Cooking In Hostels 101: The Best Budget Guide
For fresh backpackers, and even seasoned travellers – cooking in hostels can be annoying. Here’s how you can become a travelling chef.
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Cooking In Hostels
So, you’re ready to start cooking in hostels – great! Cooking in hostels is a great way to save a lot of money and keep healthy while on the road. Those Portuguese francesinhas really add up!
But, if you’ve never navigated hostel cooking before, you’ve probably got a lot of questions. I’ve stayed in a lot of hostels during my travels, and through trial and error I believe i’ve mastered the art of cooking in hostels.
Maybe you’re worried about hostel kitchen etiquette, or maybe you’re unsure of whether or not you need to bring anything yourself. Don’t fret – that’s what i’m here for.
In this guide, i’ll answer everything you need to know about cooking in hostels.
So, without further ado – let’s dive in!
Do Hostels Have Kitchens?
This largely depends on where you’re travelling. There are plenty of hostels in Europe, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand with kitchens.
However, in regions like South East Asia and Africa – there’s almost no point in a kitchen. Cooking in hostels can end up being more expensive, as the local food is super affordable.
There are always exceptions to this rule, so the best way to check if a hostel has a kitchen or not is to have a look when booking.
On HostelWorld, you can see what self-catering facilities a hostel has in the description and through the photos. Make sure you have a look before you book!
Do Hostels Provide Cooking Equipment?
Of the hostels that have kitchens, yes, they do provide cooking equipment! Cooking in hostels would be incredibly annoying (and near impossible) if you had to carry around cookware in your bag.
A lot of the time, they’ll provide the bare essentials – some basic pots, pans and utensils.
In some hostels, you’ll be spoilt for choice and they’ll have higher quality, and multiple different pots & pans. This means you don’t have to wait if someone is using the equipment!
Check out my post on how to choose a hostel like an expert!
Do Hostels Provide oil & seasoning?
I’ve stayed in close to 100 hostels during my travels, and out of the ones that have kitchens – the majority have some cooking oil on hand. Seasoning on the other hand, is less prevalent.
You can have a look at the reviews of hostels and sometimes people will mention if they have oil or not.
Cooking oil isn’t the easiest thing to carry around, so if you don’t have any, and neither does the hostel – it’s frustrating. How are you supposed to cook without it!
PSA to all hostels, please have cooking oil and at least some salt and pepper!
6 Expert Tips For Cooking In Hostels
1. Cook in off-peak times
You’re not the only one wanting to save a few bucks, cooking in hostels is very popular!
By cooking in off-peak times like the late afternoon, you’re more likely to have the kitchen to yourself and not feel rushed.
2. Raid the “free to use” shelf at your hostel
A lot of hostels have a shelf where they have things that are free to use. Usually, this means cooking oil and maybe some spices. However, they often have ingredients that previous guests have left behind!
Before you go out and do your shop, make sure to raid this shelf. You may not have to buy a jar of pesto or a box of pasta! These little things make it easier to keep your spending down and allows you to travel for longer.
Check out guide to volunteering in hostels
3. Have a couple of jars of seasoning with you
As most hostels don’t have any seasoning, you can travel with some yourself! Salt, pepper and paprika are great as they can make your hostel meal less boring.
The Infamous Paprika Explosion of June 23′: I was carrying out some spices with me on my first backpacking trip, and kept them in a small pocket of my bag. I hadn’t used them for a while as I was cooking meals that didn’t require them.
At some point, my bag started smelling of paprika – and I found some bright orange marks on my clothes. For whatever reason, I dealt with it and thought nothing of it.
Eventually, the smell was too strong for me to bear and I opened the pocket to find my paprika shaker had shattered. Paprika was EVERYWHERE in this pocket and was very hard to clean up.
It was so bad, that I had to wait 2 months before I could properly clean it up (kind of) with a vacuum in the AirBNB I booked over my birthday. In that two-month period, paprika kept leaking into my bag, as the shattered shaker had cut the pocket.
I guess the lesson is – make sure you store your seasoning better than I did!
4. Shop local
It’s very easy to head to a big supermarket and get everything there. But often, the prices there are hugely inflated.
You can save a lot of money by heading to a local market for things like veggies and fruit. As well as this, you are supporting smaller local businesses!
Check out my post on travelling responsibly
5. Cook one-pot meals
Cooking in hostels can be really easy, and using only one-pot can help you do this! It means that it’s quicker, there’s less clean up and other hostel mates can use the kitchen too.
6. Meal prep!
Other than when I only spend one night in a hostel, cooking enough for a few days makes your life really easy. After a big day, the last thing I want to do is cook.
I carried around a couple of tupperware containers so that I could store some leftovers for the next day. Some hostels even have some themselves if you don’t have any.
If you can’t store any leftovers, i’m sure someone in the hostel would love a free meal! (This is also a fantastic way to make a new friend.
