Doesn’t Mark F. say he never uses hotel coffeemakers because of bizarre things he’s heard people use them for? Add cooking to the list. Obviously, if it’s your coffeemaker, knock yourself out.
This explains why the last pot of coffee I made in a hotel room tasted like fish.
The last thing you want to do when staying in a hotel is think about any prior activities that may have taken place there.
It’s a clever idea. But the coffee maker at a hotel always has a funky smell to the water as they are rarely cleaned and descaled.
But to add some tips: Go to a camping store and get some small 2.5 oz bottles with fold down nozzles. Fill with Olive Oil, Vinegar, Sesame Oil, Soy Sauce. Those can go in the ziplock carry on or use bigger bottles in the checked bags. Then an asian store store for good soba noodles. and pack a few of those in the checked luggage, they’re sometimes portioned out with a little “Cigar Band” around the bundles. Those can be rehydrated with some hot water, dried mushroom and add tofu. Season with the sesame oil and soy sauce. And get some bagged salad (use with Oil and vinegar dressing). Pack a disposable pepper grinder and some good salt in the checked bag. Get some shredded dried sea weed for a topping for noodle dish too.
I hope you leave extra big tips for the maid.
Public Service Announcement:
Please don’t do this in a hotel - ever. Please.
I had the maid gig briefly - it’s hard work, even when people don’t cover the appliances in burnt cheese. You’re often given the maximum number of rooms you can just about clear in a day - if they’re normal. Don’t be THAT guest. Even if you tip, just don’t okay?
Also it’s the opposite of smart. Do you know which rag your busy maid used to clean your coffee pot in the bathroom sink? Sometimes she doesn’t either. If she cares, which for minimum-ish wage, she might not. This job is so mind-numbing sometimes you just zone out. I caught myself using the rag from the bathroom floor before getting a fresh rag and washing it again.
Before you ask, no, I didn’t get fired for negligence. I found a job in a restaurant where I bleached my counter obsessively.
Film critic Roger Ebert did this with a rice cooker that he carried with him as he traveled the world for work, and even published a book of recipes for meals that could be prepared using only a rice cooker.
I’m really not getting the impression that the author is recommending using the coffee maker you find in a motel room to do your cooking. In the article there are a few references to “your coffee maker,” and it would be trivial to pack one with you as you travel, the way Ebert did with his rice cooker - though I think that a rice cooker would be more practical to pack since it doesn’t have a fragile glass carafe as one of its components.
I agree that using the hotel or motel’s coffee maker to cook your meals doesn’t sound like a good idea. I don’t even use them to make coffee.
The article cites a military deployment which makes perfect sense.I assumed it was not aimed at hotel rooms, but feared that people would be tempted to try anyway. What with airline fees, amirite?
Carrying a glass carafe while staying some place a short time sounds like a massive pain in the butt, so I reckoned between those two things, there was a risk that the hotel carafe would be set upon by some poor wretch.
I did clean burnt cheese off of a coffee maker once. That sandwich was almost certainly worse for the guest than it was for me.
Aren’t you glad that you don’t have a sea-food allergy?
My roommate in college INVENTED THIS!!! We made ramen noodles in the coffee pot.
This is why I never use hotel coffee makers. If the previous guest didn’t brew meth in it, they made it smell of fish.
Kind of reminds me about some of the things that I used to use my electric water heater (not an electric kettle; it was more cylindrical, with a larger top) to make in my dorm. Ramen was fine; chili, not so much.
One thing that kind of bugs me, though, is how it’s implied that the military is still serving soldiers shit on a shingle or something. With all the advances in food preservation, can’t they give them better meals? (And, for that matter, where would they get fresh salmon and broccoli from?)
It was a flip remark when I said I’ll never go hungry in a motel room, I can’t imagine really cooking in a motel room coffee maker. I began cooking in a coffee maker as an experiment for my nephew who was over seas and complained of bad food. It became a weird and fun science project and I got hooked on it because it was fun and it really works. It’s great for kids in dorms and people who want to skip the fast food lunch and eat healthy food at work. After I had made mini cakes, and pizzas, hamburgers, hard boiled eggs and breakfast burritos with sausage, scrambled eggs and cheese, soup from scratch with raw meat and cooked a corned beef, I knew there wasn’t much I couldn’t make with mine. So come check out my facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cooking-With-Your-Coffee-Maker/149536218437333
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