Want the best souvenir from a trip to Bali? Why not take an Ubud cooking class, where you learn all your favorite dishes from your trip!
A Balinese cooking class is the ultimate way to bring memories of your vacation home, time and again, every time you pick up a knife.
When you take a cooking class in Ubud, it’s a chance to go beyond the Instagrammable cafes, picturesque rice fields, and get a taste (literally) of the real Bali!
Also learning to cook your favorite Balinese dishes at home is a fun and hands-on way to bring you closer to Balinese culture.
Plus, it’s a nice flex to impress your favorite people (or perhaps a new date you’re wooing) back home — so be sure to add a cooking class to your Ubud itinerary!
On the other hand, if you’re traveling Bali with kids, it’s also a fun way to get them involved in something hands-on and fun!
| No time to read the full post? My top pick is this Balinese cooking class with family compound visit — it mixes a traditional Ubud cooking class with an intimate cultural experience. Plus it’s private (and still affordable) so you’ll have personalized attention every step of the way. ⇢ ⇢ Book it here! |
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My Top 3 Picks: Ubud Cooking Classes
No time to read the full article about these cooking classes and just want my top 3 picks and the highlights of each?
I’ve got you.
#1 TOP PICK
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Private Balinese Cooking Class with Family and Compound Visit
✔️ See inside of local Balinese compound
✔️ Get a 1:1 cooking lesson on classic family-style dishes
#2 PICK
Subak Cooking Class with Optional Market Visit
✔️ Learn 9 different dishes per class
✔️ Morning cooking class has option to visit a local market
#3 PICK
Farm-to-Table Ubud Cooking Class on Organic Farm
✔️ Visit a community-run organic farm & make 6 dishes
✔️ Split into vegetarian & omnivore groups, with vegan options available
The Top 7 Ubud Cooking Classes
1. Private Balinese Cooking Class with Family and Compound Visit
🕰️ Tour Length: 4 hours | 🌟 Rating: 5/5 stars (125+ reviews) | 🥣 Book Now
| Sample Dishes You’ll Learn: – Pepes ikan (fish steamed in banana leaves) – Bumbu kuning (turmeric and coconut milk braised chicken) – Bregedel (hand-ground fried corn fritters) ➜ Check class availability and rates here |
This private Balinese cooking class is my top pick because you simply can’t beat the one-on-one attention a private class offers you.
If you are really serious about learning to cook Balinese food, this is the perfect tour for you!
The tour includes pick-up and drop-off from Ubud hotels, where you’ll be whisked away to Dewa and Jero’s charming traditional Balinese walled compound.
Seeing inside a Balinese compound is a special privilege not every tourist gets to see, as you must be invited to do so. These are people’s homes, after all!
Luckily, on this tour you’ll be treated like one of the family, as Dewa, Jero, and their family help teach you some of their favorite Balinese dishes in a traditional wood-fired oven.
“What an incredible experience. This was so much more than a cooking class. We began with an extensive tour of Dewa’s village, lifestyle and culture… We cooked 5 dishes and have the entire recipes to take home. I would say this was one of the top highlights to our two week trip to Bali.” – Woodward M.
Read more reviews here!
You’ll also get to visit their garden and see what spices and herbs are grown in their compound, including galangal, cacao, cloves, and nutmeg.
The family stresses that this is not a professional cooking class, but rather an athentic learning experience where you can meet a local family — who happen to be excellent cooks — and learn about Balinese culture and food with them.
2. Subak Cooking School and Optional Market Visit
🕰️ Tour Length: 5 hours | 🌟 Rating: 5/5 stars (300+ reviews) | 🥣 Book Now
| Sample Dishes You’ll Learn: – Ayam bumbu (Balinese fried chicken) – Tempe Manis (Fried tempeh with sweet sauce) – Balinese vegetable soup ➜ Check class prices and availability here! |
If you want to learn to cook as many different types of Balinese food as possible, this is the cooking class for you!
