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A few months ago I wrote a post titled The Complete Beginner’s Guide to cooking in a hotel room.  This was a hotel room cooking post written out of necessity as we took our family of 8 to Disney World.  In an attempt to keep our food costs down, we ended up cooking a couple of meals back in our hotel room, even though we didn’t have a stove and just had a mini-refrigerator.  (We were there on a conference and didn’t have a choice in our lodgings).  Certainly we were helped out by the fact that we drove there instead of flew, so we could bring down food and supplies that would have been trickier to bring had we been flying.

(SEE ALSO: My top 5 Disney World tips for a budget traveler)


Some of the comments on that original cooking in a hotel room post asked for some of the recipes that we used.  So I apologize that it’s taken me so long, but it’s finally time to write that post and share some of our hotel room cooking recipes

4 of the best rice cooker recipes you can cook in a hotel room. How to cook complete meals, desserts, cake and other delicious food without a stove or oven

4 Hotel Room cooking recipes using a rice cooker

We used a rice cooker to cook our meals – for more background see the complete Beginner’s Guide to cooking in a hotel room.

hotel-room-cooking-rice-cooker

The first recipe we used was for macaroni and cheese.  We got it here, except that we used vegetable broth.  The macaroni and cheese recipe was very easy to make and most kids love mac and cheese.  You can serve it with raw veggies and fruit on the side or some bread to make a complete meal.

We also made spaghetti in our hotel room cooking, based on a recipe here. Though when we made it, we cooked the spaghetti all the way, then used the steaming pan to drain it.  But the holes in the steaming pan were pretty big so I had to be careful to not lose my spaghetti down the sink!  You could always pack a colander, especially if you can find one that collapses.  You can also find collapsible bowls and measuring cups, etc. for easy travel. We put the spaghetti to the side and heated the sauce alone in the rice cooker. We also cooked some vegetables in the steaming pan, while the spaghetti cooked, but you have to be careful about this because small bits of broccoli did fall down into the cooking spaghetti, and if you’ve got picky kids, they may not like that.  🙂

hotel-room-cooking-spaghetti

Once the spaghetti and vegetables were cooked I put them both in plastic bowls that I brought from home.  Then I poured my blended spaghetti sauce right into the rice cooker.  You have to stir it pretty often because the rice cooker does get really hot and food can stick to the bottom.  I served the sauce right out of the rice cooker.

Another recipe that I printed up for our trip, but ended up not using was for pasta and veggies.  It looks really good though.

We also printed out a recipe for chocolate lava cake in a rice cooker, but didn’t end up using that either.  It looks like the blog it was originally on no longer exists, but here is a picture of the printout we used

hotel-room-cooking-chocolate-lava-cake-recipe

Is hotel room cooking for you?  A lot of it depends on your situation.  We still have younger kids, so there’s no way we can handle full open to close days at Disney anyways, so we were generally heading back to the room anyways for a break.  And as I mentioned, if you’re flying, some of these things become a bit more complicated.  I was glad to have such a handy and resourceful wife and we would definitely do it again if the situation was right

For more hotel room cooking recipes, check out these top rice cooker recipes on Amazon

Have you ever done any hotel room cooking?


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