Mykonos Cooking Class

A Mykonos cooking class is a hands-on session in a kitchen, on a terrace or at a farm on Mykonos in the Cyclades, where a local cook shows how Greek dishes are made and the group eats what it cooks. The class is one of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville, listed with the other Mykonos tours and Greece food tours.

This post covers the formats on sale, where classes take place, the dishes taught, olive oil, bread and phyllo, stuffed vegetables, salads, dips and soups, the history of Greek cooking and the questions that come up before booking.

 

What is a Mykonos cooking class?

A Mykonos cooking class is a hands-on lesson in Greek home cooking on a Cycladic island. A chef or a local host shows the steps, the group cooks dishes from scratch, and the session ends at one shared table.

Greek cuisine rests on a triad of wheat, olive oil and wine. A Mykonos cooking class builds its lesson on those three staples, then adds vegetables, grains, pork, lamb, rabbit and goat.

Mykonos belongs to the Cyclades and lies between Tinos, Syros, Paros and Naxos. Regional Greek cooking counts Kykladítiki, the food of the Cyclades, as one branch of the wider Aegean island tradition.

Greek cooks reach for oregano, mint, garlic, onion, dill, cumin and bay leaves more than other Mediterranean cooks do. A Mykonos cooking class shows when each flavouring enters the pan.

Northern Greek recipes pair meat with sweet spices such as cinnamon, allspice and cloves in stews. Basil, thyme and fennel seed join the herb list, and parsley serves as a garnish.

The food in the lesson also has formal recognition. Since 2013, Greece has appeared on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists for its Mediterranean diet, the same everyday food that a Mykonos cooking class prepares.

• Staples: Wheat, olive oil and wine form the base of Greek cooking.
• Extras: Pasta, cheese, herbs, lemon juice, olives and yogurt complete the larder.
• Region: The cooking of the Cyclades belongs to the Aegean island branch of Greek cuisine.
• Host: A professional chef or local people lead the cooking, depending on the format.

Tastings of island produce around Chora belong to a separate Mykonos food tour, while this page stays with the techniques, dishes and history of a Mykonos cooking class.

Which Mykonos cooking class formats are on sale?

A Mykonos cooking class comes in seven formats: a chef-led hands-on class, a small-group class with a sunset option, a class with locals, a food and wine class, a farm baking class, a private class and a cruise class.

The first format centres on a professional chef. The class is hands-on, so participants chop, mix and shape each dish themselves while the chef explains the method behind every step.

A second format keeps the group small and adds an option for a sunset dinner once the cooking ends. The same small-group idea, with the sunset option, also appears in a second catalogue.

The traditional Mykonos cooking class puts visitors in the kitchen with local people. A separate food and wine format pairs the dishes from the lesson with wine at the table.

The farm format moves the lesson to a Mykonian farm. The work there turns to baking, and a brunch follows, which makes this the bread and pastry version of the class.

The last two formats solve transport. A private Myconian class includes pick-up and drop-off, and a cruise version builds port transfers into the booking for passengers who arrive by ship.

• Chef-led: A professional chef runs a hands-on class from start to finish.
• Small group: A compact group cooks together, with a sunset dinner as an add-on.
• Farm baking: A Mykonian farm hosts a baking class followed by brunch.
• Transfers: The private and cruise versions include pick-up or port transfers.

The tour cards and availability boxes on this page list live dates for each Mykonos cooking class format, from the chef-led session to the cruise version.

Where does a Mykonos cooking class take place?

A Mykonos cooking class takes place in a kitchen in or near Chora, on a Mykonian farm, or on a terrace where the sunset dinner option is served. Every setting sits on a granite island 150 kilometres east of Athens.

Chora, the largest town, lies on the west coast. At the 2021 census, Mykonos had 10,704 inhabitants, and the bulk of them lived in Chora, home to the town kitchens.

The island covers 85.5 square kilometres and rises to 341 metres at its highest point. Granite forms the main rock, and strong winds have eroded wide stretches of the rocky terrain.

The nickname Island of the Winds comes from those strong winds. The meltemi, a cool seasonal wind shared with the other Cyclades, keeps summer days relatively cool, dry and sunny for outdoor cooking.

