Culinary Underground - (508) 904-6589

Culinary Underground offers cooking classes for home cooks ages 10 years to adult. www.culinaryunderground.com

Culinary Underground School for Home Cooks is committed to furthering the art and craft of home cooking through engaging and educational hands-on and demonstrations classes. Using the best seasonal ingredients, mastering techniques, minimizing prep, and maximizing flavor are the focus of our classes.

We believe that good eating and breaking bread with others are two of life’s greatest pleasures, and are at the heart of everyday cooking for family and friends. We share with our students a growing concern of what is in our food and where it comes from. To that end, we support small, local, organic farms and dairies, seek out area restaurants whose chefs cook locally, and invite those chefs, farmers, and purveyors into the classroom to share their knowledge and ideas with our students.

About Our Name: The Culinary Underground School for Home Cooks gets its name from our original location; we live in a berm house, under the ground. We have turf for a roof and huge south-facing windows light the the original Culinary Underground kitchen. After offering classes in our “underground” location for 6 years, we expanded to our current location at 21 Turnpike Road in Southborough. And even though we are no longer literally underground, we kept the name – we liked the whimsically subversive sound of it!

Culinary Underground offers classes that range from the very basic to the great world cuisines – all geared for people who cook at home. Instruction takes place in two fully-equipped kitchens located at our school in Southborough, Massachusetts. Classes are small (no more than eight participants), hands-on, and technique-driven. Students learn through a combination of instruction and demonstration, and by preparing delicious dishes and menus. The atmosphere is informal, fun, busy, and informative.

Participants gather round the kitchen island for introductions and munchies. The Chef/Instructor gives a kitchen tour, reviews class materials, and sets the context for the class. Then it’s on to the joy of cooking!

The instructor demonstrates specific techniques and circulates among participants with suggestions and support. There is ample time for both cooking and eating. The class ends with post class summary, clean up, and take-home containers.

Class Information
Classes are designed for adults of all ages. With the exception of those courses marked “Demonstration”, all classes are full participation, hands-on classes.
While there are no prerequisites, we encourage true beginners to start by taking the Knife Skills class and a Basics class before moving on to some of the more challenging courses.

Class periods are generally 3 to 4 hours in length, depending on the subject.
Evening classes are held weeknights from 6:00 – 9:30 PM. Saturday and Sunday classes, which are devoted to the more time-consuming pastry classes like yeast breads, run from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Kid’s classes usually run from 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM or (for after-school classes) from 4:00 – 6:30 PM.

Class structure consists of a short lecture, followed by cooking, tasting, and clean-up. Copies of recipes are provided.

A chef’s jacket and toque are not required, but do wear comfortable clothing and shoes (no sandals, please). Aprons are provided and the kitchen is fully equipped, but supplying your own plastic containers for leftovers is encouraged!

NOTE: We make every effort to stick with the menus as posted in the class descriptions. However, the market sometimes determines a change in the menu, as for seafood and produce classes (we prefer to use what’s freshest in the market that day). We sometimes learn that there will be class participants who may have an allergy or other dietary restriction that we endeavor to accommodate. For these reasons, it is at the instructor’s discretion to change the menu.

Tags: Cooking Lesson,School