Yuppiechef.com have started hosting online cooking courses and last year I completed The Art Of Baking with Sarah Graham. This course is free of charge so take a look if you want to ‘test drive’ the cooking school before committing to further courses. The first course on offer this year is Mastering Meat 1 with Peter Goffe-Wood. The course is divided into 6 lessons and each lesson has a video tutorial. After watching the video you can review the course notes which can be downloaded in PDF format or printed out for future reference. Each lesson also includes a recipe or recipes for you to try. You track your own progression through the course and there is no time limit in how long you have to cover each section. The last step of each lesson is to take part in a fun quiz. You will be given the opportunity to review your answers and you can take the quiz again if you don’t score 100%. If you get stuck there is a forum for questions as well as a support link.
Mastering Meat 1:
Lesson 1: meat basics where you will learn what is important in selecting and cooking a piece of meat and you can practice by making rump steak with a red wine butter.
Lesson 2: knife skills will show you how to hold a knife, and more importantly how to keep your knives sharp. After learning how to use your knife properly you can put your knife skills to the test by making chicken satay and/or grilled spatchcocked chicken.
Lesson 3: rules for roasting covers everything you need to know about making the perfect roast. 3 recipes are provided and you can make roast leg of lamb, roast chicken or roast sirloin (or all 3 if you want).
Lesson 4: frying fundamentals starts with the basics and then shows you how to fry the perfect steak. Pete has given us 2 recipes to try, one for pan fried venison loin and the other for stir fried pork fillet.
Lesson 5: brilliant barbecue is something everyone with a braai should learn to master. This lesson also includes the golden rules for mincing so that you can make gourmet hamburgers.
Lesson 6: stocks and sauces has loads of top tips and great recipes for red wine sauce, mustard sauce and green peppercorn sauce.
Overview of Mastering Meat 1:
I found this course to be really basic and something a new cook would benefit from. The recipe choices were great, and the best part of this course for me was the list of types of knives and their uses as I can now add a few more knives to my wish list. I also found the hints and tips for using a meat grinder extremely helpful.
Following on from this course is Mastering Meat 2. The 6 lessons cover braising, stewing, curing and smoking, terrines and pâtés, advanced barbecue, barbecue accompaniments.
Overview of Mastering Meat 2:
This was a more advanced course and I learnt a few new things which was great. I would recommend this course for anyone who knows what they are doing in the kitchen.
My thoughts:
I did not watch all of the videos but played them in the background while I carried on working. This was because my video player is extremely slow due to our really bad internet speed. There was an option to use another player, but I was quite happy to listen to Pete and just watch parts of the videos. I think an option to download them would be great as this would mean I could transfer them to the video player on my tablet and watch them at home where there is no noise from the workshop to interfere with my listening.
I decided to print the recipe for home cured bacon from Mastering Meat 2 and I was really impressed that I could remove the image, take out lines, change the font size and print the recipe with ease.
The quizzes were fantastic and I did them without referring to the notes to see how much I had retained. For all except the last quiz in each course you are able to see which answers were correct, and which ones weren’t. In the last quiz of both courses I did not get 100% and I could not review the test to see what I had got wrong. In one of the quizzes in Mastering Meat 2 the answer I gave was correct according to the notes, but marked incorrect. It is recommended that you get 80% for a quiz before moving on to the next lesson.
At the end of each course I was given a certificate to show I had completed the course. This is a lovely touch – well done! I also like the fact that I can go back and access the courses and the recipes! You can purchase a single cooking course for R255 which gives you 2 year access to that course; a monthly membership for R195 per month which gives you one month’s access to all the courses or an annual membership which gives you a full year’s access to all the courses for R1920. The next 2 courses will be hosted by Franck Dangeruex and cover French Classics and Easy Entertaining.
Give Away: 2 year access to Mastering Meat 1
How to enter to win 2 year access to Mastering Meat 1:
COMPETITION NOW CLOSED
Conditions of entry:
- Your prize will be sent to you via email
- The prize is 2 year access to Mastering Meat 1 and may not be exchanged for cash
- Entries close at midnight on the 22nd of June
- I will choose the winner of the course at random
- I will inform the winner by email. I will send one email only and if the winner does not respond within 24 hours I will choose another winner
- The value of the course is R225
- Entry is open to all readers of this blog worldwide
Disclosure: I was given access to these courses by Yuppiechef.com. My access was not based on me posting about the course. This post is in line with my blogging policy.
