Mastering DIY Travel Cooking and Camping Meals

The propane stove sputtered twice before catching, and I crouched on the rocky shore of Lake Bled in Slovenia, watching my pot of water slowly come to a boil. It was 6:47 in the morning, fog still clinging to the castle perched above the lake, and I was about to make the best breakfast I’d eaten in weeks. Not because I had fancy ingredients or professional equipment. I had a dented titanium pot, a single burner that cost me thirty euros in Ljubljana, some eggs I’d bought at a farmstand the day before, and a chunk of local cheese wrapped in paper. The entire meal probably cost three euros. But as I sat there eating scrambled eggs with melted cheese, watching the sunrise paint the Julian Alps pink, I understood something that took me years of restaurant work and food writing to fully appreciate: the context of a meal matters as much as the ingredients.

I’ve spent the better part of fifteen years eating my way around the world, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that some of my most memorable meals didn’t happen in restaurants. They happened in cramped Airbnb kitchens at midnight, on camping stoves balanced on tailgates, in hostels where I shared a single cutting board with six other travelers, and on park benches where I assembled sandwiches from market ingredients because I couldn’t afford another restaurant meal. Learning to cook while traveling transformed how I experience food culture, how I manage my budget, and honestly, how much I enjoy the trip itself.

Let me be clear about something right from the start. This isn’t about deprivation or sacrifice. I’m not suggesting you skip every restaurant meal and subsist on instant noodles. What I’m talking about is building the skills, the mindset, and the portable kitchen that allows you to cook when you want to, where you want to, with ingredients you’ve discovered along the way. The ability to transform local market finds into an actual meal is one of the most underrated travel skills you can develop.

Table Of Contents

• The Philosophy of Traveling with a Kitchen
• Building Your Portable Kitchen
• The Airbnb Kitchen: Opportunities and Frustrations
• Market Shopping as Travel Research
• Camping Cooking: Constraints Breed Creativity
• The One-Pot Philosophy
• Lessons From Failure
• The Social Element
• Equipment for Every Level
• Practical Tips for the Real World
• The Bigger Picture

The Philosophy of Traveling with a Kitchen

I developed my approach to travel cooking out of necessity. In 2016, Emma and I spent three months moving through Southeast Asia on a budget that now seems impossibly tight. We had allocated about forty dollars per day for everything: accommodation, transport, activities, and food. In Bangkok, that budget stretched comfortably. In Singapore, it snapped like a rubber band. After one particularly painful lunch at a hawker center that still cost us eighteen Singapore dollars for two people, I realized we needed a different strategy.

Our guesthouse had a shared kitchen. A cramped, slightly grimy space with two working burners, a rice cooker missing its lid, and a refrigerator that smelled like someone had stored durian in it for approximately forever. But it was a kitchen. That night, I walked to the wet market on Tekka Lane in Little India and spent twelve dollars on ingredients: a whole chicken broken down into parts, a bag of rice, ginger, garlic, scallions, and some bok choy. I made a version of Hainanese chicken rice that fed us dinner that night and lunch the next day. Total cost for four meals: roughly three dollars each.

The chicken wasn’t as good as the famous stalls at Maxwell Food Centre. I’ll never claim otherwise. But it was pretty damn good, and more importantly, the process of making it taught me things about Singaporean food culture that I never would have learned eating out. At the market, I watched how the locals selected their chickens. The vendor, a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Tan who found my Mandarin hilarious, explained that the yellow-skinned chickens were what her grandmother preferred, while the white ones were considered less flavorful but more tender. She showed me how to feel for the right amount of fat, and when I mentioned I was making Hainanese chicken rice, she threw in extra ginger for free.

That interaction, standing in a wet market haggling over poultry while trying not to slip on the perpetually damp floor, connected me to the food culture of Singapore in a way that ordering from a menu never could. This is the real value of travel cooking. It’s not just about saving money, though that certainly helps. It’s about gaining access to a layer of food culture that remains invisible to the restaurant-only traveler.

Building Your Portable Kitchen

Here’s what nobody tells you about cooking while traveling: you don’t need much equipment, but you need the right equipment. I’ve refined my travel cooking kit over probably two hundred trips, and I’ve made every mistake possible along the way. I once packed a beautiful eight-inch chef’s knife only to have it confiscated at airport security because I forgot to check my bag. I’ve carried cast iron camping cookware that weighed more than my clothes. I’ve bought cheap non-stick pans that started flaking after three uses.

The kit I carry now fits inside a small stuff sack about the size of a rolled-up t-shirt, and it handles ninety percent of what I need to cook.

