also hosts a regular suite of cooking classes in local venues – all affordable to all. These courses teach young people to pensioners, how to cook affordable food, by top plant-based chefs.
Proceeds raised from the class help fund their free community cookery classes, and Global Plant Kitchens (a free online training course and toolkit, to help communities worldwide set up a similar cooking school in their city, town or village). Founder Sarah is a former university lecturer, and is presently writing a cookbook to spread the message wide and far.
Our Lizzy (Worcestershire) offers cooking classes with bed-and-breakfast accommodation near the Malvern Hills, so you can walk your dinner off, after making it). Prices include tuition, ingredients and a recipe booklet. The day courses include quick-and-easy meals, vegan baking and Christmas cooking, as well as many international cuisine classes
Online Vegan Cooking Classes
Holly White is an Irish chef who offers a membership monthly live cooking class, with access to hundreds of her favourite recipes, with nutritional information.
Brownble offers superb online cooking classes from a lovely woman, with her medically-trained husband ensuring everything is nutritious, as well as delicious. The membership (with free trial) includes a library of cooking classes from easy to intermediate, with new content added each week. You’ll learn everything from knife skills to cooking without a recipe, from how to replace dairy and eggs to making vegan cheeses and holiday dishes. A portion of profits are donated to farm sanctuaries and plant-based food charities.
Veecoco (Germany) is a wonderful site run by two brothers who offer lots of online classes by some of the best chefs and teachers in the world. Take a free 7-day trial then get access to over 800 lessons from 23 courses. From Thai, Japanese and Italian food to raw food and desserts, new courses are released regularly.
The Vegan Chef School offers a course for home cooks, that you can work your way through in around 3 months. For professional chefs, there is a Vegan Diploma course which includes how to scale recipes, adapt for allergies, source ingredients, design a menu, cost recipes, plating skills and how to adhere to Food Standard Agency guidelines. Graduates receive a certificate to show to employers.
