College, Minimalist and Mobile Cooking: The scoop on eating well without a fully-equipped kitchen

– 8 August , 2011Posted in: Minimalism

I know this post says: College Cooking, but it can also be considered Minimalist, if you consider how little you really need to make an awesome meal on the fly.

I use a lot of these principles when I live out of hotel rooms, myself. The rice cooker has been certainly one of the best appliances I’ve traveled with.

THE BASICS

TOOLS

Immersion Blender ($10 – $200)
Rice Cooker (doubles as a Steamer)
Hot Plate (if you are allowed to have one)
Microwave (if you are allowed to have one)
Mini Bar Fridge/Freezer (if you are allowed to have one)

SERVING

Bowls & Plates — or a high-curved plate that can double as both
Utensils — Spork (spoon + fork)
LOTS of Tupperware — I recommend Glasslock, because the glass bottoms can double as microwaveable bowls, sans the top, and you can use it to store food (dry or in the fridge)

SEASONINGS

Salt
Pepper
Paprika
Cumin
Tumeric
Olive Oil
Sesame Oil

FOOD PREPPING TIPS

This is all assuming you have a fridge or a microwave to use.

Make food ahead of time and freeze them into individual packs

Stews, Chilis, Casseroles, Soups, are all great options.

Braised chicken, Meatloaf, Meatballs, Lasgana, Stuffed or Baked Pastas, Enchiladas, Burritos, Gratins, Samosas

Cut your vegetables and freeze those as well

Onions, Carrots, Peas, Broccoli, Cauliflower and anything that will keep in a frozen state nicely.

Cooked potatoes, by the way, do NOT work unless they are in French Fry form. They end up mushy with a strange sponge-like texture, and not at all like a dense yet flaky carbohydrate that a potato should be.

Mix and match

You can even make basic sauces and bases, cooked proteins and cooked vegetables in individual, single-serving packets, to let the mixing and matching fly.

This isn’t very eco-friendly (I’m thinking vacuum-sealed packets here), but it sure makes it easy to open one pack of chicken (chopped or whole), grab another packet of sauce, and yet another packet of veggies to mix as a meal.

Pasta sauces, preferably not carbonara or butter-based, re-heat very well.
I also recommend pastes — tomato pastes, red miso paste, white miso paste and chili pastes are great ways to add a punch of flavour to ANY dish you make without all of the work in doing so.

Microwaves work wonders

Microwave cooking for one. Don’t knock it.

I actually prefer cooking my fish in the microwave (salmon, mostly), because with 2 minutes on high, it is perfectly cooked, and ready-to-eat in a flash.

Throw it on top of freshly made rice, grab a spoonful of red miso paste, top with some fresh coriander and munch away.

WAIT! What if I don’t have anything?

If you can only have an immersion blender and rice cooker, that isn’t so bad.

You can cook rice and food in a rice cooker at the same time.

Just pour the rice in there with some water, and place a bowl in the middle of the rice cooker with the veggies or the seasoned meat you want to steam while the rice is cooking.

I did this a LOT when I was younger, because I wasn’t allowed to use the oven, so I would chop up chicken into small pieces, season it with sesame oil, soy sauce and pepper, placed inside the bowl, inside the rice cooker.

Once the rice is done, the food is done as well. Just make sure the pieces are chopped up into small pieces.

With an immersion blender, you can make fruit smoothies, but also hummus for the day. Pop open a can of chickpeas, add some lemon juice, tahini (if you want to), salt and spread it on some pita bread or on a salad for a quick meal.

There are plenty of raw food options out there — Choosing Raw — is one of my go-to blogs for recipes.

STORAGE: GLASS FOOD CONTAINERS

Whether you have a fridge or not, using your tupperware to store your food is highly recommended by yours truly.

Just covering it in plastic wrap doesn’t work for me.

Plastic is not so hot for the environment, especially when you are wrapping plates and then throwing the plastic wrap away after it turns into a soggy, stretched-out mess.

When you store your food in those uber-tough Tupperware containers, there is a very low chance of spillage, messiness, and food contamination.

Plus, you can stack them on top of each other in neat little piles, which is something I am hard pressed to do with plates.

I highly recommend GlassLock containers — they are very much like the Starfrit Lock and Lock containers, but with a glass bottom.

Sure, they’re heavier than the all-plastic variety, but you can re-use them as microwaveable containers without the top on.

