Lijiang Cooking Class with Lost Plate Food Tours

The Essentials

Start the day by exploring Lijiang’s oldest market to shop for your cooking class, with hands-on instruction led by a local Naxi minority family. Each person will prepare and eat three dishes.

What You'll Do

• Meet your host for the day at one of Lijiang's largest local markets - no tourists here - and discover the unique selection of seasonal ingredients available today.
• From discovering wild herbs used for traditional Chinese medicine to sipping on a local version of moonshine to trying a few local snacks, experience market life like a local.
• Receive hands-on instruction in our cooking studio from your local Naxi minority host family as you learn about the primary ingredients and flavors that create our local cuisine.
• Each guest will make and eat three dishes, including clay pot rice noodles - Yunnan's most popular staple food.
• See first-hand how the ancient Tea & Horse Caravan Road has influenced local cuisine with a dessert you never expected to find in China.
• Relax in our courtyard, enjoy a selection of snacks and drinks, and chat with your host family. You'll leave with a full stomach and new friends.

About This Tour

For thousands of years, Yunnan people communicated and traded with each other along what's known as the "Tea & Horse Caravan Road." This ancient trading route stretched over 4000km, and served as a link from Yunnan to India via Myanmar, Nepal, and Bhutan; to Tibet; and to Central China via Sichuan Province. While it became famous for its most traded commodities, tea and horses, it was a way of life for local nomads and minority settlements.

While these people traveled for weeks and months, they got clever with their culinary skills. Cured meats were the only way to preserve meat for long journeys, foraging for mushrooms and wild herbs became the norm, and the high altitude required cleverness to prepare simple things like rice. But beyond that, unique flavors and ingredients crisscrossed Yunnan from far-away places, making Yunnan's cuisine incredibly diverse and in many ways more SE Asian than traditional Chinese. This can be seen today in the markets, and in the dishes and cooking styles that locals use to prepare their family recipes.

During this cooking class, you'll join a local Naxi minority family and learn all about the influences, ingredients, and recipes that they have grown up with - and learn how to prepare them yourself so they can become part of your family recipe collection too!