Please feel free to tell us how we can improve your cooking school experience and make you all better cooks!

I'd like to see a lesson on the steaming cooking method. Even though I thought I understood the basics of boiling/simmering/poaching, I found the lesson on submersion cooking methods very useful and would like to see something similar about steaming.

We have been working on a few lessons on steaming, so stay tuned, this is coming up. Cheers!

I think it would be helpful to be able to mark the edible exercises as completed as you go. It would be a great reminder to finish them if, when you look at your profile of completed lessons, it reminds you whether you've gone through all the edible exercises for that lesson or not.

We are working on a new feature that will integrate this checklist as the exercises are actually more important than the lessons themselves. Great idea. Thanks.

I liked the old way of displaying the Cooking School Lessons topics. The new way, with an expandable 'Topics' folder, is far less useful for me as I need to click (and click...) until I find what I want to look at. Please reverse this change.

Hi Diarmuid. Thanks for your feedback. I just wanted to point out that the old behavior is still present. Before we used to list just the lesson links. You can still click on the lesson links (or the lesson picture) to jump to the same lessons as before.

The expandable topics drop down was implemented by user request to allow students to quickly jump back to a particular topic in the cooking school for review if desired.

So, click on the lesson title link and there are no additional clicks required over the old behaviour. Hope this makes sense. Thanks again.

Thanks Joe, I guess the majority win - I still like the old way, which is more like a book index where you can see all lessons and lesson topics at the same time; not just each one you click, as it's more useful when 'just looking'. Your point about a student doing a lesson and having problems getting back to a particular topic could posibly be addressed by making the Topics a link.

I think a lesson or tip discussions on spicing foods would be great. General recommendations as to what goes godo with what and I guess just some general guidelines on food types and what spicing tends to work good for those food types.

I think one of the main subjects that have been overlooked is food safety, proper food handling, sanitation, cross contamination, eating raw fish and beef how to?, bacteria and parasites, etc. Because of its importance several lessons must be devoted exclusively to these subjects. I think most people have safety misconceptions that must be addressed with clear industry standard procedures.

This is a big subject that generally involves certification once completed. This is something that is on our radar for the future. Believe us we know how important food safety is and how valuable it would be as a lesson(s). In the meantime, we do try to incorporate food safety into our lessons and recipes wherever we can. Cheers!

Learning about spices and also about what foods go with what spices is something that we will do down the road. For now, we are focusing on teaching people "how" to cook the food.

It is also hard to tackle all of the spice and food combinations, as this is also a huge subject. In fact, there are entire books devoted to this one subject (the "Flavor Bible" is a good example).

That being said, we will be releasing a lesson on general herbs and spices in the not-so-distant future, but again this will provide general, but valuable, information on how to use and store, along with a few common combinations.

This is where recipes come into play. If you know how to cook the ingredients, then the many recipes out there can be used as your inspiration for different combinations, etc. Hope this helps!

Hello there Joe,

Thanks for the opportunity to share suggestions and concerns! There are a few things that I would love to see on rouxbe in the near future.

#1) I love to bake - desserts, pastries, pies, cakes, breads (especially breads). It would be great if you had some tips, lessons, and/or recipes for baking such as working with yeast, making, resting, and shaping dough, and of course recipes such as french bread.

#2) I live in Ohio, therefore most of the weather throughout the year where I live is very cold. Yet, I love outdoor cooking. It would be great if you had some tips, suggestions, lessons, or recipes that explained grilling and/or outdoor cooking methods that can be done indoors. What kind of indoor grills should I buy? How should I use them? And, will they result in the same great grill taste and quality?

#3) My favorite things to cook are traditional and authentic foods from distinct ethnic cuisines. I am always on the search for new exotic cooking methods and recipes from cuisines and ethnicities that I have never experienced before. Although you already have some great ethnic recipes and tips, I would love to see a little more of it. May I suggest some African cooking for example. I also like Brazilian and other Latin American cuisines as well as Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Indian, South Asian, East Asian, Pacific Islander, and Eastern European. You could also add more to what you already have for Asian, Mexican, Spanish, Greek (Spanish and Greek should not be put together by the way), Italian, and French.

These are just a few suggestions. I do love this website. I have already become exceedingly familiar with ethnic cuisines. Tying what I have learned before with the professional cooking skills that I am developing now will only make me become something I never dreamed of becoming in the kitchen! Thanks!