In a pinch, I have also placed food on the backs of the plastic tops and eaten off it like a plate.

Please feel free to add your own tips in the comments!

This post first appeared on Fabulously Broke.

Tags: College, Cooking, Food, Kitchen, Minimalism, Minimalist, Mobile, Utensils

About everydayminimalist

I'm a 20-something year old girl who lived out of a single suitcase in 2007, and now I'm living with less, but only with the best. You don't have to get rid of everything to become a minimalist! Minimalism can help simplify and organize your life, career, & physical surroundings. You can read more about me as a minimalist. Or come and visit my other blog Fabulously Broke in the City where I got out of $60,000 of debt in 18 months, earning $65,000 gross/year.

Emily

I think those are some pretty good suggestions, though I know that a lot of dorms don’t allow rice cookers. Mine didn’t, people brought them in anyway, and then they set the curtains on fire. :/

If you have access to a kitchen, even a small communal kitchen, a small pot and pan would probably be plenty for most cooking, though. For someone who really likes to do fruit smoothies or something, there are really small blenders out there, too. Probably not a necessity for most people, but I know some people who do that for breakfast every morning.
- http://www.everydayminimalist.com The Everyday Minimalist
  
  Oo.. maybe rice cookers are not a fab idea then. Although I should note that I never leave food cooking unattended and I certainly don’t put them near any enclosed spaces
  - Emily
    
    Haha, I’m sure! Unfortunately it’s the few irresponsible people who get privileges taken away from the group.
    - http://www.everydayminimalist.com The Everyday Minimalist
      
      Darn their irresponsibility!
Pds

thanks for the idea ..
http://frugalhealthysimple.blogspot.com/ Marciamoore2

I bought a hotpot to boil water in. If you have one without an exposed coil, you can also heat up soups and things. I take that with me when we travel and stay in hotels that have a fridge. We can cook quite a few things in it.
- http://www.everydayminimalist.com The Everyday Minimalist
  
  You travel with cooking things too? That’s awesome. We go crazy with the food in cities when we travel.
http://homelessonwheels.wordpress.com Mike | Homeless On Wheels

If I could have only one cooking appliance, I’d go with a rice cooker. They are so versatile – you can cook so much more than rice. Also they draw less power than a microwave, toaster oven, or hotplate — less risk of overloading a circuit in a hotel, dorm, or small RV.
http://ozarkscrescentmural.blogspot.com/ Victoria-Ozarks Crescent Mural

I’m pretty minimalist in the kitchen. All I need is a couple of plates and bowls, couple of pieces of silverware, a flipper/spatula that does double duty as a spoon to stir, a tall cast iron skillet (tall so it can be both a skillet and a pot) and a hot plate. I recommend the DUXTOP. I can live without everything else, but a fridge/freezer. I’ve got a few pieces of vintage Tupperware passed down through the family and that’s fine because it’s a good example of reuse.
- http://www.everydayminimalist.com The Everyday Minimalist
  
  I’ll have to Google this DUXTOP.
  - http://ozarkscrescentmural.blogspot.com/ Victoria-Ozarks Crescent Mural
    
    The reason why I recommend the DUXTOP (http://www.amazon.com/1800-Watt-Portable-Induction-Countertop-8100MC/dp/B0045QEPYM/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2DQPI1T6QS9GH&colid=8MO92DZYCUGE) is because it can handle heating cast iron, which is a healthy way to cook. I recommend Lodge for cast iron.
http://flutyocarina.net Stephanie

The glass tupperware is a definite yes, even after moving out of school. I actually don’t recommend sporks because they don’t do a good job of being a fork for me. Keeping one spoon, one fork, and one butter knife is all right.

Truth is, every college is different. The dorms that I live in come with communal kitchens that are fairly well taken-care of, and that changes a lot of things up. People at my school actually cook good food because the capability is there.

