How To Cook When Traveling Around The World

It took me a while to figure out what it was that I missed the most from my previous “settler” lifestyle. But I figured it out. I miss having my own kitchen! Having a full-sized fridge with a freezer, a big enough kitchen with at least 2 stoves, a large sink, the essential cooking appliances and good kitchen equipment. I’m not a pro cook, I’m just an amateur who enjoys experimenting in the kitchen. Also, when you’re traveling long-term it gets very tiring to go out for every single meal. And if you’re on a budget and spending time at hostels you’ll find many fellow travelers gathering around the kitchen to make cheap meals. So, how do you cook when you’re traveling around the world?

Find A Place With A Kitchen… Duh…

The obvious answer is to find accommodation that includes a kitchen. You can always find hostels with common area kitchens on Booking.com and I would recommend you look at the photos and the comments to make sure it looks useable. There have been many times when the equipment just wasn’t useable like blunt knives, no fridge, even pots with holes in them! If you’re going the Airbnb route, accommodation will likely be more expensive if you look for a place with a kitchen. But if you’re staying long-term, chances are it’ll be worth it.

Also, I would recommend doing your groceries early when you arrive at your new place so you get all the essentials and have enough time to use it up during your stay. Check your kitchen to see what’s available. Sometimes prior visitors will leave behind cooking oil, salt, pepper, sometimes some herbs, spices and sauces too. Some of my fondest memories staying at hostels was making friends around the kitchen and common dining place exchanging ingredients, sharing food and just hanging out around a nice cheap meal.

Doing Your Groceries

It’s quite obvious but worth mentioning: try to get what you need in the size that you think is best for the length of your stay. If you’re traveling overland for a while, you can invest in some cooking oil, salt and spices to carry from one place to the next. In terms of ingredients when doing your groceries, you’ll want to buy fresh local ingredients. You can find a ton of fresh fruit and vegetables for cheap. Sometimes you’ll find places that sell meats that have been lying out in the air. I would typically avoid those and go for packaged meats to stay on the safer side. For eggs, you may find it weird that they keep them outside at room temperature. That’s in fact quite common around the world, even in certain European countries. If you find them refrigerated, keep them refrigerated at home. But if you find them stored at room temperature, it’s perfectly safe to keep them that way at home as well. Makes more room for your fridge too!

Of course, what you buy will depend on what type of diet you have. Many travelers are vegetarian or vegan, which is great because you can find really fruit and vegetables that are fresh and sometimes exotic to you, but local to where you’re traveling. I like to periodically experiment with my diets and so my grocery shopping habits will change from one year to another. I was vegan for over a year when I was back in San Francisco, I tried the ketogenic diet for about 6 months while traveling. And I’m now experimenting with keto carnivore. Not full carnivore just yet as my diet revolves around meats and greens, and eggs and cheese. I know it sounds hardcore, but I’ve found that I can still have a lot of variety in my meals and I’m seeing some good benefits to my skin and overall energy levels. I might do a separate blog post on diets and nutrition as I have been obsessed with different diets for a while.

You May Not Always Need To Cook

When I first arrived in Vietnam, my first country in Asia during my travels, after traveling through Latin America, my first reflex was to go do some basic groceries. I couldn’t find a small bag of rice, so I opted for a 1kg bag. Big mistake. When I got back to my Airbnb, I found the equipment was lacking and it was always a mess to cook. And at the end of the day, what I came to find out is that street food outside is so prevalent, very cheap, authentic and really good that it made no sense to actually cook at home! It’s almost like, any local who cooks for themselves just set up shop outside and sells some to people as street food as well. That’s an exaggeration but it certainly felt that way. You might be scared about eating street food in certain parts of the world, but it’s the best way to try the local food! Always make sure what they’re serving looks fresh, try to go to places that are crowded with other locals, and enjoy!

Street food is a ton of fun and is a huge topic that I will keep for another blog post.

If You Just Don’t Have A Kitchen

If you’re really in the mood to cook but you just don’t have a kitchen to cook in, one option is to take a local cooking class. I have never got a chance to get to it, although I would love to give it a try someday. You’ll get to learn the local staples and core ingredients, how to prepare them, the history of the dishes and at the end you can to eat a delicious meal you prepared hanging around making new friends!

When I was in Pattaya in Thailand for about 2 months, I didn’t have a kitchen but I was desperate to get to cooking. The area I was in was very “clubby”. A ton of girls working the streets at night, loud music playing until 2am every night and many of the places to eat around the corner were catered to long-time older expats or young adults dropping by for a long weekend bachelor party so it would mostly be Western food. So I was enthralled to eat out that much. Also, I had been traveling without a kitchen for a while and I was just really in the mood to cook. Plus, watching cooking YouTube videos non-stop did not help. I even came across crafty people figuring out how to cook with clothes irons in hotel rooms!

So I looked around on the internet and came across this compact foldable hot pot device. I was hooked! I kept looking at the specifications, what they said you could cook in it. It also works as a hot water kettle, which sometimes is baffling but hotels and Airbnbs sometimes don’t even have those. And so I bought it, but it was going to take a while because I got it on AliExpress. In the meantime, I gave in to my addiction to cooking videos on YouTube and learned a ton about how to cook Thai food. I was also thinking in my mind how I can adjust the recipe so I can cook it in my new foldable hot pot. I even came across a YouTuber who had a similar compact device and he was just experimenting a bunch of recipes too. That was super cool and inspiring. It made me think I could even start my own YouTube channel where I would show how I experiment with my new hotpot as well!

Experimenting With My New Kitchen

When it finally came, I was so excited. I bought a bunch of local ingredients at the supermarket and got to try a bunch of Thai recipes. I got to a point where I was able to cook some decent meals. And so after a while, I wanted to try some new things and I came across some more YouTube videos on how to cook sous-vide steaks. So I gave that a shot too! The result didn’t look great since I didn’t have any equipment to sear the steak at the end. But it was still really juicy and cooked through! I would definitely recommend this device if you’re always in a mood to cook and are in a situation where you often come across accommodations where they don’t have a kitchen. It’s a ton of fun to experiment with and you can cook some surprisingly good meals too!

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YouTube Your Way To Become A Chef

Some of you may be excellent cooks, but many of us are total newbies. What I found to be the best way to learn, is simply to watch YouTube cooking videos. There’s a ton out there and here are a few of my favorite channels.

• Brothers Green Cooking: https://www.youtube.com/user/BrothersGreenEats
• Pai’s Thai Cooking: https://www.youtube.com/user/PailinsKitchen
• Helen’s Vietnamese Cooking: https://www.youtube.com/user/HelenRecipes

It can seem daunting at first, but as long as you take it slow, keep expectations low, keep trying new things and don’t set your Airbnb on fire, you’ll be having a ton of fun! If you don’t have the exact ingredient or equipment you need for a recipe, that’s fine. Just try thinking outside the box and see how you can make it your own recipe.

So even though I really do miss having my own kitchen and the luxury of having all the appliances I can work with, it’s still fun to cook while traveling. I love watching YouTube recipes and adjusting them to what I have at my temporary home. At the end of the day, I’m no great cook, but that’s the part that I enjoy the most. Experimenting and trying different things and then tasting the results of the hard work.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you on the next one!

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