Culinary Bootcamp: 4 Day Course

Culinary Bootcamp: 4 Day Course
Multi-Day course
9:30AM - 03:00PM

This 4 day crash course will cover the elemental principles of cooking well at home and get you moving in the kitchen with a spring in your step. Immerse yourself in 4 glorious days of prepping, cooking, and discussing everything about food!

Book this course

There are currently no dates available for this course.

Please contact us directly or check back here for future course dates.

Full course details

Want to know how to make a nurturing soup on a whim? Understand how to cook a perfect braise, break down a chicken, fillet a fish, or bake a loaf of bread with confidence?

Would you like to be able to create beautiful flavours from store cupboard ingredients? Learn how to work outside of a recipe? Open the fridge and feel inspired?

On this 4-day bootcamp, we'll equip you with the core of what you need to know to move through the kitchen in a well-rounded way, as well as with more confidence and freedom. We'll start with a deep dive into the building blocks of flavour, finish off with an introduction to the art of presentation, and make plenty of stops in between in order to give you a proper overview of what we consider the pillar principles in the kitchen.

These four days will cover an exciting, overarching kitchen gamut and give you great momentum for continued kitchen growth and adventures. If you have the curiosity, enthusiasm, and appetite for all things cooking, this is the right place for you. You'll never be stuck for ideas again!

Sample Menu

  • BUILDING BLOCK 1: BUILDING A GOOD FOUNDATION
    * How to make a great stock
    * How to make a great soup
    * Aromatic anchor points & flavour regions
    * Introducing marinades, brines & cures
  • BUILDING BLOCK 2:  ROAST, BRAISE, SEAR, SIMMER!
    * How to break down a chicken
    * How to make melt-in-your-mouth pork ribs
    * How to braise lamb shanks
    * How to sear a perfect steak
    * How to make a classic jus
  • BUILDING BLOCK 3: LAND & SEA INSPIRED COOKING
    * How to make a beautiful salad
    * How to work with roasted vegetables & whole grains
    * Flavour profiles & pairings
    * How to work with fish
    * Introducing shellfish

BUILDING BLOCK 4: INTO THE BAKERY
* How to make a quick bread
* How to make a yeasted bread
* How to make a croustade
* How to make a pie
* How to work with leftovers!

  • "I learned so much"

    I just completed the Culinary Bootcamp: 4 Day course. I could not recommend the course or the school highly enough. An amazing four days, the teachers are so generous with their time, information, energy and enthusiasm. The course is focused on "how to cook" as opposed to "how to follow a recipe". I learned so much and had such fun. Thank you.

    Eithne: Culinary Bootcamp
    March 2024

  • "Amazing experience"

    Amazing experience. So much learning and eating packed into 4 days but in a really fun and constructive way! Demo to hands on myself for each task was really helpful and Gerry, Cindy and Gráinne were all super friendly and knowledgeable. Will definitely be coming back for a day course or evening course!

    John: Culinary Bootcamp
    March 2024

  • "Well designed"

    This course is ideal for anyone wishing to improve their skills. It is very well designed and the staff are engaging, highly expert and delighted to impart their vast technical knowledge which in turn is supported by a wealth of collective experience.

    Anonymous, Culinary Bootcamp
    March 2023

Frequently asked questions

  • What do I need to bring?
  • Please bring the following to class with you:
    Apron
    Tea towel
    Water bottle
    Pen
    Sensible shoes!

    Aprons will be available in our shop if you prefer to purchase them from us.

  • Should I eat something before I come?
  • Note that in all of our courses you will be eating the dishes you prepare in the hands-on session and everyone generally leaves us well-fed. Keep in mind that it takes time to whip up what we've planned and we recommend you eat something before you arrive at the school. As a point of reference, on our Morning Courses, we'll have our first taste at around 11:30 and for our Day Courses, we usually enjoy our first taste around 12:30 PM - 1:00 PM. On our Evening Courses, we generally sample our first few bites around 8:30 PM.

    All food cooked in the school is intended to be eaten on the premises. For health and safety reasons, no savoury or unapproved items may be taken home.

  • What level of cooking experience do I need?
  • The beauty of how we design all of our courses is that anyone of any level can join us and learn heaps. While someone new to the kitchen will find support as they maneuver through new techniques, the more seasoned cooks in our group will thrive on all the pointers we offer for further improvement. Our personalized approach allows for really healthy breathing space in terms of suitability because we always teach our course material in a layered way and we know how to quickly adapt to a moving room. Constant, open-ended learning is one of the things we love the most about being in the kitchen and our tutors' enthusiastic teaching style and patience is a testament to that.

  • Who typically takes this course?
  • We have both a wonderful community of regulars and constant stream of new students joining our classes. On any given course, you can expect a group of great diversity in both background and experience, many locals, and a good few travelers. What everyone seems to have in common though is that they are eager to eat and learn and be in good company.