Hi Joseph
I am also one of the co-founders, so I hope you don’t mind, but I am going to address your suggestions
#1) There is a bread lesson coming up in the near future (you will however need to be a premium member to see it, in the meantime you can watch the Wheat and Gluten Lesson. As for desserts, pastries, pies and cakes…these are all things that we will go into down the road. In the meantime, there are quite a few recipes for these, with supporting tips and techniques in each video.

#2) A lesson on Grilling and/or outdoor cooking – this is quite specific and for now we are not focused in this area. We are focused on teaching people the fundamentals of cooking, whether indoor or outdoor. In the future, however, we may go into this in more detail with grilling and/or outdoor cooking.

#3) More ethnic and exotic foods. Again, these are quite specific and once you learn how to cook; meaning going through the cooking school to learn the skills and techniques behind recipes, you will be able to make many of these dishes, using any flavor combination you like. For instance, if you learn the fundamentals of How to Braise or How to Make a Stew, you will see that making an African stew is just a matter of changing a few ingredients, yet the method behind the dish is the same as if you were making a classic French stew. Then of course there is even more to learn about both of those, which is covered in the Combination Cooking Lesson (a method of cooking that uses both dry and moist heat.

I guess what I am saying is, when one is first learning how to cook, I mean really learning how to cook and not just following recipes, one needs to learn to walk before they can run. Does that make sense?

Keep up the good work Joseph. We are looking forward to you become part of the Rouxbe Cooking School - Cheers!

Hello!
An important improvement would be adding the conversion of weights and measures to metric system in the text of the recipes.
I think this would be most helpfull to a considerable number of students.
Thanks

Here is another thread that address this same question/suggestion. Cheers!

Thank you Dawn for your response to my suggestions before. I most definitely see your point. I am new to learning about basic cooking skills and techniques and am very excited about learning more in the near future. Applying what I learn with my exotic food interests is going to be a great experience. Thanks!

This is perhaps a bit far-fetched, but I think it would be just grand to offer some sort of "Rouxbe cooking retreat" to members, (obviously not included in membership fee), where those interested (and/or near enough to location) can actually get some hands on, face-to-face instruction. Maybe with a focus on different cuisines....

That sounds like fun! We have actually thought of this in the past. Perhaps this is something we might organize down the road. Cheers!!!

I'd be there. I can't think of a better experience. I live on the east coast, and I'd be there. I love Vancouver, I need to get back there.

The videos are explained very well, but as my mother language isn't
english, sometimes it's hard to me to understand some words or phrases.
It would be great add subtitles to the videos.
It doesn't need to be in other language, it can be in english.
If adding subtitles is complicated, may be a text of what is being said at the video will help too.

As an online school, I think this would help a lot of users.

I would like to learn more about proper storing of leftover meals along with more food safety items. I know the website has plenty of tips of food safety but I think it would be better to collect them all under one section that way we can read them all at once versus finding out each time I go to a new cooking lesson.

This is something that we may do down the road. We have even built Rouxbe so that we can eventually do it in other languages. But this would still be a big job to do and for now we are focused on finish the basic cooking school. Cheers!

In my opinión it would be extremely interesting advancingo on the bread making lessons towards something like brioche, croissant and some general pastry fundamentals, id be extremely interested in ducha topic, and as the cooking school so far has been pimarely focused on starters and main dish cooking techniques, it might be a very interesting addition to the lessons...I wish so hard not to have to buy those stabilizers filled, pain au lait and pastry in general...:* thanks a lot family

Bring it on!!

Also, would be nice if in the future you offered some kind of certificate? Like Level I, II, III completion? No biggie, but I'm really serious about learning everything I can about food and cooking, then find someone--anyone--who will let me teach them what I've learned.

I'm 50 years old and finally found what I want to do in life, thanks to Rouxbe I have been deeply inspired and my new passion and dream doesn't seem all that impossible now.

However, I have zero desire to become a chef at this age, but when friends ask how to make a dish, there's no greater feeling than teaching them the things I have learned.

The more I learn, the more I want to know. The more I know, the more I want to teach it to someone--anyone who will listen!

Would also be nice if there was a section where I could take notes on recipes I tried...and a shopping cart for the groceries I need, a future wish list of dishes I want to try and a place to put a week's worth of menus I'm going to cook week by week.

Ok, I know this is way too much to wish for, but there's a lot of fun the wishing.