Meal planning

Feeding People When the Kitchen Is Out of Action

Updated 29 August 2026 · 4 min read

At some point the kitchen goes out of action. A renovation that overran, an oven that died, a move where the boxes are in the way, a flood.

It is always longer than anyone said it would be, and the default outcome is three weeks of takeaway and a great deal of money.

It does not have to be. You need less kitchen than you think, and mostly what you need is a plan that does not pretend the kitchen exists.

Set up one table, properly

The mistake is scattering. A kettle in the hall, a microwave on a box, plates in the bathroom.

Give yourself one surface, one place, and put everything on it. A trestle table or the top of a chest of drawers is enough. It takes twenty minutes and it is the difference between coping for three weeks and giving up on day four.

• Appliances at one end, plugged in and staying plugged in
• Plates, cutlery and mugs in one open box, not packed away
• A washing-up basin, a drying cloth and a bin bag holder
• One chopping board, one sharp knife, one pan

What two appliances get you

Pick two. A kettle plus a microwave is the common pair and covers more than people expect. A slow cooker plus a kettle is better if the outage is long.

Kettle

• Pasta, if you pour boiling water over it in a covered bowl and wait
• Couscous and instant noodles, which are designed for exactly this
• Stock for anything, and hot water for washing up

Microwave

• Baked potatoes in about ten minutes
• Rice, in a covered bowl, more reliably than people believe
• Steamed vegetables, scrambled eggs, and reheating everything

Slow cooker, if you have one

• Every stew, curry, chilli and soup, unattended all day
• A whole chicken, which then becomes three more meals
• It is the single most useful thing to own during a renovation

Meals that need no oven and no hob

1. Jacket potato with a tin. Microwave, tinned beans or tuna, grated cheese.
2. Couscous with whatever is raw. Boiling water, five minutes, oil, lemon, chopped anything.
3. A slow cooker stew, served on the couscous or the potatoes.
4. Wraps with cold fillings. No cooking at all, and children prefer them anyway.
5. A proper salad with something substantial in it: tinned pulses, cheese, nuts, leftover meat.

None of these is a compromise if it is finished properly, which mostly means acid, salt, fat and something crunchy.

The washing up is the thing that breaks people

Not the cooking. Washing up in a bathroom sink, on your knees, is genuinely miserable and it is what turns week two into takeaway.

• One pan, one board, one knife. Everything else is disposable or eaten off the same plate.
• Wash immediately after eating, while the kettle water is still hot, never later
• Paper plates for a fortnight are a reasonable trade, and this is the one time to say so
• A washing-up bowl means you carry water once rather than running a tap you do not have

Every temporary kitchen fails the same way: not because cooking got hard, but because clearing up got hard enough to skip, and then there is nothing clean to cook with.

Use the freezer before it starts

If the outage is planned, the fortnight beforehand is the moment to cook double every time you cook.

Ten flat bags of stew in the freezer, defrosted in cold water and heated in a slow cooker or a microwave, is three weeks that cost almost nothing. This is the single highest-return thing on this page, and it has to be done in advance.

Set an end date and mark it

Renovations drift. Put a date in the calendar to reassess, not to be finished by, and if it passes, buy one more appliance rather than continuing to suffer.

A twenty pound hotplate in week three is not a defeat. It is cheaper than four more takeaways.

What helps

• A slow cooker, the single most useful appliance to own without a kitchen.
• A double hotplate, cheap, and it restores most of what you are missing.
• A washing-up bowl and a folding drainer, so water is carried once.
• A trestle table, which becomes the kitchen and later becomes useful anyway.

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