The “freezer” sections of most mini-fridges I’ve come across around here are not good at all. I’d recommend only buying what you need in small increments at the closest grocery store. Most of us don’t have cars, so we can’t buy very much food at once anyways.
- http://www.everydayminimalist.com The Everyday Minimalist
  
  I’d have loved a communal kitchen. I was really sick of the food at college after a week or so. :
Dan

Thanks very much for the great post. Love the idea of minimalist and mobile cooking. A quick search online shows two different brands of GlassLock containers. One from a company called Kinetic and one from a company called SnapWare. The picture in the post looks like the ones from Kinetic. Do you have a preference or no anything pro/con between the brands?
- http://www.everydayminimalist.com The Everyday Minimalist
  
  I am not in my kitchen at the moment but the actual brand we use is called “Glasslock”.
  
  http://www.kitchenstuffplus.com/Brands/GLASSLOCK.aspx
  
  There are other imitators out there and I think they’d all work fine if you look for the following things:
  
  1) Rubber edges on the lid so that it really snaps tight and keeps things fresh
  2) 4 snaps on each side of the container (1 for each side) that are solid and don’t seem to wiggle when they’re locked in
  3) A glass bottom (for microwaving, glass is the best. I just microwave everything without the plastic top to avoid chemical/plastic leeching into my food)
  
  That’s about it. I haven’t tried any other brands, but the Rubbermaid ones don’t look very well made.
Caroljkerr

We are the in process of transitioning to fulltime RV living. That means my kitchen is A LOT smaller than it used to be! Slowly figuring out how to cook great meals with less space and figuring out how to store things. The biggest challenge so far is the smaller refrigerator/freezer. Not so much a problem when we are near good food sources, but when it’s 20+ miles to the nearest grocery we have to be pretty creative about how to make things fit.

While not the most environmentally friendly, we think the vacume sealer saves space and waste so like most things it’s a trade off. I see one in our future.
- http://www.everydayminimalist.com The Everyday Minimalist
  
  The vacuum sealer is a godsend for dried foods especially when we travel.
  Perhaps for saving space, you should consider stacking your tupperware containers (they fit perfectly in a square fridge) and take up less space than plates or other awkward pots that are covered.
  
  We also cook once for the week and then mix and match.
  
  http://www.everydayminimalist.com/?p=3446
http://forhumanrights.wordpress.com/ Kris

I’ve just moved into a kitchenette situation! I downsized from a 2BR, 2 Bath condo that had a full kitchen, to a furnished efficiency apartment and I love it. My kitchen furnishings are just a little different:

Instead of a microwave, I have a toaster oven. I like them better and don’t worry about the microwave destroying nutrients.
I have 2 hot plate burners, in case I want to cook more than one thing in a pot at once
Instead of a rice cooker, I have a small 2-cup crock pot. Most people use those for crafts, but I like the small one as it keeps me cooking fresh food each day.
I do have access to a full fridge and freezer though – but since I’ve just been in my new city a week, it isn’t anywhere near full. I’ve been eating fresh before buying much new.
I also have a coffeepot, and the electric tea kettle was included here.

I also haven’t tried out my new immersion blender yet – I bought it because my old Osterizer finally bit it. This week! I like this so far because it keeps me eating fresh food each day.
- http://www.everydayminimalist.com The Everyday Minimalist
  
  That toaster oven is a good idea actually.. I may buy that instead of a microwave next time.
  
  I also LOVE my immersion blender. I mean, smoothies, sauces, hummus, gazpacho.. purees.. the list doesn’t stop.
  - CoCoYoYo
    
    I use my toaster oven for baking, broiling and roasting and a Rival hot pot for boiling water (pasta, eggs — that kind of thing). I have a full stovetop/oven but countertop appliance cooking works well when you’re generally cooking for one.
http://annienygma.com Annie

I have never seen the Glasslock containers before! I will have to explore them! Here, the kid and I have:
Undercounter (dorm) fridge
Hot plate
Toaster oven
Microwave
George Foreman-type grill
Seasoned salt
Natural sea salt
Pepper
Cast iron skillet
3 stainless pans w/lids (came as set)
3 plates, saucers, bowls, forks, spoons, etc.

Containers are repurposed plastic containers. I’ve had the cookware for well over a decade and it will last me forever. Such is the benefit of buying quality stuff!

We can cook anything we want, only in smaller quantities than a traditional oven. Less waste that way!

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In a Nutshell

other blog: fabulously broke in the city
minimalist since: 2007 -- why minimalism?
talk to me: contact me here!
current location: canada/usa
home: hotel room
owns: 3 suitcases 2 carryons of stuff
# of items: more than 100!
furniture: 1 japanese futon
works: business consultant
gadgets: macbook pro, ipod touch (pda)
drinks: earl grey cream tea
practices: rebel yoga and de-cluttering
loves: minimalism, $$ management, traveling
quirk: must prep my food before eating
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