This cooking class boasts the largest number of dishes they’ll teach you in a single class: an impressive nine dishes per class!
With so many dishes, you’re certain to find your new favorite Indonesian dish!
If you want to also learn a little more about Balinese culture, opt for the morning cooking class because it includes a market visit.
The afternoon class is still worthwhile, but the market is closed, so it’s impossible to combine a cooking class and a market visit in this way.
“Best experience ever. I really recommend doing the class in the morning youll never get to experience the local market like this without the tour” – Marina C.
Read more reviews here!
Note that since you learn to make so many dishes, this is a pretty jam-packed half-day cooking class.
It’s perfect for those really dedicated to learning Balinese cuisine and wanting to hone their cooking skills!
However, if you’re more of a casual cook and just want to learn a handful of traditional dishes, you may want to opt for a shorter cooking class in Bali.
3. Bali Paon Ubud Cooking Class
🕰️ Tour Length: 5 hours | 🌟 Rating: 5/5 stars (70+ reviews) | 🥣 Book Now
| Sample Dishes You’ll Learn: – Opor ayam (chicken in coconut curry) – Pepes ikan (steamed fish with spicy paste in banana leaves) – Sate lilit Bali (minced chicken meat satay) ➜ Check class availability and rates here! |
For a more affordable Ubud cooking class, look for a group Balinese cooking class like this one.
You’ll learn to recreate all your Bali favorites while also visiting a local market to shop for the freshest ingredients (morning classes only).
While it’s not as intimate a setting as the private class on the family compound in the first tour listed, you’ll still get a chance to see a traditional Balinese home.
“I really enjoyed this experience, it was one of the favourite things I did on my visit to Bali. Visiting the market to understand the ingredients, and then going to a traditional Balinese house to cook in, which is set up in a class structure for cooking. The food we cooked was exceptional and I enjoy every part of this tour.” – Constance M.
Read more reviews here!
Mama Puspa, the host of this group Ubud cooking class, is jovial and welcoming, and she’ll quickly have you learning as much as you can in this half-day class.
That said, the downside of a larger group like this one is that you may not get to individually prepare each dish, since the dishes tend to be divvied up amongst the group.
However, for a fun group atmosphere perfect for solo travelers looking to meet other like-minded tourists, you’ll likely find that this is the ideal Ubud cooking class!
4. Farm-to-Table Ubud Cooking Class on Organic Farm
🕰️ Tour Length: 6 hours | 🌟 Rating: 5/5 stars (30+ reviews) | 🥣 Book Now
| Sample Dishes You’ll Make: – Gado gado (freshly cooked veggies with peanut sauce) – Satay lilit (chicken mince satay with bumbu bali spice paste) – Black rice pudding (sticky rice with palm sugar and coconut milk) ➜ Check availability for this Ubud cooking class here! |
All of these Ubud cooking classes offer fresh, delicious Balinese dishes you’ll drool over long after your class ends.
But nothing is fresher then when the produce from its own organic farm is used for your cooking class in Ubud!
Plus, the farm is community-run, ensuring that the entirety of a local community gets to benefit from tourism.
Plus, this is one of the more vegetarian- and vegan-friendly Ubud cooking classes — you’ll be split into vegetarian and non-vegetarian groups, and even the veggie groups will have vegan adaptations.
“My husband and I are vegan and were a little apprehensive about doing this class, where some people might be cooking meat, over one that was fully vegan. However, the class was extremely vegan friendly – the group was split at the beginning into vegetarians and non-veg (about 2 thirds of the group of 12 were vegetarian), all meat prep was done in a different room before being cooked in a different part of the open air kitchen, and all vegetarian recipes had a vegan version!” – Louise B.
Read more reviews here!
This is the perfect cooking class if organic food and sustainable farming practices are just as interesting to you as learning to cook delicious meals.
You’ll get to pick your very own vegetables, plucked fresh from the garden, before learning to make six Indonesian dishes which vary by what’s fresh and in season.
