With the popularity of TV personalities like Rachael Ray, it seems like everyone wants to be a chef. Happily, most major cities today have culinary schools that offer classes to amateur chefs. You can even spend weekends or entire weeks at culinary schools such as the Culinary Institute of America (both in the Napa Valley and Hyde Park, New York) to learn Italian, vegetarian or French cooking techniques.

If you fancy yourself a good chef, attending amateur classes can increase your awareness of the culinary arts and turn you into a chef.

One of the most important elements you can learn in a culinary class is how the use of spice can enhance a dish. Though some schools offer classes dedicated to the correct use of seasoning, virtually all will include some instruction on how the simple addition of salt or pepper can transform a dish. In the very top classes, you may be lucky enough for the instructing chef to introduce you to the world of exotic salt, in which the smallest sprinkle can turn roasted chicken into a culinary art form. And classes of most descriptions will mostly likely include a section on preparation, such as marinades, which can turn your low-priced supermarket chicken special into a fragrant, roasted dish with so many layers of flavor you’d think it had come from your city’s best restaurant.

Fine-tuning your ability to pair wine with food is another benefit of attending culinary class. Imagine tasting a robust red wine with a charred steak. Can you imagine this same full-bodied red wine paired with a delicate dish of lemon steamed sole? No? What if this same wine was served with fish, but the variety was the more substantial and oily sea bass, served in a hearty tomato sauce with grilled mushrooms? Would this dish be a better pairing with the wine?

In many culinary classes, you will have the opportunity to experiment with different dishes and different wines and figure out for yourself why some marry well and some do not. After experiencing enough of these pairings, you will form your own ideas about why certain wines and foods pair well. Some people believe in matching the weight of the food with the weight of the wine, for example, serving a medium-bodied chardonnay with roasted sea scallops sprinkled with French sea salt and freshly cracked pepper. In this case, the cooking method (roasting) is what gives the scallops enough weight to match the wine. Serving a sashimi quality scallop would require a very light wine, such as an Albarino from Spain.

Finally, cooking classes are a great way to bond with a significant other. Day-to-day living often gets so hectic couples neglect to engage in hands-on activities they can enjoy and experience together. To find classes in your city, Google culinary schools and see what’s cooking!