Thomas Keller Teaches Cooking Techniques MasterClass Review

I’m taking the Thomas Keller Teaches Cooking MasterClass as part of the new MasterClass All Access Pass. And I’m loving every minute of it.

Masterclass have a phenomenal cooking class line up (Gordon Ramsay, Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters) so the All Access Pass is a no-brainer if you’re a foodie and aspiring chef: $180 for all MasterClasses in a year as opposed to $90 for just one class.

I’m really loving the MasterClass cooking series. I’m still stuck into the Gordon Ramsay one and love it. After seeing all the excitement for the Thomas Keller MasterClass, I figured why not?

So, without further ado, let’s get into this Thomas Keller Teaches Cooking MasterClass review. 

Here’s my Thomas Keller Teaches Cooking MasterClass review

Cooking fans are gonna hate me when I say this but…

I didn’t actually know who Thomas Keller was before I took this MasterClass. 

I’d heard his name a few times back when I watched cooking programs but I’d mainly learnt from British chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver.

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But just a few lessons into this MasterClass and I wanted to know all about the only American-born chef to hold multiple Michelin three star ratings.

Chef Keller’s teaching style is superb. His instructions are easy to follow and his enthusiasm and dedication to haute cuisine and refinement are incredibly infectious.

What I really LOVE about this course is that it focuses on cooking techniques rather than recipes because those are the most important parts.

This is really exciting for me and exactly what I wanted.

I’m having so much fun following Gordon’s recipes but I really appreciate Keller’s principle-based approach to cooking.

He explains the rationale for this in an excellent module called ‘Vegetables: An Introduction’.

It’s all about breaking everything down and getting a solid foundation!

For vegetables, foundations include:

• big pot balancing (asparagus)
• confit (eggplant and garlic)
• purée (potatoes, parsnips)
• braising (asparagus)
• roasting (zucchini)
• peeling (tomatoes)
• glazing (carrots)
• baking (beets)
• pickling

So far, I’ve already glazed some carrots (delicious), learned proper peeling, roasted zucchini, and puréed potatoes. I’ve not got to baking beets yet because, even though beets are my favourite vegetable, I’m living in Japan and they’re hard to get. But tomorrow I’ll start pickling for the first time!

Thomas Keller shows us why these elements are important to understand and teaches us the principles so we can apply them to any kind of vegetable that we want throughout the different seasons.

Chef Keller’s MasterClass gives us the tools to go to a grocery store and become inspired to do spontaneous cooking from what we’re able to find. 

This is the exact type of cooking class I wanted!

The Thomas Keller MasterClass is split up into 36 video lessons

The video lessons usually run to 10-20 minutes and the whole course is 6+ hours.

In addition to the video lessons (which have fantastic production value), you get access to the sleek student hub where you can meet other cooking students and participate in different ongoing exercises and discussions.

You also get access to office hours where Thomas will answer your questions (no questions answered yet because the course has just gone live – so get your questions in!).

On top of all that, you get a fantastic PDF booklet of about 100 pages with tons of homework.

There is so much to explore crammed into this MasterClass.

Make sure you have a budget set aside for ingredients and some optional cookbooks. I haven’t personally bought the recommended cookbooks yet but I love the fact that MasterClass offer a 30% discount on a bunch of Keller’s cookbooks.

I will certainly be taking them up on that when I buy my first book (after working through all of the video recipes).

You don’t need much to get started with the Thomas Keller MasterClass – but there are things I need to get in order to progress.

In the Kitchen Setup module, we gained a wonderful in-depth look at what essential tools we need in the kitchen. After seeing exactly what was important and what wasn’t, it became clear that even as an amateur chef there were a lot of tools I simply didn’t need in my kitchen. Looks like my drawers need a clean out…

That made it super easy to dive right into the course but right now there are modules I’m saving for later because I don’t have the equipment.

For example, Thomas Keller shows us how to make delicious agnolotti, fettuccine, linguine, spaghetti alla chittara, cavatelli, and spaghetti aglio e olio but I’ve had to modify the recipes because I couldn’t make the pasta dough from scratch – I will when I can though!

I love that this course is all about focused practice – finding a fundamental technique (e.g. Pasta dough, cooking a vegetable) and practising it so much (and getting it wrong) that you know every variable involved and exactly what you need to do – from there you can go on to master any dish.

I haven’t finished the MasterClass but I’ve learned so much already.

I loved the various discussions and homework around salt and oils and vinegars and flavour enhancers and flavour additions and so much more.

In addition to the practical hands-on stuff, I absolutely adored Chef Keller’s lessons on things like sourcing ingredients, what constitutes “local”, thinking in the shoes of the farmer, forager, and fisherman, and some mind-blowing (at least to me) stuff on organic and sustainability.

Will a seasoned chef learn as much from this masterclass as an eager amateur like myself?

Probably not. But I’m still convinced it will be well worth the price of admission. I’ve seen so many chefs who are advanced in their careers in the student comment section of this course expressing how much they’ve been able to apply to their craft.

Also, it’s just a heck of a lot of fun!

I am so grateful to have MasterClass in my life.

I know that sounds super corny.

But it’s true. I have so much fun and learn so much every day thanks to MasterClass.

The Thomas Keller, Wolfgang Puck, and Gordon Ramsay MasterClass have got me back in the kitchen and having a blast.

The writing courses from the likes of Aaron Sorkin and James Patterson have improved my writing skills.

And I’ve even learned how to tell jokes from the legendary Steve Martin.

If you’re ready to invest in MasterClass, I highly recommend you consider grabbing the All Access Pass so you can benefit from tons of world class learning materials.

That’s enough from me for now. Time to get back in the kitchen and whip up some Hollandaise with Chef Keller.

Let me know what you think of the masterclass and how it compares to the other cooking courses. 

I’m personally going to be putting together a big comparison of the different cooking courses with recipe pictures so people can see the strengths of each one. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

You can check out the Thomas Keller Teaches Cooking MasterClass here.