Hotel Room Cooking
What’s the most disgusting mess you’ve ever made in your hotel room? I asked a hotel maid this question once and she simply said, “Blood; everywhere was blood!” Wow. Ok, well I’ve never murdered anyone in a hotel room, but I spilled an entire Chinese take-out order in the trunk of my car during a hot Texas summer, once. It took some Veterinary prescribed enzyme killer and a gallon of boiling water to get the smell out… I was thinking about that when my sister sent me a website about cooking in your hotel room. I was skeptical at first, but as sick and tired of chain-restaurant food as I am; I’m willing to try anything. Heck, if I get good at it, I could save a buck or two on my next vacation!
Logically, you have to realize that most standard hotel rooms have two sources of heat; the coffee-maker and the iron. I realize that some rooms come with microwave ovens, but let’s stick with the bare minimum here, for the sake of argument. The article I read actually suggested that you could cook bacon on the iron if you made yourself a little tray out of aluminum foil. Are you kidding me? There are so many things wrong with this idea… First, it would take ? hour to do, second, where would you collect all of the rendered bacon fat and third, isn’t there a mountain of bacon available on the breakfast buffet? I don’t even want to mention the smell of bacon that future guests would have to endure whenever they ironed their clothes…
Some suggestions were practical, however. There are many mornings that I just want a bowl of oatmeal and I really don’t feel right about paying the buffet charge of $25 for it. Solution? Oatmeal in the coffee-maker! Just put a couple of packets of instant oatmeal in the carafe, add some honey or jam from the restaurant downstairs, and run the coffee-maker with the prescribed amount of water. Voila!
Lipton Cup-O-Noodles or Ramen Noodles work too. Take the paper lid off of the Cup-O-Noodles cup and run the water directly into it for a hot soup. You may have to run the cycle twice to get the Ramen Noodles completely done, but it works!
The filter basket that sits over the coffee pot makes a terrific steamer. You can steam shrimp, vegetables, or even bits of fish in there if you want to. Again, you may need to run a couple of cycles of water through it to achieve your desired results.
I’ve seen recipes on the internet for hotel room poached eggs, lemon chicken, and other items but let’s face it, without a refrigerator; do you really want to hassle with raw chicken, eggs and bacon? Almost any dry goods or fresh vegetables can be cooked and rendered quite delicious with a bit of creativity!
EXTRA: If you have questions for Ken regarding business travel, hotels, airplanes, etc, please call 1-877-49-EXPERT. Your questions will be recorded and Ken will answer the best ones in his Ask the Expert podcast show.
