Chef Wendi James in Autumn Steakhouse. Via CulinAerie.

By DCist contributor Jenny Holm

Whether you’re looking for a unique gift, resolving to spend more time in the kitchen in the new year, or just plain hungry, cooking and tasting classes might be the answer. D.C. is full of them if you know where to look, from recreational cooking schools to community centers to local restaurants and bars. The following list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a good start.

Culinaerie
Location: 1131 14th. Street NW
Price: Typically $85/person, $185 per couple, price varies for series classes

Culinaerie offers the District’s largest selection of participatory classes in a variety of styles and ethnic cuisines, from classic French to sushi, regional Indian curries, and molecular gastronomy. All classes are participatory, meaning that you’ll be doing your own cooking and you’ll get to eat what you make. There are plenty of one-off options based around 3-4 recipes, but if you’re looking for a more systematized approach to getting comfortable in the kitchen, try a series: Culinaerie offers beginner, intermediate, and advanced options, plus a pastry series that will teach you the techniques you need to cook based on intuition rather than recipes.

If you love Culinaerie’s classes but can’t afford to take them as often as you’d like, you can sign up to volunteer as a kitchen assistant. You’ll help prepare for the class and clean up afterwards, grab extra utensils as needed, keep the wine flowing (responsibly), and generally help out the chef and students. In exchange, you’ll get to watch the chef’s demonstration, take home the recipes from the class (as students do), and eat the meal the chef has prepared when you’re done, all for free. No professional culinary experience required. Text the word TOMATO to 42828 to get started.

Hill’s Kitchen
Location: 713 D Street SE
Price: $45-50/person
Located on the second floor of a converted townhouse above the associated cookware store, Hill’s Kitchen offers both demonstration and participatory classes in a constantly rotating assortment, from knife skills and baking essentials to handmade pasta and pierogi. Before or after class, you can browse the shop’s selection of kitchen essentials and not-so-essentials for all the tools you need to hone your skills at home.

Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital
Location: 921 Pennsylvania Avenue SE
Price: $40/person
This refurbished Civil War-era hospital offers some of D.C.’s most unique demonstration cooking classes, from cooking with animal fats and urban foraging with a traditional foodways expert to northern Greek cooking with the executive chef from Kapnos. Two-Michelin-starred chef Gerard Pangaud teaches frequent regional French cooking classes here.

Passion Food Hospitality Restaurant Group
Price: $55-$85 per person
Restaurants in the Passion Food Hospitality group (including Acadiana, Fuego Cocina y Tequileria, DC Coast, Penn Commons, and District Commons) will host a variety of cooking classes and spirit tastings in 2015. The year starts out with a scotch tasting class at DC Coast on January 24 and continues with one to two classes a month at rotating host venues. Classes include Cinco de Mayo cooking at Fuego, barbecue and grilling at Acadiana, and couples cooking and Taste of the Chesapeake at DC Coast. You can also register for tastings of spirits from bourbon to cognac to aperitifs and cordials.

Rooting DC
Price: Most classes are free
Ostensibly a gardening forum, this annual one-day conference has grown to feature speakers and classes on everything from cooking with Asian vegetables to pickling, raising backyard chickens, and making acorns edible. Most of the one-hour workshops are free, though a few carry a fee. This year’s conference will take place on February 28. Registration opens on January 15. Watch the conference website for details.

Three Little Pigs
Location: 5111 Georgia Avenue NW
Price: $100/person for workshops, $725 for half a pig and a teacher to guide you through butchering it
If you love prosciutto, chorizo, kielbasa, paté, bacon, and all the other cured, smoked, dried, and preserved variations of meat and animal fat, Three Little Pigs has a class for you. The staff of this butcher shop/curing house/café/catering company can teach you how to make your own bacon at home, whip up some duck liver mousse, dry your own beef and salmon jerky, smoke your own sausages, and understand the differences between regional barbecue styles (and how all of them differ from grilling). Classes allow up to 12 people, so reserve early to guarantee your spot.

If you’re ready to take your game to the next level, sign up for a hands-on, private lesson in hog butchery. For $725, you get half a pastured pig (roughly 110 lbs.) from Polyface Farms, lunch, and a teacher who’ll guide you and two friends through the process of breaking the animal down into whatever cuts you’d like. You get to take home all the meat, so unless you’ve got a deep freezer or plan on doing a lot of smoking, grilling, and curing yourself, make sure you’ve got some pork-lovin’ friends to share the bounty.

Urbana
Location: 2121 P Street NW
Price: $45 per person
Chef Ethan McKee teaches occasional pasta-making classes at this recently renovated Dupont Circle standby. You’ll learn how to roll and shape three different types of pasta using everyday kitchen tools. The cost includes samples to take home, recipe cards, and snacks to enjoy while you take turns working with the dough.

Kaz Sushi Bistro
Location: 1915 I Street NW
Price: Varies based on class type and size
Learn to make your own sushi at home or prepare other Japanese dishes from Chef Kaz Okochi, one of the D.C.-area’s most innovative sushi chefs. You’ll need to gather your own group of 10 to 20 people, then contact the restaurant to schedule your private class.

Cocova
Location: 1904 18th Street NW
Price: $75/person for a two-hour truffle-making class, $45 for a 90-minute chocolate tasting class
This Dupont artisan chocolate shop offers a two-hour class that will teach you everything you need to know to combine chocolate, cream, and various natural flavorings into truffles that you get to take home at the end of class (if you haven’t devoured them all already). You’ll learn how to temper chocolate, infuse flavors into cream, make ganache, and roll your own truffles. Chocolate quickly becomes a hot mess, so closed-toed shoes are required. More into eating chocolate than cooking with it? Try their chocolate tasting class, where you’ll learn about the history, cultivation, and production of one of nature’s most alluring substances.

Wisdom
Location: 1432 Pennsylvania Avenue SE
Price: Varies based on class type and size
Hone your home bartending skills with a cocktail-making class at Wisdom. They’ll teach you how to stock your bar smartly, what the basic bar tools are for and how to use them, and how to make a proper Manhattan, martini, Rickey and Collins. The price ($60 to $75 per person, depending on how many friends you can corral to come with you) includes gratuity, plus you get to drink all the cocktails you make. They also offer classes focused entirely on either gin or absinthe: their history, various forms, and classic cocktails. A guided cocktail tasting for two is also available.