How to prepare for no kitchen for a week?

[SnowIsInTheAir]

Open plan living, dining, kitchen area.
I will be without a kitchen for a week. I will have a hot plate, water from the bathroom. What would you meal plan for the week? Which things should I not box up? Feeling a it overwhelmed and need to have a plan.

I think you need to plan on take always or buy a cheap[ microwave and live on ready made meals. Use paper plates and throw away cutlery. Ideally go and stay in a hotel for a week - we went abroad for a week when this happened in our house.

Slow cooker - really cheap

Beef stew
Chicken curry
Soup
Sausage casserole

Stir fry
Omelettes
Take out!

Or why not get a foodi prep machine? If you can stretch to the £150 price mark? Cooks everything going

Microwave in your living room….! That’s what we did. Lots of microwave stuff, pot noodle type things, soup, jacket potatoes done in the microwave etc etc.

Can you buy or borrow an air fryer? They work like a mini oven and would give you some more cooking options.

A week is super easy. We were months without a kitchen during our extension.

Do you have a slow cooker? I used a hot plate and slow cooker so I could rustle up reasonably healthy meals.

That said, if it's just a week you could be more relaxed and have microwave meals, ready made pasta sauces etc and the odd take away.

Paper plates good idea of washing up will be a pain.

Ask box up most stuff and just have the absolute essentials re mugs, cutlery etc. easier to keep tidy and track of everything.

*also not ask

Can you splash out on one of these? I've got one and it was a life saver when the kitchen was being done. It's great now as well as an extra hob, or for camping etc.

www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/tillreda-portable-induction-hob-2-zones-white-90497166/

When we had no kitchen for a week I had access to the fridge freezer as we moved it to the lounge temporarily , the microwave, toaster and kettle. We lived off ready meals dinner wise. They are handy for that sort of thing.

We're going to have no kitchen for 3/4 months while ours is being made.

We are having a table set up with a Ninja air fryer, microwave, halogen oven, toaster, kettle and water from a bathroom which is luckily next to the kitchen - where I'll do all the washing up too!

Ninja air fryers are really good, we will continue using it even when our kitchen is done. Maybe get two if there is a lot of you, we fit a small roast chicken and veggies in ours.

We had months without a kitchen when we had our house extension,

We set up an area with a fridge, microwave, toaster and kettle. We ate basic food like jacket potatoes, beans, scrambled eggs, toast, porridge, sandwiches, salads and ready meals. We went out for meals and had takeaways.

Do you have any of the following:

Electric steamer?
Rice cooker?
Microwave?
Slow cooker?
Toaster?

You can cook joints / chicken in the slow cooker.

In a steamer you can cook veg and then if you wrap fish or chicken in foil you can cook that alongside.

Ok so day one a whole chicken in the slow cooker, veg cooked on the hob.

Do you have a fridge?

Assuming you don't eat all the chicken use the left overs to make sandwiches or buy a jar of curry sauce and make a chicken curry on the hob with rice. Popadoms in the microwave and some mango chutney.

Day three smoked fish with rice in Orange juice. I do this in the rice cooker but it can be done on the hob, rice for however many you are cooking for, add a 50/50 mix or orange juice and then some smoked haddock.

If you get kippers in a plastic wrapper with butter you can cook by boiling a kettle, put the kippers in their package in a bowl or jug, add boiling water and leave for 10 mins.

You can cook pasta the same way.

Day 4 beans on toast with cheese - if you don't have a toaster then do this on potatoes baked in the microwave.

Put the beans in a jug in the microwave with grated cheese for 3ish mins, make toast, pour beans over toast.

Day 5 Pancakes, easier with 2 frying pans, make pancake batter, oil both pans, use a ladle the batter into one pan, when you see little holes appearing flip the pancake into the other pan, repeat.

You can do sweet or savory fillings, cheese is usually a winner but mushrooms, bacon, cream cheese all work well, you may need to cook them before the pancakes if you only have 2 rings.

Day 6 pasta in a creamy sauce

Put dried pasta of choice in a jug/bowl/pan add boiling water and leave to one side.

In a pan cook some bacon lardons, mushrooms, onion, spring onion, whatever you like.

Once cooked add cream cheese and stir, add a couple of spoonful's of the pasta water and once the cream cheese has melted drain the pasta and put in the sauce.