What I blogged:
- one year ago – Milk Chocolate Cream Cheese Tart
- two years ago – Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes
- three years ago – Lemon and Vanilla Apple Tart
I would love to do these courses. Very interested in trying gourmet hamburgers. The 2nd course really has piqued my interest a lot.
It was really good Rosemary. Good luck!
Pan fried venison loin
Good luck Joanne 🙂
Interested in the stocks and sauces
Good luck and thanks for entering!
I am very interested in trying the home cured bacon – Will you be doing a post about this recipe that you tried at some stage ?
Thx
I will do a post once I have tried it Liesl 🙂
Sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing Tandy! 🙂
My pleasure Giovanna 🙂
I won’t enter, as I won’t be able to cook all the recipes just for myself, but it’s a lovely prize for the lucky winner. xxx
Thank you for the sentiment Cindy 🙂
I would love to learn to cook a delicious steak with a green peppercorn sauce.
Good luck Jess!
Terrines and pates sound awesome. Lovely, honest post Tandy 🙂 xx
Thank you Tami, and good luck!
Being vegetarian, I of course, have no idea about meat – but I would like to cook it one day for those around me, so this course sounds very good 🙂
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
I hope that one day you get to cook met with confidence – good luck for your entry 🙂
ARGH… Meat at cooking school was a year of torture for me, I just couldn’t get into dealing with meat ‘like that’. It was so bad, I turned vegetarian until completion of that section. Amazing really I made it through. I prob should go back and do a refresher course. This is a really great concept Tandy, I like this way of learning. Im a BBQ girl from way back! 🙂
Happy Wednesday to you lovely lady, wishing you a fine and dandy rest of week too. x
Thank you for the lovely comment Anna! I became 100% vegetarian when we had to dissect frogs at school 🙂
I think I’d like to learn about the perfect roast. I feel like I’m still almost ‘scared’ of cooking meat because I’ve never been a big meat eater and don’t really know what I’m doing. Sounds like an interesting course!
It is very interesting Helen and good luck!
HI Tandy, what a wonderful give away. I would love the curing and smoking and braising and roasting. Thanks!
The curing is the most interesting for me right now! Good luck and thank you for your entry 🙂
Men, you are good, Tandy. I don’t cook much with meat…maybe that’s why, it looks very complicated. Good coursers though…
ela h.
I love cooking with meat but it was a huge learning curve for me as I used to be vegetarian 🙂
Tandy, your amazing innovatative posts never seize to amaze & inspire me
Thank you so much for the compliment, and for reading this post Usha 🙂
I would love to win this course as I have been trying hard to learn cooking and handling meat. I get kind of scared just at the thought of touching skin. I know, weirdo!
Not weird at all Ami! Good luck 🙂
Hi Tandy!
Well, I took a knife course once and found it to be very helpful I feel so much more confident about using knives now.
I think I can really appreciate the mastering meat, don’t think it would be too simple for me, I need all the help I can get with meat, it’s my weakness.
The stocks and sauces intrigued me the most, I would love to learn how to make stocks and sauces, something I haven’t invested enough time in as of yet in my life. I believe that’s what separates blah cooking with restaurant cooking, the ability to make a good stock or sauce!
I would love to do a ‘live’ knife skills course just to make sure I can sharpen my own knives. Thank you for the entry and good luck 🙂
This would be a great gift for someone! I bet there is plenty to learn about mastering meat that we just don’t know 🙂
Even I learnt something new!
I’ve seen these online cooking classes and have been tempted to try one out. I’d love to learn to make a good roast chicken. I’m always worried it’s not cooked properly.
Thanks for the comment Cindy! And good luck in the draw. I always roast my chicken for 90 minutes at 180degC and that seems to work for me 🙂
I think this is a fun and excellent way to learn things right. Tips and techniques given by experts are so handy in the kitchen especially during time-pressured scenarios or occasions!
Julie
Gourmet Getaways
That is so true Julie 🙂
I’ve always wanted to make sachertorte. This looks amazing!
Thank you so much Emily, and thanks for the visit 🙂