Amid increasing consumer interest in plant-based eating, cooking classes supporting such diets have been proliferating.
Among the latest is a series launched last month by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that promotes preventative medicine and plant-based eating through its Food For Life program. The group’s African American Culinary Heritage plant-based nutrition and cooking class series continues through July in several locations around the country and online.
“Black Americans are increasingly adopting a plant-based diet for reasons including health, food justice, and the environment,” said Jennifer Paul, a registered dietitian with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine who helped develop the course curriculum, in a statement.
The six-week course is designed to explore the history of African American culinary traditions. The course will also seek to help participants who want to prevent or overcome high blood pressure, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and other health conditions that disproportionately affect African Americans.
Among the instructors for the classes, which are available online, are Charles Smith of My Health My Mississippi, and Cheryl Marshall, founder of Vegucan Health & Wellness.
Even in Las Vegas, where indulgence tends to take center stage, plant-based cooking classes have appeared. The Vegan Culinary School & Eatery recently opened there, offering online and in-person classes featuring local and visiting chefs.
This week the school is featuring Jesse Amaro, chef/owner of Love Amaro Pizzeria in Riverside, California, for two classes on making vegan pizzas, and another class on using tofu as an egg replacement, presented in partnership with Tofuture, which makes use of a tofu press to remove the water from the tofu before cooking.
Earlier this year, Dominique Crenn (pictured above), co-owner and chef of the three-Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, launched a class on modern vegetarian cooking on the streaming, subscriber-based service MasterClass. The class draws on her background growing up in France and seeks to teach students how to think of food as art while demonstrating cooking techniques such as blanching, roasting, and layering.
“In my class, I’ll show members how to take vegetarian ingredients they already know and turn them into something extraordinary and delicious that can hold their own next to any other entrée,” she said in a statement. “Whether a meat eater, a vegetarian, or a pescatarian—this class is for you.”
Crenn was the first female chef in the U.S. to earn two Michelin stars, and then the first to earn three. She also won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: West in 2018, among other accolades.
The world’s most renowned cooking schools have also joined the plant-based culinary education trend. The Culinary Institute of America, for example, has been partnering with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on the Menus of Change series for the past several years, which led to the recent launch of the Global Plant-Forward Culinary Summit and the Plant-Forward Kitchen.
“Over the next 10 years, the plant-forward juggernaut will transform our expectations of restaurants and away-from-home dining,” the CIA said in a statement describing its Plant-Forward Kitchen platform.
And last year, Le Cordon Bleu launched a 10-week online class in plant-based baking techniques, offering a professional certificate in Plant-Based Patisserie.
“We are going to be teaching students how to substitute products such as animal fats and eggs and introduce new processes where they can design new patisserie products,” the school said in an online video explaining the new course.
Related: Tamworth Distilling Makes Whiskey From Invasive Crabs; Ukranian Borscht Declared Endangered Heritage Tradition