Mykonos has no rivers, only seasonal streams, two of which now serve as reservoirs, and reverse osmosis of seawater supplies 4,500 cubic metres of water each day.

In Chora, the Tria Pigadia, three wells standing in a row, were built in 1722 to give the town water. They reach only 5 to 6 metres down, because the diggers worked into sand.

• Climate: Mykonos has a hot semi-arid climate with low overall rainfall.
• Rain: The rainy season runs from October until March.
• Sunset: Crowds gather at Little Venice, where rows of old fishing houses line the waterfront, to watch the sun go down.
• Access: The airport lies 4 kilometres southeast of the town.

Whether in a town kitchen, on a farm or on a terrace, each Mykonos cooking class works within this dry, windy island setting in the Aegean Sea.

Which dishes does a Mykonos cooking class teach?

A Mykonos cooking class teaches core dishes of Greek home cooking: layered bakes such as moussaka and pastitsio, keftedakia meatballs, slow-roasted lamb, stifado stew, stuffed vegetables, pies and dips. The menu changes with the format and the host.

Moussaka shows the layering method. Tselementes built his version from three parts cooked separately: aubergine slices sautéed in olive oil, ground lamb with tomato, onion, garlic and spices, then béchamel or savoury custard on top.

Pastitsio follows the same three-tier logic with pasta. Tubular pasta bound with cheese or egg forms the base, ground beef in tomato sauce with cinnamon and cloves fills the middle, and béchamel covers the top.

Béchamel starts as a roux of butter and flour, heated in milk or cream and seasoned with nutmeg. Greek cooks enrich it with egg before it tops the bake.

Keftedakia are fried meatballs of lean ground beef bound with eggs, onions, garlic, parsley and mint. Kleftiko is lamb leg or shoulder marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and rosemary, then slow-roasted in parchment.

In stifado, baby onions, tomatoes, wine or vinegar, olive oil, bay leaf and black pepper cook down around meat such as pork, goat, rabbit or beef. Its name comes from the Italian stufato.

• Moussaka: The lamb layer takes cinnamon, allspice and black pepper.
• Pastitsio: The name comes from the Venetian pasticcio, a family of baked savoury pies.
• Giouvetsi: Lamb or beef cooks with orzo in tomato sauce with garlic and oregano.
• Kokkinisto: Beef, pork, poultry or orzo braises in tomato sauce.

Pies, stuffed vegetables, dips and soups each get their own section below, since a Mykonos cooking class treats them as separate kitchen skills.

How does a Mykonos cooking class use olive oil?

A Mykonos cooking class uses olive oil as the main cooking fat, the base of every dressing and the medium for ladera, the vegetable dishes stewed in oil. Extra virgin oil goes on raw dishes for the strongest flavour.

Olive oil counts as the oldest and defining element of Greek cuisine and goes into the large majority of dishes. The olives themselves reach the table as well.

Ladera, a word that translates as oily, names the vegetable dishes simmered in olive oil. Fasolakia uses green beans, arakas uses peas and bamies uses okra, each simmered in oil with other vegetables.

Briam, also called tourlou, combines aubergines, courgettes, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic and parsley. Plaki dishes bake in a roasting tin with extra virgin olive oil, tomatoes, vegetables and herbs.

For gigantes plaki, the giant beans are soaked and boiled until tender, then mixed with a sautéed sofrito and baked until the top browns. With no meat or dairy, the dish suits Orthodox fast days.

Heat matters at the stove. Extra virgin oil has a smoke point of around 180 to 215 °C, and above about 210 °C its unrefined particles burn and spoil the taste.

• Grade: Extra virgin oil holds no more than 0.8% free acidity.
• Virgin: Virgin oil comes from mechanical means alone, with no chemical treatment.
• Consumption: Greece leads the world in olive oil use per person, around 24 litres a year.
• Storage: Dark glass at or below 15 °C protects the oil’s polyphenols.

Byzantine households in colder inland areas, where olive trees failed to grow, swapped in butter and lard, yet a Mykonos cooking class keeps olive oil in nearly every pan.

Which dough and bread skills does a Mykonos cooking class cover?

