Becoming Masterchef in Birmingham

OK, perhaps winning Masterchef is beyond most of us, but one of the most popular part time courses is cookery. Cookery classes have always been popular, but the rise of celebrity chefs and access to more exotic ingredients has made cooking fashionable as well as very useful and highly enjoyable.

If you search on this site you will see that in Birmingham alone there is a huge variety of cooking classes available from private lessons with top chefs, which understandably have prices to match the chefs’ awards, to classes run in local colleges and by Birmingham Adult Education Services.

The first thing to think about when deciding to enrol for cookery lessons is why you want to do them. Leisure classes are very different from professional classes. It is possible to do Professional Catering NVQs or Chef Catering NVQs part time, and if you want to work in a professional kitchen, these would be the courses for you.

If you do not need professional training but do require basic cookery skills there are a number of courses for you, including cooking for the family, healthy cooking, and cooking on a budget. There are also cookery courses dedicated to providing men with basic cookery skills, although the men might prefer being in mixed classes – they have the choice.

If you want to learn a new style of cooking or to improve your skills, then there are also a range of leisure courses available to you. Most classes run for particular levels, for example you may find Chinese cookery courses for beginners or at an intermediate or advanced level. If you don’t fancy Chinese cooking, then you might want to try an introduction to Ethnic cookery which will cover a number of cooking styles. Many Adult Education Centres also run courses in Caribbean cookery, Indian cookery, Thai cookery, and you can even find Mediterranean cookery lessons. If you really can’t decide which style of cooking you like best, you could always try fusion cookery.

If you do not want to learn about the cuisine of a particular area, then you might find courses on baking, cake decorating, cooking with chocolate, or general cooking workshops. Seasonal courses are also available in some colleges or education centres, for example cooking for Christmas, or cooking with autumn fruits. Some of these may be single day or weekend courses, others are provided as evening classes. Whichever you choose, have fun and enjoy the fruits of your labours!

Alex is a software developer and not a professional writer. Being a non native speaker he sometimes do mistakes in English.