Crew who cook on layovers: the travel kettle and rice cooker underground, recipes included
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#1 There is a whole subculture of crew who refuse to pay hotel prices for food and it deserves a thread. Filipino crew practically invented it and I will start with our classics, but I know the Indians, the Thais and the Eastern Europeans all have their own systems.
The kit
A small rice cooker (the 0.6 litre ones), or a travel kettle for the noodle based approach. A folding silicone bowl. One real spoon and one real fork because plastic ones snap on rice. A tiny bottle of soy sauce and one of chilli oil. That is the whole kitchen and it weighs under a kilo.
The Filipino standard
Rice in the cooker, a tin of corned beef or sardines from any supermarket in the world, an egg cracked on top for the last two minutes. It is not gourmet. It is home, in a Frankfurt hotel room, for two euros. Add instant coffee with the condensed milk sachet and you have the breakfast of every Filipino crew member I know.
The kettle only approach
Instant noodles improved: the good Korean ones, a boiled egg from the hotel breakfast you took to go, a handful of the spring onions you bought at the corner shop. Kettle porridge with the peanut butter jar from the other thread. Couscous, which cooks in a kettle in five minutes and takes any tinned thing.
The rules
No fish in the kettle. Ever. Someone did it in a Dubai crew hotel and the room was unbookable for a week.
Open the window if there is one. If there is not, cook in the bathroom with the fan on.
Clean the cooker before you pack it or you will remember why on the next trip.
Why
Because per diem is money and the difference between eating out every meal and cooking half of them is, for me, about 400 dollars a month sent home. That is the whole reason.
What is your system?
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#2 Kababayan, the corned beef and egg on rice is a religion. I add a sachet of the sinigang mix to hot water for soup. The Doha crew building has a whole floor that smells of it on Sunday and nobody complains.
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#3 Indian crew version: the same rice cooker, a small dabba of dry spice mix from home, a tin of chickpeas, a tomato from the shop. Fifteen minutes, a curry, in a hotel in Amsterdam. The Dutch crew think we are wizards.
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#4 Thai version is the kettle and the good instant tom yum with an egg. And the chilli oil bottle, which is not optional. I have been stopped at security in three countries about the chilli oil and won every time.
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#5 Hungarian, and my system is bread, a tin of paprika sausage and the hotel kettle for tea. Less elegant than the rice cooker crowd. Cheaper than all of you.
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#6 @viktorbud there is a purity to the bread and sausage approach that I respect.
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#7 The no fish in the kettle rule needs to be in the training manual. The Dubai incident is real and people still talk about it.
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#8 Jetstar, and the Bali crew do a version with the warung takeaway reheated in the kettle steam. Less cooking, more logistics. The 400 a month is the true number though. That is what this is about.