A Mykonos cooking class covers filo pastry, layered pies and Greek breads, and the farm format gives the whole lesson to baking. The core skills are rolling, stretching, oiling and layering dough before it goes into the hot oven.

Filo is a very thin unleavened dough of flour, water and a little oil, named after the Greek word for leaf. Homemade filo calls for repeated rolling and stretching into one huge, thin sheet.

Cooks work on a very large table, ideally marble-topped, with a long, thin rolling pin in hand. Constant flouring between the layers stops the thin sheets from sticking to one another.

Filo sheets are rolled to their final thinness first, then brushed with oil or melted butter and stacked. Puff pastry, by contrast, is folded and rolled out again and again.

Greek cooks wrap chicken, spinach and cheese, ground meat or courgette in filo, as bite-size triangles or large sheets. Tiropita layers buttered filo around a cheese and egg mixture.

Bread work covers koulouri, a sesame-crusted ring, and lagana, a flat oval loaf baked for Clean Monday with fingertip marks pressed into its top. Lagana was once unleavened, but leavened versions are now more common.

• Paximadi: Bakers slice this hard bread into wedges and dry it again in the oven.
• Tsoureki: This sweet holiday bread combines flour, milk, butter, eggs and sugar.
• Bougatsa: Its name traces back through Byzantine Greek to a Roman term for hearth bread.
• Brunch: A Greek brunch table carries koulouri, strained yogurt, bougatsa, tiropita and tsoureki.

Similar hands-on lessons on another Cycladic island appear in the Santorini cooking class post, while the farm baking format belongs to a Mykonos cooking class.

Which stuffed vegetables does a Mykonos cooking class cook?

A Mykonos cooking class cooks gemista, the peppers and tomatoes filled with rice, herbs and olive oil, and dolmades, grape leaves rolled around a filling. Stuffed courgettes, cabbage rolls and papoutsakia, the little-shoe aubergines, belong to the same family.

Gemista means filled with in Greek. The dish bakes peppers and tomatoes stuffed with rice, ground beef or both, plus onions, mint, parsley and olive oil, after each vegetable has been hollowed out.

Dolmades, also called dolmadakia or sarmadakia, are grape leaves wrapped around a filling. Olive oil and rice versions are served cold, while meat-filled ones come warm, with avgolemono as one sauce.

The word dolma comes from Turkish and means something stuffed. Greek uses ntolmadakia gialantzi for the meatless kind, from a Turkish word for fake, since vegetarian versions once counted as substitutes.

The concept of stuffed vegetables is believed to have arisen in Ottoman palace kitchens in the 15th century. Food historian Andrew Dalby traces stuffed vine leaves to late Roman and early Byzantine wrapped foods.

Ancient Greeks wrapped food in leaves too. One dish filled fig leaves with cheese, eggs, milk, honey and flour before frying, yet Eugenia Ricotti argues that rice did not exist in ancient Greece.

• Courgettes: Kolokithakia gemista hold rice and at times meat, cooked on the stovetop or in the oven.
• Cabbage: Lahanodolmades are baked cabbage rolls finished with avgolemono sauce.
• Papoutsakia: Baked aubergines hold ground beef under béchamel, and their shape earns the name little shoes.
• Filling: A standard mix combines minced meat, rice, chopped onion, parsley and tomato.

Another Cycladic option for hands-on cooking is a Naxos cooking class, while this Mykonos cooking class page moves on to salads, dips and soups.

Which salads, dips and soups does a Mykonos cooking class make?

A Mykonos cooking class makes horiatiki, the Greek village salad, along with dips such as tzatziki, melitzanosalata and skordalia, and soups such as fasolada and avgolemono. Each one teaches a separate skill, from knife work to emulsions and egg tempering.

Horiatiki tests knife work. Tomatoes are cut into even wedges, while cucumber, onion and green pepper go in thin slices. Feta, olives, olive oil, salt and Greek oregano follow, and the salad stays unmixed.

The original salad holds no lettuce, unlike lettuce-based versions sold as Greek salad abroad. At informal tables, diners dip bread into the juice and oil left on the plate.