Check out my post on how to survive hostel life
Hostel Kitchen Rules / Etiquette
Sadly, hostels don’t have private kitchens for each guest. A lot of the time, they are small and cramped, don’t have a lot of equipment and everyone wants to use them. For those reasons, cooking in hostels comes with a lot of written and unwritten rules.
Most hostels will have signs up with their own rules; which are usually things like “no cooking after ___pm” and “please label your food in the fridge”. Pretty normal stuff. However, underneath, there are some unspoken rules and etiquette you need to be aware of.
1. Don’t take over the kitchen
Cooking in hostels is popular. Everyone wants to cook their dinner, so don’t be the person to start cooking a 4 course meal using all of the cooking equipment.
The first thing I think of when thinking about this is when I was in Sofia, Bulgaria. Me and my new travel buddy just got off the bus after a long travel day and all we wanted to do was eat.
We checked in, and hit up Lidl for some ingredients. When we got back, we found a group of 4 guys cooking up this huge meal. They were using pretty much all of the equipment and got annoyed at us when we tried get in there.
They were still there cooking 3 HOURS LATER.
2. Avoid cooking smelly food
Are you craving some fish? Reconsider your need to cook it, unless you want some annoyed hostel mates. I get it! Fish is tasty. But, it’s not the nicest smelling thing before it is cooked.
When I’ve been cooking in hostels, it can be annoying! I get cravings for food that I would have at home – but can’t as they don’t smell great.
This means when i’m cooking in hostels, I cut back on the garlic, completely avoid seafood and steer clear of stinky curry pastes.
Save these ingredients for when you have a private kitchen! When travelling long-term, I usually spend a couple of nights in an apartment to reset. This gives me the chance to cook up something different!
3. Wash up as soon as you can
As I mentioned before, a lot of hostels don’t have a lot of cooking equipment. Sometimes, they’ll have as little as one pan, one pot and a few basic cooking utensils.
There’s nothing worse than going to cook and finding that someone has used and chose not to clean up the pan you needed!
It’s great hostel etiquette to wash up as soon as you can. I tend to wash up very quickly before I eat so I don’t have to worry about it after. But, it’s just as fine to wash up as soon as you’re done eating.
Cooking in hostels is about respecting the fact that other people want to cook as well. Washing up as soon as you can is a way you can do this!
4. Don’t steal other people’s food!
The fact that I have to say this is crazy. There is still a small percentage of travellers that steal peoples’ ingredients that have their name on them!
A lot of hostels deploy a “if there’s no name on it, it’s yours” rule. I love this rule! When trying to keep costs down, you can nab some things that you now don’t have to spend money on.
To keep this from happening to you, make sure you label your food when cooking in hostels!
Easy Hostel Meal Ideas
When travelling, the best meals and snacks are the ones you don’t need many ingredients for. They are quick to make, and use the least amount of equipment possible! Your hostel mates will love you for not making anything super complex.
Here are some easy hostel meal ideas (that are also affordable) that I use when travelling:
1. Pesto Pasta (or, any pasta really)
If one meal defined my travels, it would be pesto pasta. This dish almost single handedly got me through my first solo backpacking trip. All I needed was some pasta and a jar of pesto!
If you want, you can add in some chicken or green veggies and voila! You have a great hostel meal that doesn’t take long, require heaps of sauces and ingredients and most importantly, is friendly to your wallet.
2. Peanut Butter Toast
Cooking in hostels doesn’t need to be fancy. When i’m in hostels without a free breakfast, I buy a small loaf of bread and a jar of PB and i’m sorted! I can even carry around the jar when travelling between places.
I went through a period where I wasn’t really eating a lot, purely to save money. I had the bare minimum! But, naturally, I was losing weight after walking everywhere all day. Peanut butter and bread is a good source of calories and plant-based protein to keep you full on the road!
3. Boiled Eggs
Looking for an easy snack that fills you up and gives you a good amount of protein? Boiled eggs are great. They can even be a full meal if it works for you!
Cooking In Hostels: Final Thoughts
There you have it! Now, it’s up to you to put my wisdom into practice. The difficulty of cooking in hostels varies from hostel to hostel, so with some trial and error it’ll become easy for you too!
Check out all of my posts about hostel life
Book Your Trip With My Favourite Resources:
Cheap Flights: I always use Skyscanner to browse for cheap flights. It offers so many options to help you find a good deal! It even allows you to search for “anywhere” if you haven’t decided where to go yet!
Accommodation: I start my hostel search with Hostelworld. Most hostels are now on this platform making it the place to find the best hostel for you.
Travel Insurance: If you can’t afford travel insurance, you can’t afford to travel. It is so important to have when travelling as it will save you from illness, injury, theft and cancellations! I always use Worldnomads when travelling on a budget as they have the best deals for me.