Cooking during kitchen renovation

[BananaPie]

We have building work planned for next year, and we’ll be without a kitchen for a few months.

We’ll have hot plates and microwave rigged up as a temp kitchen... if you’ve been in a similar situation, what did you feed the family? I’d rather not live on ready meals for months, but obviously won’t be able to whip up anything too complicated or which creates masses of washing up!

Thanks

We're preparing for the same shortly! We've bought a Ninja Foodi which is a pressure cooker and air fryer and have been impressed so far,we can make macaroni cheese in 30 mins in the single machine

In the same boat and its the air fryer that's made it bearable.

We have a slow cooker and a thermamix

Also the slow cooker.
We've been eating lots of pasta. Made curry, chilli and Bolognese in the slow cooker.
Sausages, fish fingers, fish cakes in the air fryer. Air fryer chips. Jacket pots in air fryer or microwave.
Did the Christmas dinner without an oven! Slow cooker chicken. Can't get the crispy skin but the meat is delicious. Roast pots in air fryer.

Slow cooker and a freezer full of home made lasagne kept us going for 6 months without a full oven. If you've got a ring you can make risotto etc so it's not too hard.

Thanks. I’ve never heard of an air fryer. I’ll have a google. I’m slightly irrationally worried about cooking smells and steam without an extractor but I guess just opening a window should help a bit.

i set up coffee tea station, microwave/ convection oven air fryer and between them i think we had takeout fish and chips once in three weeks

We have just finished our kitchen renovation which took 4 months. We didn't expect it but our builders left the old oven and grill, washing machine and sink connected in an area they weren't working in until the end. Something to suggest as it made life very easy. We had a camping stove for cooking pasta

IKEA do a one ring induction hob for £39 I think. I'm going to get a couple of these to add to a microwave and slow cooker so we can do a bit of variety. I also am thinking maybe of doing hello fresh for a while so we don't need to keep a range of spices etc out.

We had 2 camping stove rings, the microwave, kettle, and toaster plus the BBQ outside. I set it all up as a field kitchen in the middle of the extension (eventually our dining room) using the old worktop lengths and some saw horses. I bought a lot of 'steam in the mircowave' veg bags/pots plus rice pouches and kept the meals simple with pasta, salads, pan-fried salmon etc. We did ours during the Autumn so could have BBQs too, but I would have left the slow cooker out instead if it had been colder.
My biggest issue was keeping dust off the plates and utensils etc as it got everywhere. One day the builder went poking around under the polythene covering it all to make his tea and left it uncovered. Absolutely everything had to be washed (in the bath as no sink by this point). That nearly pushed me over the edge, but he was careful not to do it again after witnessing the volcano that exploded out of the top of my head.

I agree with PPs about keeping everything connected for as long as possible or setting up a temporary sink. Sometimes on jobs I've worked on we've been able to move the sink unit somewhere else with some very temporary pipework running back/from the original connections.

One regret I have is that we didn't make a makeshift kitchen / dining area when our kitchen diner was being made. I wish I'd have bought a foldable table that I'd have put up at the end of the day so I would have a surface to cook on and somewhere to eat too. I did a bunch of meals with a slow cooker on the floor and it was so nasty being so near the dusty floor.

Wallpaper table with : table top oven, slow cooker and microwave.

Outside hooked up to outside tap. : Camping Washing up station.

I cooked as normal during recent kitchen refurb/building for the 8 weeks we were without a kitchen. I am used to it though, have done lots of kitchens .

Being without water/lugging washing up to the bath is the worst part. If this is going to happen, then use silver foil roasting trays and disposible plates/cutlery imho.

We made a kitchen in another room, no running water but had an electric job, slow cooker, toaster,microwave and actifry. Bought big bottles of water at the supermarket. Was a bit annoying but worked out well. So happy with my new kitchen!

God yes use disposable cookware,washing up was a pain in the ass

My builders left the dishwasher plumbed in for as long as possible, I was only without it for part of a week.

Meanwhile we camped in the hall, kettle, microwave and toaster along with a freezer filled with casseroles. That was 12 years ago when I had a toddler. Now I would add an Instant Pot and a Tefal Actifry and it would be easier!

We did 6 weeks without a kitchen and with two ravenous teenagers.

We had a 2-ring electric stove, a microwave and a kettle. We also had a utility room or washng up etc plus we bought a very cheap 2nd hand fridge and stuck it in there.

We ate lots of risotto with loads of veg thrown in. We also did pasta and sauce a lot.

It really wasn't too bad.

I would recommend something that will work as an oven. Without it we missed the ease and texture of supermarket pizzas, oven chips, even just baked chicken pieces. I guess an airfryer would fit the bill (?) or a portable Combi microwave.

Also if we did it again we'd use picnic plates and plastic glasses. I tried to keep it simple by using our normal crockery but we were lugging it all upstairs to wash and it was a complete pain.

I had a tabletop oven that I bought from Aldi for not much. That plus a hot plate and microwave meant it was pretty much business as usual.

I also made loads of stuff in advance and froze it

I set up a makeshift kitchen in the spare bedroom. That way we didnt have too much dust to deal with, and could do the washing up in the bath. I also made portions of pasta sauce, curry sauce, spag Bol sauce and chilli then froze in individual portions. All I needed to cook was jacket spuds or uncle Bens rice to accompany them. We had take away pizza once a week and ate out once a week.

We did a whole heap of batch cooking prior to starting the kitchen and so had lots of some made dinners already prepared. Spaghetti Bolognese, chilli, lasagna, stews etc

Did this while running a B&B! 2 ring burner and hotplate, slow cooker, toaster and toastie maker. Luckily we did renovation over late spring/ summer so barbecued at every opportunity. Stir fries, pasta, slow cooked chickens, casseroles, cheese toasties, curries. As Badger says, batch cooking if you have usable freezer space.

We ate as normal - just rigged up a temporary kitchen in the utility room. Bought an induction hot plate from Amazon and also had a combi microwave and electric steamer. We cook everything from scratch and just used different mediums for cooking. We cooked salmon and veg in the steamer, roasts in the microwave and stir fries on the hob. Worst thing was no dishwasher, although we had a sink and kettle!

Just gone through and extension with a temp kitchen.
We had fridge freezer, microwave, two hobs , toaster and kettle.
Big plastic boxes to keep our plates and pans in and two plastic crates for food.
Meals wise, we ate anything you can do in two pans or less!
Pasta, falafel and cous cous, sausages and mash and veg, scrambled eggs, pan fried fish, stir fries.
Things that help - microwave rice, cous cous, fresh mash that you can microwave. We got some pre made meatballs from our butchers which was a nice easy way of having those without making them.
We got a big 5 ltr water bottle which we filled daily (only tap was upstairs) and kept downstairs for drinks.
We had about one takeaway a week and I was happy with how well we managed even if it was a slog at times. I kept a bowl which I’d fill upstairs with hot water and brought downstairs for washing up, worked ok.

£99 tabletop oven from Argos which has been worth its weight in gold to share around the wider family in times of need. I cooked a full Christmas dinner for 7 one year using that, a camping ring and a microwave.

Took me two days of advance cooking though!

I'd definitely want a cheap slow cooker eg the Morphy Richards sear and strew. It would be good for those days where you don't have time to cook, but may have slammed something in the oven.