Cara’s Cooking Coaches
Make yourself at home in the kitchen
Learn to cook with a BGSK coach by your side. With your coach guiding you and cheering you on, you'll soon be chopping, stirring, and sautéing with confidence and joy.
So far, we're in the greater New York City area.
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How Coaching Works
When you sign up for a cooking coaching session, you’ll select a classic menu from our offerings below. Whether you make steak or polenta, the food will be a starting point for you and your coach to jump off into the wonderful world of cooking intuitively. The coach will arrive at your house with all the necessary groceries and recipes, and you’ll set off an a kitchen adventure. By the time the coach leaves your (cleaned-up) kitchen, you’ll be excited to cook again.
**The first 15 people to sign up for a cooking coaching session will receive an extraordinary BGSK tote bag filled to the brim with cooking gear from LeCreuset, GIR, and Edgeware worth more than $200. Like your coaching session, the kitchen towels, skillet, olive oil, spatula, and more are all meant to help you in the quest to make your kitchen the place you want to be. You can see the full list of goodies here.**
At your two-hour coaching session, you’ll:
Learn the lifestyle.
With tips from your coach, you’ll start to figure out how to cook for yourself every day, a healthful and satisfying habit.
Get confident.
When you’re good at something, you enjoy it, and when you enjoy it, you’ll keep it up. Our friendly coaches will make being in the kitchen a pleasure.
Become flexible.
By learning to cook - rather than reading recipes - you’ll become a natural at substituting one ingredient or piece of equipment for another.
Love your kitchen.
Our coaches come to you and teach you to make the most of your kitchen, whether it’s big, sunny, and fully equipped or tiny, dingy, and sparse - unlike cooking classes held in fancy professional kitchens.
Grow your repertoire.
Maybe you love scrambling eggs and making marinara sauce for pasta, but it’s sometimes hard to expand what you make without serious attention from a knowledgeable cook.
Coaches
Coaches are experienced home cooks whose practical know-how and genuine enthusiasm for cooking are contagious. Each coach will guide you through a menu designed by Big Girls, Small Kitchen to optimize your exposure to all sorts of techniques. Coaches will translate recipe instructions from the page to real life.
In the process of cooking original, classic, comforting food, your coach will help make you at home in the kitchen. BGSK’s coaches come from both professional and non-professional cooking backgrounds. Some learned their trade from chefs; others from moms or husbands. Most importantly, they share a love for cooking, an eye for resourcefulness, and a deep knowledge about food.
Gifts
give as a giftCooking coaching sessions make fantastic gifts for recent college grads, dwellers in first apartments, take-out fanatics, newly engaged folks, young married couples, or anyone who craves a little more confidence in the kitchen.
If you book a session as a gift, we’ll send a festive e-gift certificate to the recipient and schedule a session directly with the lucky chef-to-be.
Menus
ITALIAN DINNER
$220
Tomato-Basil Crostini
Thyme Roasted Chicken Legs with Fingerling Potatoes
Arugula, Pickled Shallot, and Cherry Tomato Salad with Pecorino
Affogato
FRENCH BISTRO
$220
Baked Brie
Seared Flank Steak with Beurre aux Fines Herbes
Potato Gratin
Sautéed Spinach
Rich Chocolate Torte
VEGETARIAN SUPPER
$220
Smoky Carrot Dip
Polenta Steaks with Multi-Colored Peppers, Red Onions, and Fresh Mozzarella
Zucchini Coins with Basil
Seasonal Berry Crumble
BRUNCH WITH FRIENDS
$175
Smoky Potatoes with Tomatoes and Baked Eggs
Banana, Pumpkin or Apple-Walnut Loaf Cake
Sliced Fruit
Bacon or Sausage
MOROCCAN MEAL
$220
Homemade Hummus Tahini
Chicken Tagine with Sweet Potatoes
Israeli Couscous or Quinoa with Herbs
Cinnamon-Chocolate Almond Bark
SEASONAL MENU-Coach’s Choice
$240
Elect to be surprised with in-season produce!
Your coach will design a menu that matches the mood, the holiday, and the season.
FAQ
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Yes. There’s a space on the sign-up form where you can tell us about a few foods foods you don’t eat. We do have an explicitly vegetarian menu, and most menus are easily turned gluten-free. That said, we’ve picked out these recipes for teaching purposes, so we don’t want to stray too far.
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They’re amazing home cooks trained in the BGSK way of approaching the kitchen. Some of them have specialties in a particular cuisine, and some have professional experience. As the program grows, we’ll add more coaches, with more specialties, in more regions. In the future, we’ll introduce you to all the BGSK coaches via profiles on the site.
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Email [email protected] to find out more.
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You get 2 to 2½ hours of coaching, all the groceries you need to make the full menu, and recipe cards for every dish on your menu, plus a notebook for taking down any tips from your coach or tweaks you decide to make.
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We’ll send out a festive Paperless Post-style e-gift certificate to the recipient, explaining how to schedule the coaching session. The recipient will get in touch with us to set it up.
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A cutting board and a chef’s knife, a baking sheet, a skillet, a casserole pan, and a heavy pan with a lid. The idea is to learn to cook with the equipment you already own. But if you don’t own something important, tell us on the form, and the coach will supply.
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All recipes serve 4 people.
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Only the best for our coaching students! Part of learning to cook is being able to identify amazing ingredients, and your coach will point out why local, organic vegetables are special and what it means to buy grass-fed beef.
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That’s up to you! You can invite friends over for the end of the session and feed them. You can dine with your coach if you guys have bonded. Or stow everything away in the fridge and eat leftovers all week.
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Two. Coaching is all about individual attention, and we want you to get hands-on experience at every step of the cooking process. With too many cooks in the kitchen, you might miss something.
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You’ll receive a prompt confirmation email with additional details about scheduling.
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You’ll put in the top three dates and times that work for you. We’ll confirm the date within 36 hours of signing up.
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When you sign up for the coaching session.
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If you cancel more than 48 hours in advance, we’re happy to reimburse you or reschedule. If you cancel within 48 hours of the scheduled coaching session, we will have to charge you anyway. Sorry!
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If you live beyond the realm of New York metro area public transportation and are willing to pay travel expenses, we’ll do our best to find a coach who will come to you.
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We’ll be ordering groceries online and having them shipped to your home in advance of the coaching session. If this will be a problem, let us know when you sign up.
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If you’re an experienced home cook or trained professional with a desire to teach and a (relatively) flexible schedule, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at [email protected].
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The video was shot and edited by the brilliant Anika Anand and Ken Christensen.
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