Tzatziki starts with strained yogurt, in Greece traditionally made from sheep’s milk, mixed with cucumber, garlic, salt, olive oil, vinegar, dill, mint and parsley. Straining removes the bulk of the whey, so the yogurt thickens.

Melitzanosalata blends aubergine with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, onion and parsley, and stands in for tzatziki during Lent. Skordalia, made in a mortar and pestle, beats garlic into potatoes, nuts or soaked bread.

Avgolemono joins egg and lemon juice to a hot broth. Rice or orzo cooks in the broth first, and the starch it releases helps to stabilise the emulsion.

• Fasolada: Dry white beans simmer with tomatoes, carrots, onion, celery and bay leaf.
• Fava: Yellow split peas cook with onion and are mashed with garlic, lemon juice and oil.
• Origins: Avgolemono began in Sephardic Jewish cooking as agristada.
• Lentils: Fakes, a lentil soup, traces back to ancient Greece.

Fasolada carries the nickname national food of the Greeks, and its beans, oil and vegetables show the frugal base that a Mykonos cooking class still draws on.

What history sits behind a Mykonos cooking class?

A Mykonos cooking class draws on a Greek food history that runs from Mithaecus, author of the first known cookbook in the 5th century BCE, through Byzantine kitchens to Nikolaos Tselementes, the chef who reshaped modern Greek cooking and opened a cooking school.

Ancient Greek cooking was frugal for the majority and rested on cereals, olives and grapes, with legumes just as important to daily meals. Lentil soup was the typical dish of a working man.

One fragment survives of the first known cookbook in any culture, written by Mithaecus in the 5th century BCE. Archestratus, a 4th-century BCE writer, called himself the inventor of made dishes.

Ancient cooks boiled meat and vegetables in the caccabus, a pot set on the fire or on a trivet. Bread dough baked at home in a clay oven raised on legs.

Byzantine cooking kept the ancient base and added nutmeg and basil, with boiling as its commonest method. Scholars name Byzantine koptoplakous and plakountas tetyromenous as the ancestors of baklava and tiropita.

Nikolaos Tselementes, born on Sifnos in 1878, studied cooking in Vienna for a year. He returned to Greece in 1932, founded a small cooking and confectionery school and published the first complete cookbook in Greek.

• Syros: The first Greek cookbook was printed on Syros, a neighbour of Mykonos, in 1828.
• Fork: Scholars suspect the personal table fork began in the Byzantine Empire.
• Teaching: Chef Zisis Kerameas taught culinary arts at public tourism schools from 1970 to 2000.
• Cookbook: In Greece, the surname Tselementes now serves as a synonym for cookbook.

From the ancient caccabus pot to egg-enriched béchamel, each stage of this history reaches the work surface of a Mykonos cooking class.

What do travellers ask about a Mykonos cooking class?

A Mykonos cooking class raises recurring questions about meat-free dishes, cruise transfers, the meal at the end and the tools in use. The answers below draw on the formats on sale and on the dishes and methods that the lesson teaches.

Can a Mykonos cooking class cook without meat?

Yes. Greek cooking holds a long list of fasting dishes with no meat or dairy. A Mykonos cooking class can turn to gigantes plaki, briam, fava, melitzanosalata and the fasting spanakopita, which uses olive oil and herbs but no eggs or cheese. Tselementes even proposed a vegan moussaka for Orthodox fast days.

Can cruise passengers book a Mykonos cooking class?

Yes. One format is built for cruise guests and includes port transfers, and the private class adds pick-up and drop-off. Ferries and high-speed vessels reach Mykonos from Athens and the surrounding islands, and Tourlos serves as the island’s new port. The tour cards above show which dates are open.

Does a Mykonos cooking class include a meal?

The formats on sale point that way. One small-group class offers a sunset dinner option, the farm baking class ends with brunch, and the food and wine class pairs the cooked dishes with wine. The sunset dinner echoes the ancient deipnon, the main meal of the day, taken at nightfall.

Which tools does a Mykonos cooking class use?

The tools follow the dishes. Skordalia comes together in a mortar and pestle, filo needs a long, thin rolling pin and a large table, and plaki dishes bake in a roasting tin. Tigania takes its name from the shallow pan it cooks in, while ancient Greek kitchens kept a cheese grater called a tyrokne.