Said It Here

How do you cook cheap meals in a hotel room?

Living out of hotel rooms or accommodation with no kitchenette or reliable cooking equipment makes food a massive, expensive burden. Relying on packaged rice, single hotplates, or eating out for every meal gets old quickly and causes food to become the single largest budget drain.

What the numbers show

Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count

  • The most recent one is from October 2026.
  • This comes up 30.5× more often in r/travel than across the site as a whole.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    eating cheap reheat food and ramen
  2. 2
    buying rotisserie chicken and canned fish
  3. 3
    using an air fryer for simple meals
  4. 4
    packing sandwiches and snacks
  5. 5
    Using a travel water kettle to prep foods that can have water added
  6. 6
    Bringing a single hotplate, induction cooktop, hot pot, or slow cooker
  7. 7
    Requesting a microwave or fridge from the hotel or booking extended-stay hotels
  8. 8
    Buying a cheap air fryer and donating it afterwards
  9. 9
    Eating out or relying on no-cook options like sandwiches, rotisserie chicken, and pre-cooked items

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/travel3 people · October 2026

“Even if they do provide the per diem, having to go somewhere for every meal can get old really quickly when you’re on a trip that long. At least that’s how it felt for me.”source ↗

turtledrum_215 · r/travel · 15 upvotes

“I used to take a single hotplate with me (and a saucepan, sieve, bowl and cutlery, obviously)- although you're fairly limited to pasta, soup etc.”source ↗

RiffyWammel · r/travel · 10 upvotes

“I want to save money while I am there so I am looking for tips on cooking in a hotel room.”source ↗

“I have no option for a kitchenette room and have no say in where I stay because the company are paying, so a room with a kitchen is not an option.”source ↗

“Is there some sort of gadget I can get that wont set off the alarms and is small enough to put in a small case? I know there is a kettle but kettle food gets sickly after a few weeks of it 🤣”source ↗

befrforasec · r/travel
r/personalfinance1 person · September 2026

“where food is the biggest expense ima struggling with to cut down.”source ↗

“Cooking is a bit of a struggle atm with no real reliable way to cook unless I invest in buying something”source ↗

Big_Badger_7044 · r/personalfinance · 12 upvotes

“I lack a rice cooker at this moment unfortunately so I’ve been mainly eating those bag uncle Ben’s rice packs for any of that”source ↗

Big_Badger_7044 · r/personalfinance · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

r/personalfinancer/travelaccommodationbudgetingcookingtravel

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