YSE Cookery School

Murray is an excellent and gifted chef. More importantly, he is an excellent and gifted teacher. The course is set up in such a way that it can also be used as a reference guide to cooking and technique. It's also fun and very well laid out and presented. The lessons are a good length and the instruction is very clear. I still regularly go back and rewatch many aspects of the course and just use different recipes and ingredients. My cooking is constantly improving because of this and I have been helping other cooks to improve their skills. I have recommended the course on many occasions and will visit the school in Val again. Great experience.

This course took me from mediocre meals from a very small repertoire to a confident, consistent and adventurous cook with a huge number of skills under my belt. The course is perfectly designed to teach and develop the essential skills of cookery through a really broad range of dishes. Each day of cooking introduces and reinforces the skills and techniques you will use for all future cooking in any context, so I now feel that even if I'm tackling a new dish, I have the knowledge and skills to do it justice. The menu plan challenges your time management and organisational skills as much as the cooking skills and, for me, that was another really excellent aspect of the course to take on as an aspiring professional cook. Murray's detailed feedback on all dishes and questions was another invaluable part of the course, so that even if something was disastrous, I could understand how to correct it for next time. Having access to the discussion board and the ability to compare notes and ask questions with other cooks created a lovely feeling of support, enthusiasm and encouragement which was really great. I learnt so much from this course and feel equipped and inspired to continue my cooking journey. I would highly recommend the course to anyone who would like to get into professional cookery or someone who just wants to gain the essential foundations to cook delicious food forever!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this course. The set of dishes gets progressively more technical as the course goes on which allows you to pick up the basics, then apply them to more complex dishes. Murray sets out each day perfectly, giving you enough time to complete all your dishes but keeping the time pressure high enough so that you really learn to plan, manage and prioritise your time carefully. Each day has a theme running through it, meaning you might spend one day focusing on pastry, another on cooking with certain meats or on regional cuisine; this allowed me to hone my skills in each area and helped me learn more about the wider cultural influences in food. The overall theme is to supply you with the principles that occur over and over in pretty much all the cooking you will do, Murray gets this spot on and I now feel confident to apply what I have learnt and get creative with my own dishes. The feedback given was insightful and helpful and allowed my confidence to grow with my cooking. This course is definitely not designed for beginner cooks, but for those who already have a firm interest in cooking and wish to expand upon this, I cannot recommend this course enough.

Loved the style of the book. Relates exactly to the video instruction and will be a useful aide for years to come.

This course took me from mediocre meals from a very small repertoire to a confident, consistent and adventurous cook with a huge number of skills under my belt. The course is perfectly designed to teach and develop the essential skills of cookery through a really broad range of dishes. Each day of cooking introduces and reinforces the skills and techniques you will use for all future cooking in any context, so I now feel that even if I'm tackling a new dish, I have the knowledge and skills to do it justice. The menu plan challenges your time management and organisational skills as much as the cooking skills and, for me, that was another really excellent aspect of the course to take on as an aspiring professional cook. Murray's detailed feedback on all dishes and questions was another invaluable part of the course, so that even if something was disastrous, I could understand how to correct it for next time. Having access to the discussion board and the ability to compare notes and ask questions with other cooks created a lovely feeling of support, enthusiasm and encouragement which was really great. I learnt so much from this course and feel equipped and inspired to continue my cooking journey. I would highly recommend the course to anyone who would like to get into professional cookery or someone who just wants to gain the essential foundations to cook delicious food forever!