River Cottage Online Courses

Welcome to the River Cottage Online courses

These courses have been designed specifically for online learners and for people unable to come to our Cookery School at River Cottage HQ.

Each course contains around eight hours of high quality video and step-by-step tutorials from Hugh and the rest of the River Cottage 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.

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.

Free with River Cottage Membership!

To start, please log-in on the top right of the screen. You’ll need your River Cottage shop login and password, and to have purchased access for the courses in our online shop. Each course is priced Ł20, so if you haven’t done sp already 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

Learn with Hugh and Ray 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 plus a selection of River Cottage recipes.

Online Catch & Cook

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 give you the practical information you need to know how to catch, clean, fillet and cook a selection of the finest inshore fish, plus a selection of our favourite recipes.

Online Preserves

Learn how to make the most marvellous jams, jellies, marmalades and the cheekiest of chutneys, lively fruit liqueurs and piquant pickles. You’ll also discover how to achieve great consistencies and textures every time, how to bottle and seal your preserves and which tools of the trade are worth investing in. Your store cupboard will never look the same again!

Online Mushroom Magic

If you’re not already a mushroom fan, you will 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, whether you're a beginner or experienced forager, is a few bits of equipment and a smattering of River Cottage knowledge to be on your way.

Online Game Course

We hope you will enjoy this foray into the wild which Hugh's 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, plus a collection of our favourite recipes.

Online Bread

Bread is such a familiar part of our everyday diet that it’s sometimes easy to overlook - why bother making your own when it’s so readily available in every supermarket? In Online Bread we’ll show you how to make a simple white loaf and some easy everyday variations on the theme, we’ll look in-depth at the key ingredients used in bread-making and show you how to use them with confidence.

Online Edible Seashore

At River Cottage we like our food fresh and wild, so what could be more exciting than the bounty of our windswept coastlines? From the edible plants that cling to the crags in our cliffs to the slimiest of seaweeds and the juiciest of molluscs and crustacea, there’s enough tasty fayre on our beaches and shorelines for everyone and the best bit is, it’s all free.

Online Edible Hedgerow

Discover your inner hunter-gatherer with the River Cottage guide to the edible delights of the great British hedgerow. Here’s where you’ll learn to identify some of the tastiest plants, berries, fruits and nuts our countryside has to offer. So don your boots and your gloves and get ready for a foraging adventure.