  • What if I have a food allergy or dietary restrictions?
  • If you suffer from a severe nut, egg, dairy, seafood, wheat allergy or coeliac disease, please contact us before booking onto a course and we'll be able to confirm whether or not your specific course menu is adaptable. If we are able to accommodate, note that the changes will be made for the specific student in question but that the curriculum for other students will remain the same as the original. Please note that certain course themes may not be adaptable in order to stay true to the course theme and brief.

    When making a booking, be sure to highlight if your food allergy is life threatening and if it is, you must bring an Epi-pen. If your food allergy is airborne and severe or life threatening, due to the wide range of course themes and events that we host throughout the days and evenings, our environment is not safe for you and we regret that we cannot accept your booking. Please note that we are a busy school environment and while every care will be taken to provide a safe and enjoyable cooking experience for all students, the allergin(s) you are affected by may have been handled at some point previous to your arrival, there is always the risk of cross-contamination.

  • What if I can't make it to a course or dining event that I've booked?
  • Note that if you cannot make a Morning Course, Evening Course, 1-2 Day Course or Pop Up Restaurant Night that you have booked, you are more than welcome to send someone in your place (16 years or older). There's no extra cost for this so just give us a buzz and let us know who to expect and we'll take good care of them. If this can't be arranged and you need to cancel your place, please take a look at our Terms and Conditions to see what rules apply to you. Please note that if you are booked on as a Cook's Club Member, the membership is non-transferrable and therefore your place on the class is non-transferrable. Multi-Day Courses (3-5 days in length) are reserved for the individual booked onto the course or a single attendee (e.g., if you aren't able to attend certain days, someone else cannot be sent in your place on those days). For our full Terms & Conditions, go to https://dublincookeryschool.ie/terms.

  • Is there a discount to booking onto more than 1 course?
  • We don't offer a discount on multiple bookings but we do sometimes run spotlight sales on various courses. If you would like to stay abreast of these surprise sales, just sign up to our newsletter. You can find a link on our homepage!

  • Is there an age requirement?
  • All of our regular courses are designed for adults and our minimum age requirement for someone coming on their own is that they are at least in Transition Year (an exception to this is on specialized age-specific courses such as Growing Gourmets). If your child is younger than this and you think that he or she would enjoy one of our regular courses, we'd love to have them on but they must be accompanied by an adult. Please alert us within the comments section of your online booking if any of the above applies to the attendee; note that our course fees apply to each participant or attendee, regardless of age. Note that our Growing Gourmet Courses are for students Juniors (11-14 years of age) and Seniors (14-17 years of age).

  • Do you have courses geared towards TY students?
  • For TY students, we have terrific 4 and 5- Day Courses here that provide a great curriculum for life skills experience; when booking on, please indicate that this is a TY student as this course is open to the public. We also have a Growing Gourmet series (for 12-17 year olds) that you should check out if you are looking for a course specifically geared to the younger age group!

  • What is parking like in the area?
  • Metered parking can be found right outside the school Monday-Saturday from 8.00-19.00 and is available for €5 a day on the stretch from Brookfield Avenue up to the door of the cookery school, and on Sweetmans Avenue. Other spaces are available in the area on an hourly charge. Please resist from parking outside the houses on Brookfield Terrace and Brookfield Place. Please also don't park on the grass verges opposite the school or on the double yellow lines in the area. For more info, go to https://dublincookeryschool.ie/find-us.

Your course itinerary

09:30 AM – 9:45AM

As with all our classes, please bring the following with you: Apron Tea towel Water bottle Pen Sensible shoes! For this very special course, we also encourage you to bring the knife that you would normally use at home as we'd like to give you as much feedback and support as possible in consideration of the tools you would normally use (and your chef's knife is the most important one!). If it better suits you, you're still by all means more than welcome to simply use our school knives while you are here. Additionally, if you bring a little notebook and pen to scribble away in, that could be beneficial -- there will be a lot of extra tips and tricks and advice flying around the kitchen in the coming days and it would be a shame to miss or forget any of it! We will be sampling what we cook through the week with a great feast of effort at the end of the final day. We do recommend that you have breakfast before arriving each morning as we jump straight into quite a bit of activity. Note also that on the first day, the menu is on the lighter side as we will be busy establishing the foundation of what we are cooking for the rest of the week. Rest assured that we will always have some fruit and healthy bites available to snack on in the meantime though!

09:45 - 15:00

We’ll welcome you into our modern, mirror-lined Demo Kitchen. The tutors leading the session will introduce our special plans for the day and then jump right into the delicious tasks at hand. You'll head into the Hands-On sessions to help connect the dots. In our practical sessions, everyone works in pairs with specific elements organized for each person. Don’t worry if you’re flying solo today, we’ll find you a partner in crime. And yes, you will be sampling what we make all day long!

15:00

At this point, we're generally wrapping up the cooking! This is a great time to raise any lingering questions you may have with our team.