You’ll even get to take home your very own recipe book so you can easily recreate the magic at home — a very thoughtful touch!
It’s a great way to spend an Ubud day trip!
5. Private Market Tour (with Photography) + Family Cooking Class
🕰️ Tour Length: 5 hours | 🌟 Rating: 5/5 stars (80+ reviews) | 🥣 Book Now
| Sample Dishes You’ll Make: – Satay ayam (chicken skewers roasted over an open fire) – Gado gado (freshly cooked veggies with peanut sauce) – Bakwan sayur (fried mixed vegetable fritters) ➜ Check class availability and prices here! |
This tour is similar to other Ubud cooking classes that start with a market tour before bringing you into a family home to learn some Balinese classics.
However, this is a completely private class experience, making the cost a little higher than some other cooking classes, but not dramatically so.
The individualized attention and customization you can request is a great value-add for a minimalistic price increase.
Your host, Putu, will warmly welcome you and show you the ins and outs of a Balinese market, allowing you ample time to not only shop but stop and snap pictures of the market if you like.
“Putu was an wonderful, gracious host! Her family immediately made us feel welcome… The market tour was fascinating, trying new fruits, experiencing new scents, and watching daily Balinese life unfold. Both Putu and her cousin who helped with the cooking had good English and were able to easily communicate things about their culture and way of life.” – Kyle S.
Read more reviews here!
You and Putu will cook about 2-3 main dishes, so it’s more about in-detail quality education as opposed to churning out as many dishes as possible.
It’s a great choice to start small if longer, more intensive Ubud cooking classes are intimidating.
It’s also shorter than other tours, with the cooking portion lasting a little under 2 hours.
If you’re looking for a starter, private cooking class in Ubud, this class should be your pick!
6. Private Multigenerational Compound Visit with Meal + Private Cooking Class
🕰️ Tour Length: 3 hours | 🌟 Rating: 5/5 stars (220+ reviews) | 🥣 Book Now
| Sample Dishes You’ll Make: – Gado gado (green veggies and peanut sauce) – Tempe manis (sweet fried tempeh) – Balinese vegetable soup ➜ Check class availability and rates here! |
Feel truly like part of a Balinese family when you join this Ubud cooking class in a multi-generational compound.
Compounds are a uniquely Balinese way of living, intertwined with culture and religion, and it’s not something every tourist gets to experience.
Mixing a private visit to a family compound with a private cooking class is an excellent way to see a different side to Bali that many people miss.
In between cooking, you can also tour the family temple and compound, seeing where they grow jackfruit, cacao, coffee, bananas, and more, as well as keeping their pigs, ducks, chickens, and cows.
“We had a wonderful night cooking with Putu in her home. Not only did we learn about traditional Balinese food, we learned about her family’s religion and Balinese culture… They were extremely welcoming and spoke great English. Our family of four had a private cooking lesson and we made five traditional Balinese dishes, followed by a huge dinner and local beers.” – Lori M.
Read more reviews here!
You’ll appreciate that everything is prepped and chopped for you before your arrival, so you can just focus on the fun cooking part and none of the prep work!
Once you make a meal — typically at least 5 dishes — your host, Putu and her husband Pasta, their children, and her grandparents, will all join you for a delicious lunch or dinner in the compound.
You’ll also get to learn about traditional Balinese medicine that Putu makes called jamu, local alcohol made in Bali, and about her grandparents’ local rice farm nearby.
7. 4-Hour Balinese Cooking Class in Ubud
🕰️ Tour Length: 4 hours | 🌟 Rating: 4.8/5 stars (120+ reviews) | 🥣 Book Now
| Sample Dishes You’ll Make: – Tahu kare (tofu curry with Balinese spices) – Lawar bali (mixed Balinese-style vegetables) – Dadar galung (cake with coconut and palm sugar) ➜ Check cooking class + tour availability and rates here! |
Running short on time in Bali and you want don’t watn to spend all day in an Ubud cooking class?
