Sicily Cooking Vacations
Looking for a Sicily Cooking Vacation ?
Imagine learning local Sicilian cooking while having the time of your life on a dream vacation in Italy. All of the cooking classes in these Sicily cooking vacations are 100% hands-on, done as a group of friends cooking together. Best of all, you live true Sicilian Island life as you get to know locals, eat in local homes, and participate in local Sicilian traditions.
You will be cooking, singing, dancing, dining, wining, relaxing, having fun throughout your vacation. During the trip, you will learn some wonderful fresh recipes and techniques, and also make friends for life.
It’s the perfect way of learning to cook delicious food while discovering the provincial culture and cuisine on a Sicily cooking vacation.
Available Sicily Holidays:
Here is what we offer in our Sicily cooking vacations:
- Learn to cook with 100% hands on cooking classes.
- Cooking lessons with Local Home Cooks for some classes, and professional chefs on others.
- Stay in some truly unique boutique accommodations that stay true to the local culture.
- Our Own Private Boats for all outings by boat.
- All Inclusive cooking vacation with included excursions each day whenever we are out of the kitchen.
- English speaking, Native Italian chefs and hosts.
- Small groups who speedily become dear friends.
- Organic farm-to-table ingredients used in all cooking classes, often the local catch of the day.
- Small, hometown trattorias that are the best farm-to-table Italian food whenever we are eating out.
- Always the most authentic Sicilian food and wine
- Beautiful daily culinary excursions.
- All transportation by private boats or minibus.
- The Best Culinary Vacation in Italy
Like Visiting Family in Sicily
We treat each guest like they are our own family. They discover the true coastal life so few people truly experience. They live the passion for local cooking, food and wine, and regional cuisine of Sicily, which is at the heart of life in Italy.
The cooking vacations in Sicily offer the enchanting experience of Sicilian culture like no other vacation. They are personal and intimate, so we all become dear friends. We live among the locals, shop with the villagers, explore like the Italians. We see the famous sights so many want to see, but we also spend time getting to know the true local life in the less touristy parts of Sicily.
Excursions You Will Cherish for the Rest of Your Life
Our vacations offer at least three full Sicilian cooking classes during the week, focusing on authentic regional cuisine, which are all family recipes of our wonderful hosts. When we are away from the kitchen, we always have something exciting and fun happening. On our 8 day Favignana Island vacation, we spend a great deal of timme expriencing island life of a small Sicilian island, including night-fishing, harvesting salt, making fresh cheese and honey, and so much more. On our 12 day Motherland Sicily, we visit Palermo, Catania, Siracusa, Ragusa, Modica, and much more are we circle the island We spend a great deal of time off the beaten path and introduce guests to our favorite hidden gems most tourists never experience, such as the smaller, less visited towns of Sicily, and even a wonderful family on Mt. Etna!
These excursions are never about simply visiting a place. There is almost always a unique connection wherever we go. The cheesemaker and the winemakers are dear friends. Wherever we go, there is always a connection with the people, and everyone you will encounter is a family, that will quickly become your own extended family away from home.
There is always a special reason for wherever we are going, and it always connects with the Sicilian lifestyle, friends and family, and the culinary delicacies of this beautiful region of Italy.
About the Cooking Classes
Whenever we doo cooking classes on our Sicily culinary vacations, they are not demonstrations. They are 100% hands on cooking classes. So you will roll up your sleeves and get wrist deep in making everything fresh, from scratch... Whether we are making a full 5 course home-cooked meal, or the famous Modica chocolate. It is always our guests preparing, and eating what they made!
For those wishing to spend more time sipping wine and eating Italian food, you can participate in the cooking lessons to whatever extent your heart desires. Swim in the pool at some of the the villas we stay at, take in the sun our the stunning views, Relax in the beautiful settings, take a stroll along the coast, or go into one of the local Sicilian towns. Whether you are cooking or not, the time we spend during the cooking classes are always a highlight.
On our Favignana Island vacation, we make Caponata, Busiate Pasta, Sicilian Fish Rolls, Sicilian Almond Cookies, Pasta all Norma, Veal Marsala, Roasted Potatoes, Cassatelle Pastries, Eggplant Parmesan, Arancini Rice Balls, Cannoli, and Sicilian Sausage.
On our Motherland Sicily vacation, we make Pasta alla Norma, Stuffed Beef Rolls, Baked Bell peppers, Cassata Pastries, Ragusa Scaccia (like Calzone), Sicilian Chocolate, Sicilian Sasuage, Caponata, Busiate Pasta with Trapanese Pesto, Palermitan Roasted Veal, Fennel & Melon Salad, and Cannoli.
Traditional Sicilian Delights
Even the meals that are not part of our cooking classes are uniquely special. After all, the cuisine of Sicily is truly unique and different from much of the Italian food in other regions.
Whenever possible, we select small, family-run trattorias where the ingredients came right out of their garden, or the fish was just caught hours ago by nonno, while nonna is cooking in the kitchen. These are the places that are known to be the best in any of island villages and cities. The wine is always flowing during lunch and dinner, and we take pride in making sure that we're pairing the right dish with one of the wonderful local Sicilian wines.
How Our Cooking Vacations in Sicily are Different
There are several websites offering cooking and culinary vacations in Sicily, and there are so many wonderful offerings. But each is different in a variety of ways. First, most of the websites you discover are actually travel agencies that are offering a catalog of Italian cooking vacations that they are reselling. Usually, they have no idea what the experience will even be like. In fact, often you may not realize it, but they are reselling our vacation. Culture Discovery is not an agency. When you are with us, you are with us.
You will likely be meeting the people you email or speak with. If you take all of those out, you only remain with a few. Generally, they are actually hotels or restaurants that learned they could offer cooking vacations to fill their rooms or say their restaurant is a cooking school to fill tables. In other words, the cooking vacation is mostly to get you to buy their primary services. There is no soul, and no overall connection made. Cooking Vacations in Italy is how Culture Discovery started in 2006, and quickly grew to be the largest directly owned company of its kind in Italy.
What makes us so unique is that we look at our vacations like finely orchestrated concert from the moment you arrive, until the moment you leave. While others do cooking classes, provide accommodations, and may offer some excursions, we look at each vacation as a full experience. This is why our vacations are all-inclusive. We believe that the full experience is more about the Italian culture of family and friendship than anything else. So we start with that. Our goal is not just offer a cooking vacation or cooking school, with a few excursions here and there. It is to give you a full experience, so that when you leave, you will have made new life-long friends, and you will have experienced many things you never could have otherwise. You will have a new family.
To do this, we make sure all of our meals outside of cooking classes are in small, family-run trattorias that are dear friends. Whatever we do, wherever we go, everything is connected and all about relationships. In fact, you will see that we spend more time introducing you to the cheesemaker than the cheese. Our excursions are not "history tours", but they are excursions that bring you into local Sicilian living. And our cooking classes are all more like a group of friends and family cooking together for a party, than an academic class.
All of this weaves together into a dream experience that gives our guests a true sense of belonging that lasts long after the vacation itself, and this is why so many of our guests come back over and over... because they have truly become dear friends and extended family. It is not a marketing line, it is actually what we do, and why we love doing this. Just look at our Facebook Page or our Facebook Group for alumni, and it is clear that our team and our guests are a big family of friends.