River Cottage Online Courses

Hello and welcome to the River Cottage Online Courses!

These courses have been designed specifically for online learners and for people unable to come to the courses we hold at River Cottage HQ.

Each course contains high quality video tutorials from Hugh and the rest of the team. These will help guide you through your chosen subject. Each topic is broken down into easy steps, which can be printed out so that you can digest them at your leisure. Along the way are little quizzes to help you test your knowledge!

There are also great resources, like recipes from the River Cottage team and lists of suppliers and helpful organisations.

When you’ve completed a course, we’ll even send you a River Cottage Course Certificate, signed by Hugh!

Always start with the Course Tutorial, as this will tell you how to get the most out of this course. Please note that these courses contain a large amount of video, so you need to have a broadband connection and the latest version of the free Flash player in order to enjoy them. You can download the flash player from here.

To start, please log-in on the top right of the screen. You’ll need your River Cottage shop login and password and have purchased access for the courses. If you haven’t done this please purchase your course from the link below.

Alternatively, why not purchase River Cottage Annual Membership for Ł35? With this (and many other benefits) you’ll get free access to all the online courses.

Online Pig & Pork Course

In this course you will learn the basic principles of good pig husbandry, the process of butchering a pig, and how to make your own air-dried hams, brine-cured hams, brawn, bacon, sausages, chorizos and salamis.

The course isn’t just for pig keepers. You’ll find it invaluable when buying your pork from your butcher or farmer.

You certainly don’t need to have your own pig to try out the selection of River Cottage recipes, which range from the simple to the more adventurous. All of the content is explained using video tutorials from Hugh and Ray, along with step-by-step guides which can be printed out. At the end of the course, you will be able to use everything but the oink!

This course is suitable for small-holders, home pig-rearers, or just people who want more from their pork! To purchase this course, visit the shop at www.rivercottage.net.

Online Catch & Cook

Welcome to the Online Catch & Cook course

The tastiest fish you’ll ever eat is one you’ve caught yourself - and our online Catch and Cook course is designed to help you do exactly that. We’ll show you how to catch, clean, fillet and cook a selection of the finest inshore fish.

Sections include focusing on sustainable fish catches such as mackerel, bass, bream, pollack and plaice. There is lots of practical information plus some great recipes too.

Online Mushroom Magic

If you’re not already a mushroom fan, you should be by the end of this course – they really are a magical food. Quite apart from the delight you’ll get from eating what you find, foraging for fungi is a lot of fun – and all you’ll need is a few bits of equipment and a smattering of knowledge to be on your way.

If you never use the larder outside your front door to prepare your meals, you’re in for a real treat! Not only will you get the very freshest and very best taste around, searching the wild for your supper will give you a special kind of therapeutic well-being.

This course will help absolute beginners and the more experienced mushroom hunter to seek out fungi, identify what they are and if they're safe to eat or not, and how to get the best of their marvellous flavours.

While this isn’t an exhaustive guide to every species of mushroom, you will learn about the most edible varieties and how to cook them in some delightful ways. We’ve also provided the River Cottage Identification Key to make life easier!

The course includes recipes from the River Cottage team to give you some creative ways to cook and serve your harvest, plus a list of helpful resources.

Online Game Course

We hope you will enjoy this foray into the wild which I’ve put together with my friends Ray Smith and Nick Fisher to celebrate the fantastic role that game and wild meat play in the River Cottage repertoire.

We think you’ll find everything you want to know about preparing different sorts of game for your table – including deer, squirrel, rabbit, pheasant, duck and pigeon.

There’s a fantastic range of recipes to offer you, your friends and family the very finest in wild meat.

We’ve also done our best to cover everything we think you’ll want to know about getting started in hunting wild game because, as well as the pleasures of consuming game, we hope you are going to get out there and do a bit of hunting yourself.

In this course, you will learn:

How to go about shooting or trapping wild game.
Butchery skills from skinning to preparing the meat for cooking, and what tools to use.
How to make your own sausages, salami and haggis.
Plus recipes ranging from a simple stew to a ten-bird feast.