This half-day 4-hour tour encompasses a morning market tour and a Balinese cooking class with veggie options available, all in a short amount of time.
You’ll cook Balinese classics ranging from sate lilit to ayam jamur soup to pepes tuna, depending on what’s fresh that day!
“We had the best morning, exploring the market and being introduced to ingredients… We got to eat everything at the end, our hosts were friendly and funny. One of the best experiences we’ve had so far!” – Claire
Read more reviews here!
This is the perfect tour for people with limited time in Bali who want to tackle as much as they can in a single, convenient outing.
And even with that short time, you’ll still be able to sample a surprising amount of dishes!
FAQs about Cooking Classes in Ubud
Is there a vegetarian or vegan option for the dishes?
Bali is an extremely vegetarian and vegan friendly destination, and many cooking classes will offer vegetarian versions on request.
Check each individual class to see if they specify whether vegan or vegetarian options are available.
This class most definitely caters to vegans and vegetarians, with a separate group always dedicated to plant-based travelers, and meat-eaters prepare their food in a separate area.
How much does a typical cooking class in Bali cost?
This depends where you visit in Bali — Ubud is generally cheaper than say, Seminyak or Canggu or Uluwatu.
The price of a cooking class in Ubud largely depends on how large the group is and if the tour offers something special, like a compound or farm visit.
Generally, the cheapest tours are around $25 per person and the priciest tours are about $75 per person.
Are private classes available?
Definitely! There are private classes available if you prefer more individualized attention, usually for quite fair prices.
For example, this private cooking class is relatively inexpensive and also includes a compound visit and a chance to be welcomed into a traditional Balinese home.
This private cooking class is a little more pricy, but it also includes a market visit with chance for photography!
Are these cooking classes able to accommodate allergies or intolerances?
This will largely depend on class to class, and it’ll also depend on the severity of your allergy.
For example, peanuts are very popular in Balinese cuisine, so if you have a severe allergy to peanuts, it’s unlikely that these cooking classes will be a safe environment for you.
If you have celiac, you may be able to eat some of the dishes, but communicate well with your hosts regarding what gluten actually is and what ingredients (like soy sauce) have it.
Traditional Balinese Foods You Might Make
Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the most famous Balinese dishes you might make on an Ubud cooking class.
- Gado-Gado: Traditionally made with a mix of vegetables, tofu, tempeh, and sometimes boiled eggs, vegans can opt for a version without the eggs. The dish is drizzled with a tasty savory-sweet peanut sauce that is all-too-addicting.
- Sate Lilit: This kebab-style dish is made of minced meat (typically fish or chicken). The meat is mixed with grated coconut, coconut milk, lime leaves, and spices. Then, it’s wrapped around bamboo sticks and grilled.
- Soto Ayam: This flavorful chicken soup is made with turmeric so that it’s a beautifully sunny yellow color. It’s served with rice, vermicelli, and a variety of garnishes.
- Pepes Ikan: Fish, typically tuna or something else locally caught, is wrapped in banana leaves with a blend of herbs and spices, then it is either steamed or grilled.
- Ayam Pelalah: Shredded chicken is seasoned with chili, lime leaves, and other spices for a tasty chicken salad-like dish.
- Nasi Goreng: Indonesian fried rice, typically made with egg cut into ribbons, vegetables, and a protein of choice, often chicken or tofu.
- Pisang Goreng: For something sweet, the quintessential Balinese desert is fried bananas. It’s naturally vegan, simply made by frying banana slices in a batter until crispy
Allison Green is a former teacher who has been travel blogging since 2016. She has a Masters in Teaching and a B.A. in English and Creative Writing. Her blog posts merge her background as an educator with her experience traveling to 70+ countries to encourage ethical, meaningful travel. She has been a speaker at the World Travel Writers Conference and her writing, photography, and podcasting work has appeared in National Geographic, CNN Arabic, CBC Canada, and Forbes, amongst others. Now a full-time traveler, she has lived in Prague, Sofia, New York City, and the San Francisco Bay Area.