World Record Attempt

On Tuesday 1st July we joined with the Jamie Oliver Cookery School and thousands of others around the country to try and break the world record for the largest cooking lesson ever!

The existing record was achieved by the Partnership for Health in Poland, with 6,778 participants from 89 schools taking part on 6th November 2015.

The Jamie Oliver Cookery School had chosen a fresh homemade pasta recipe for the attempt – making the dough from scratch, learning how to make a couple of different shapes (gnocchetti and pici), all in a quick tomato sauce. Groups of 15 or more from across the country joined the online class, and finished by sitting down to enjoy their creations together.

As an official Guinness World Record attempt rules were stringent: witnesses and stewards checked that nobody left the room, and that everybody took part fully in the cooking. Time-stamped photos had to be submitted showing every cook and their dish at various times during the attempt.

It took a few days for everybody to submit their information to be verified, but the final result was that the record was comprehensively smashed, with 10,515 cooks taking place, from 42 countries across 6 continents. We’re proud to have been part of such a huge undertaking to highlight the importance of cooking education and skills.

As the Jamie Oliver team said:

At the heart of this record attempt is a simple belief: every child, everywhere, should leave school able to cook confidently and take care of themselves — no matter what life throws at them.

That’s a belief that we share, which is why cooking and food education is a core part of our vision.

We’ve just released our latest kids’ cooking classes for the summer holidays: book your places now.