The Nimble Cook Toolkit - Old
The Nimble Cook Toolkit
Ronna Welsh
author, The Nimble Cook and founder, Purple Kale Kitchenworks
BE THAT KIND OF COOK
with The Nimble Cook Toolkit
Purple Kale Kitchenworks’ flagship online course
In The Nimble Cook Toolkit, you’ll learn how to be more resourceful, consistent, and creative in the kitchen, both when working with recipes you love and improvising a meal of your own. You’ll spend less time cooking (and cleaning up!) and you’ll waste less food.
All this, in a unique online course that lets you work on your own time, at your own pace, with ingredients you choose. You also receive exclusive live support and join a community of eager home cooks.
“Ronna Welsh cooks the way I do: efficiently, vigilantly, skillfully, and frugally. Understanding how versatile ingredients are so you can incorporate them into any recipe is the proper, intelligent way to cook.”
What a Nimble Cook can do
Let’s say you have a favorite soup. You could make a big batch of the soup to eat for several days. Or with the same amount of effort, you could prepare a little extra of its individual ingredients, instead. If you slice half an onion for the soup, you could cut the other half to have on hand for the next time you come into your kitchen to cook. You could use the onions to top grilled sausages, or in an omelette. (If you carefully sauteed those onions before putting them away, that omelette would be even quicker and easier to make.)
And if you prepared some of the soup’s other extra ingredients: washed and chopped the remaining herbs, cooked off all the beans, grated the extra cheese, and crisped all the bacon, the possibilities for what you could make quickly expands: a bowl of beans with fresh herbs, a warm bean salad with bacon vinaigrette, an open-faced sandwich of bacon and sauteed onions.
Once you see more options for individually-preparing your ingredients—as you know how, like best, and/or have time for—you can create a personalized pantry that is small steps away from putting together many delicious things to eat.
A new, nimble way to cook teaches you how to get the most out of your ingredients and time by making each—and every part of each—ingredient a launching pad for many different meals.
A hard lesson for me became a great course for you
You’d think that experience, skill, and organization play a large part in how well we cook, but they aren't key. And inspiration? Under the daily grind, inspiration abandons even experienced chefs.
+ Click here to read my story
Before starting my own cooking school, I worked at the helm of some beloved New York City restaurants. Off hours, I rarely cooked for my tiny household of two. When two became four, I struggled to make even the humblest dish for my young family to eat. My professional skills seemed no match for the relentless distractions and ceaseless demands of new parenthood.
In short order, I had to adapt restaurant practices to the home, including its whims, mishaps, and changing circumstances. This meant abandoning meal planning much of the time, focusing instead on quickly and easily turning small sets of versatile ingredients into many different, delicious plates of food. I regained confidence and joy in cooking again, and fed my family the way I always imagined.
This ingredient-first way of cooking was intuitive for me, but I realized it was not for most home cooks, who were more comfortable buying groceries for a week of set meals. I turned my "nimble" methods into classes, and eventually into an acclaimed cookbook, The Nimble Cook.
My instruction was hailed as both approachable and revolutionary. As my community of home cooks grew, I needed to find more ways to teach. The Nimble Cook Toolkit was born. With this course, alongside my cookbook, I now can help anyone, anywhere become a more resourceful, creative cook.
Your toolkit
In five lessons, you'll learn how to:
You’ll also get
1) “The Nimble Cook Workbook,” 30+ pages of tips and exercises, created just for this course.
The workbook includes:
• Three original recipes to jump-start your cooking
• Templates for “charting” your recipes
• Worksheets for building a personal pantry (What are Starting Points?)
• 6 different types of Starting Points
• 18 prompts for creating your own dishes
• A worksheet for improvising in the kitchen
• How and why to rethink what makes a meal
• Dozens of doable strategies for sustaining your nimble way to cook
• A kitchen "office" supply list
• 8 weeks to a nimble kitchen
and more.
2) Exclusive access to four “Kitchen Sessions,” a twice-monthly live Q&A with Ronna.
3) Unlimited time to complete the course, which you can do at your own pace, even repeating it a few times over with different ingredients.
Frequently Asked Questions
+ I do not have advanced kitchen skills. Is this course for me?
Yes. The methods in this course fit any skill level or circumstance. If all you know how to do is boil and egg and roast a potato, you have a home here, as will a more accomplished cook. For The Nimble Cook, improvisation starts with the right perspective (more important than advanced skills), which means looking at the potential in each ingredient to create many meals. Improvisation is available to even the beginner cook. That is the conceit, and gift, of this course.
+ This is a cooking class. Why do I provide my own recipes?
Recipes make great teaching tools. In this course, you may work with the original recipes I provide or use your own favorite recipes as frameworks for creating a host of other dishes. That way, you'll be able to cook with ingredients you love--great for all eating preferences--and immediately incorporate your nimble practice into the way you cook, everyday.
+ How much time will this course take?
You'll have access to the entire course at once, as soon as you register. This means, you can view all of the video lessons and dig into the accompany workbook at your own pace. The assignment in Lesson Three will take you into your kitchen for an extended cooking session, which you can do over a weekend, with the hours you allow. You'll also have access to the course for a lifetime, so if you want, you can breeze through the lessons with a new set of ingredients, each time. This course is designed to be transformative, but not disruptive.
+ What if I already have your cookbook? What if I've taken one of your classes before?
If you have my book or have taken any of my studio classes, the themes in The Nimble Cook Toolkit will be familiar to you. But this class explores the methods and philosophy that guide all my instruction in greater depth and detail. It is packed with material that couldn't fit into one book or a single class. You'll find the content isn't repetitive, but supportive and affirming. Plus, this class gives you continuous and live support while you cook and learn at home.
+ I have more questions. Who can I reach out to?
Email me directly with any questions you have about this course. Let's make sure it's a good fit for you. You'll reach me at ronna@purplekale.com
Unlike any other online cooking class
A Sneak Peak
Register now, then start the course only when you’re good and ready.
(This makes it easy to give the course as a gift!)