Day 7 - get a take away.

If you have either get a slow cooker or another hot plate and a microwave you will be fine. It's only only week.
Lots of one pot meals with easy carbs.
Curry and rice
Chilli and rice
Fajita wraps
Hot dogs
Pasta pesto
Stir fry and pre coked noodles
Stew with dumplings and bread on the side

I saw a mobile caravan parked outside a house, it was a sort of rent-a-kitchen. They park it on your drive and hook it up to your utilities while your kitchen is out of action.
Clever!

Do you still have a freezer? And a microwave? Or borrow one?

If so then freeze pasta and curry sauce to re-heat in the microwave while you cook pasta and rice on your hot plate.

If that falls through, google one-pot meals, we did lots of fried rice which you can do with the rice pouches, just make sure you heat them thoroughly. Stir-in pasta sauces and then just fry some ready made chicken or fish, the pasta will keep warm for the couple of minutes.

Treat yourself to a take away one night.

Unless you plan to use it afterwards I wouldn't buy any larger. applicances. We managed 4 weeks without a kitchen, I wouldn't use a slow. cooker or anything afterwards so survived without one.

I had picky tea's most nights when we were without a kitchen. Got some nice bread and spreads, ready made bites (chicken, sausage rolls ect), then lots of veg and dip. Basically anything you can pull out a fridge and put on a plate. If you wanted something warm alongside you could make a big batch of soup?

I've juat been through 2 weeks of this (open plan is a PITA for building work as it is so disruptive) with a microwave (kept the old fitted one until new one came in, & put it on a table), an Instant Pot and a toaster. You only need basic kitchen stuff - sharp knife, can opener, wooden spoon, chopping board. But tbh I had no inclination to cook so there was lots of ready-made rice and pots of curry/chilli etc (which you could make in advance). Good luck! Mine should be finished next week.

Also if you're without even a fridge or freezer it's at least cold enough outside to store some bits. Do you have an ice box or anything?

I might have this wrong but I didn’t think you should drink / cook with water from the bathroom taps. If so, you might want to buy some large bottles of water.

We've just had our kitchen done, and to be honest my recommendation would be just live with the concept of microwave meals and takeaways for a week.

I had various slow cooker/Instant Pot options, but frankly nowhere to prep the food to put in them, and washing up over bath for the few days we were without a dishwasher wasn't fun.

Just take it on the chin and take the easy option, I say!

You’ll be surprised how quickly the week goes so try not to stress. Think of it as a temporary camping kitchen with the added luxury that you are not sleeping in a rainy tent on air beds.

@Mybalconyiscracking

I saw a mobile caravan parked outside a house, it was a sort of rent-a-kitchen. They park it on your drive and hook it up to your utilities while your kitchen is out of action. Clever!

Just googled this, what a great idea - I might have done that if I'd known it existed!

How many people are you feeding?
One or two, no proble.
Family of 6, more challenging.
I used microwave, toaster and kettle for 7 weeks. Fridge and freezer moved into living area.
M& S ready meal OR main meal out OR takeaway OR meal from lovely neighbours once a day. Paper plate but real cutlery.
Sandwich, toast or soup at lunch. Beans or scrambled egg on the toast.
Toast or porridge or cornflakes or overnight oats for breakfast.
Coffee. Lots of coffee.

A week you say……be prepared for longer, great suggestions on here, have been without kitchen twice now, first for 5 months, 2nd for 5 weeks. Basically you don’t want to create lots of washing up, we did a mix of ready meals and the prepared veg bags you can pierce and pop in micro, take always, slow cooker etc, eating out some nights to get away from it. After each renovation we go completely off ready meals and take always for ages, its a means to an end.

Slow cooker, microwave, George Foreman grill and electric steamer was what we planned for in the nearly 3 weeks without our kitchen, but we didn't use the steamer at all in the end.

In between slow cooker and salads we had supermarket ready to cook things that just went in the microwave (full of veg) and lots of fruit. Family of 4 and full time work at the time, certainly didn't feel we ate crap.

My biggest tip would be get some big plastic storage boxes, use one for collecting dirty pots in so that you can carry them to the bathroom for washing up. Then use a clean one for carrying them back and leaving them in to drain dry.