Wednesday, August 11, 2021
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Tuition: $35  Materials: $30

The materials fee covers ingredients you will use to learn best practices and take home to craft a master meal!

Calling all at-home cooks! Learn how to maximize your home kitchen possibilities with this entry-level fundamentals and tricks-of-the-trade cooking class. Students will get hands-on experience practicing simple, professional kitchen skills in order to elevate their home-cooked meals.

Topics learned will include knife skills, temperature control, timing, mise en place, proper use of fats and acids, working with a variety of herbs, spices, and seasonings, and how using seasonal ingredients contributes to your best meals! 

Class participants will use these skills to prep for an outstanding dish they will prepare in their home kitchen. Everything learned can be carried forward into all your everyday cooking. 

Students should bring: a sharpened kitchen knife you are comfortable working with; kitchen towel; apron; food-safe containers to bring your prepped ingredients home; questions! Please note that this class will involve handling meat products; however, many of the skills learned are applicable to vegan and vegetarian cooking, as well. 

About the Instructor: Hudson Ledeen left a celebrated career of twelve years in the culinary world, where he excelled in creating menus and recipes using locally sourced products, as well as teaching and mentoring fellow cooks and chefs new to the field. Passionate about conservation, public lands and natural resources, he went back to school and earned his Applied Science Degree in Natural-Resources Technology. Hudson has a vast background when it comes to outdoor experiences. He’s removed beaver dams, trapped and relocated bears, tagged migrating birds, worked as a fishing guide, canoe outfitter, fishery technician in Alaska, and is an avid hunter and angler. 

He is now working as the Community Coordinator for the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness based out of Ely. At the heart of the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness mission is the belief that the economic health and prosperity of the BWCA gateway communities are deeply connected with the future of clean water and the wilderness. Building partnerships and growing relationships throughout these communities is the focus of Hudson’s work.

Today, Hudson uses his culinary skills to prepare creative and inventive meals for friends, family and community.

Sunday, September 12, 2021
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Tuition: $25

Mead has been touted as one of the earliest forms of alcohol. Combining honey, water and yeast, this fermented beverage is one of the easiest and delicious ways to imbibe. It is gaining in popularity especially because of its gluten-free nature. 

This class will teach you how to properly make, age and store mead like a pro. Nik will share tips gained from years of experience fermenting in a commercial setting to help make your mead stand out from the rest. Details will cover honey types, yeast strands, fermentation tips, flavor additions and clarifying and stabilizing your mead. 

During the class, we will make an entire batch of mead together and we will raffle off the product to take to your home to finish the fermentation ($170 value). By the end of the class you will learn how to easily make delicious mead in up to 5 gallon batches that you can drink and share with your friends and family.

About the Instructor - Nik Prenevost: I am the Assistant Mead Maker at the White Bear Meadery (WBM) in Gem Lake. The first and only true Meadery in the state of Minnesota, WBM provides up to 20 meads on tap and continues to grow in size as a business and varieties of mead it produces. From traditional meads to cider or root beer meads, I have made them all and have experienced first hand with the successes and failures of experimentation in the industry. From the first time I tasted mead in Tampa, FL I came home to Minnesota in search of the 'nectar of the gods'. Enter White Bear Meadery. Working in a commercial setting with the Owner and founder, Josh Eckton, has ramped my mead making experience up from none to incredible meads.