Going to Cooking School Online

A few months ago, I attended cooking school with my husband and son. We didn’t spend a fortune. We didn’t go to France. In fact, we didn’t even leave the house. We attended a class in pan frying online at Rouxbe.com.

Normally I do the cooking at home. I’ve been cooking all my life and have gotten pretty good at it. My kids are too young to have learned to cook much. And my husband would rather eat than cook, though he has learned a lot in the last few years.  I thought that if these guys understood the science behind cooking – what happens when you heat the pan, how the foods change, the alchemy behind flavor, etc. – that they would enjoy cooking more and I could enjoy eating at home without cooking.

They both enjoy the Alton Brown show.

And I was right. Understanding the physics of the pan created an understanding of pan frying in my teenager that turned him almost instantly into an expert. If I want a steak cooked or a chicken breast pan-fried, I now ask him to do it. Anything else, though, and he steps aside and goes back to playing video games.

I wanted to continue that course and hopefully extend his cooking skills beyond this one trick. But Rouxbe has moved to a lifetime subscription ($400) plan. I think it’s probably worth the money. But I can’t convince my husband we should pay for it.

So I was pleased to discover this free course – the Science of Cooking – at YouTube EDU. But the classes are long. And some of them are entertaining in a nerdy sort of way. But I watched for a long time and didn’t really ever have an “Aha! I want to cook that!” moment.

Then I found these two maniacs. They can make a Maki roll out of watermelon and some lab equipment. They can make BBQ sauce out of hay. And they can print food on paper. Fascinating. But I’m not making any of that for dinner. Not this year anyway.

So I guess I’m stuck cooking dinner again.