A Private Cooking Class in a Marrakech Riad

Shop the market with a chef, cook a slow tagine in a riad kitchen and eat it on the rooftop at dusk.

Starting at the Market

Most classes open with a stroll through a neighborhood market, your chef pointing out what’s good today: tomatoes at their peak, the right lamb for long, slow cooking, and spices worth buying whole instead of powdered. Then it’s back to the riad, where the kitchen is usually home-sized, set just off the central courtyard and stocked with clay tagines, brass platters and a mortar and pestle polished by long use.

Building the Tagine

You pound and blend the spices, sear the lamb or vegetables, then build the layers in the tagine and leave it to murmur gently while the class carries on. As it cooks, you might shape flatbread by hand or put together a salad, while glasses of mint tea are filled from a height in the time-honored way. Tagine and couscous are the usual focus, sometimes with Moroccan salads, bread and a lesson in making mint tea. No experience is needed; your chef adjusts the pace and how hands-on you get.

Dinner on the Rooftop

You eat what you’ve made on the spot, frequently up on the roof terrace, while the call to prayer rolls over the old city and dusk settles in. Allow three to four hours from market to meal; an earlier class ends with a rooftop lunch, a later one with dinner up there as the sun goes down.

Why a Private Class

Group classes keep pace with the slowest and often leave out the market altogether, handing you ingredients already weighed. On your own, the chef can change the speed, the menu and even how much chili goes in, and the shopping becomes a highlight instead of the first thing dropped when time runs short, a real window onto how Moroccans cook. Out Of Office arranges the class, the market walk and the riad, timing it to fit the rest of your day, perhaps after a morning in the souks. Your specialist plans the wider Marrakech stay, and our Morocco guide covers LGBTQ+ rights and travel advice.