The foundation is a lightweight stainless steel pot with a lid. Not titanium, which heats unevenly and tends to scorch sauces. Not aluminum, which can react with acidic foods. Just a simple 1.5 liter stainless pot that I bought at a camping store in Portland for twenty-two dollars. It’s been to thirty-something countries now, and aside from some discoloration on the bottom, it works perfectly. The lid doubles as a plate or a cutting surface in a pinch.

For a cooking surface, I carry a single MSR pocket rocket style stove. Weighs less than three ounces and can boil a liter of water in about three and a half minutes. The fuel canisters are available worldwide at camping stores, outdoor markets, and increasingly at convenience stores in countries where camping is popular. I usually pack one in my checked luggage and buy more as needed. In places where canisters are hard to find, like rural areas of developing countries, I switch to a multi-fuel stove that can run on white gas, kerosene, or even unleaded gasoline. That’s overkill for most travelers, but if you’re planning extended camping or backpacking in remote areas, the flexibility is worth the extra weight.

The knife situation took me years to figure out. You can’t fly with a real chef’s knife in carry-on luggage, and checking a bag specifically to transport a knife feels ridiculous. My solution: I carry a small folding knife with a 3-inch blade that’s legal for carry-on in most countries. It’s not ideal for serious prep work, but it handles basic cutting tasks. Then, whenever I’m settling into an Airbnb or rental for more than a few days, I buy a cheap knife at a local market or kitchen store. I’ve purchased knives on six continents now, ranging from a beautiful Santoku in Kyoto that cost forty dollars to a rusty but surprisingly sharp blade at a market in Marrakech for the equivalent of two dollars. Most of these knives I leave behind for the next traveler or give to my host. The Kyoto knife I kept.

Beyond that, my kit includes a small wooden cutting board, a silicone spatula that folds flat, a metal spork, a lighter, salt and pepper in tiny containers, and a few essential spices in travel-size jars. Cumin, chili flakes, and coriander cover most cuisines. Everything else I buy locally.

What I don’t carry: specialized gadgets, single-purpose tools, anything that requires electricity, or anything fragile. Every ounce matters when you’re moving frequently, and I’ve learned that a good knife and a decent pot can accomplish almost anything more elaborate equipment can.

The Airbnb Kitchen: Opportunities and Frustrations

Let me tell you about the worst kitchen I ever cooked in. It was a studio apartment in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood, booked specifically because the listing promised a “fully equipped kitchen.” When we arrived after a late flight, exhausted and hungry, I discovered that “fully equipped” meant a two-burner electric cooktop with one working burner, a pot with a warped bottom that spun when you stirred, a single dull knife that couldn’t cut bread without tearing it, and three plates, two of which were chipped. The refrigerator worked, but the freezer had frosted over so completely that you couldn’t actually put anything in it.

We ended up eating takeaway pizza that night, and I spent the next morning at a kitchen supply store near Campo de’ Fiori buying a knife, a small frying pan, and a pair of tongs. Cost me about thirty euros, but it transformed our two-week stay. I cooked cacio e pepe with fresh pasta from the market, eggs with guanciale and pecorino for breakfast, and simple pastas with whatever vegetables looked good at the local shops. The apartment’s terrible oven prevented any roasting projects, but working around limitations is part of the game.

Here’s what I’ve learned about Airbnb kitchens after staying in probably two hundred of them across forty-something countries. The listing photos lie. Not always intentionally, but a photo taken with a wide-angle lens makes a cramped galley kitchen look spacious, and “fully equipped” means different things in different countries. In Germany, a fully equipped kitchen usually actually is. In Southern Europe, the term is more aspirational. In Southeast Asia, you might find a rice cooker and a hot plate, which is honestly all you need.

My approach now is to message hosts directly before booking and ask specific questions. Not “Is the kitchen well equipped?” but rather “Does the kitchen have a working oven? How many burners on the stove? Is there a knife suitable for chopping vegetables?” Specific questions get useful answers. Vague questions get reassurances that may not reflect reality.

When I arrive at any rental accommodation, I do a kitchen assessment within the first hour. I check which burners work, test the water pressure, look at the knife situation, and inventory the basic equipment. If something essential is missing, I have time to solve the problem before I’m standing there with a pile of market ingredients and no way to cook them. This sounds obsessive, and maybe it is, but it beats the alternative.

The best Airbnb kitchens I’ve encountered share certain characteristics. They’re in places where the host actually cooks. You can tell immediately: worn cutting boards, real knives with handles that show use, spice collections beyond salt and pepper, olive oil that’s not dusty on top. In Barcelona last year, I stayed in an apartment where the host, a retired chef named Carles, had outfitted the kitchen with professional-quality equipment. He left a notebook with his favorite local markets, tips for what to buy when, and three handwritten recipes for Catalan dishes. That kitchen had better equipment than most restaurant stations I’ve worked.

The secret to cooking in unfamiliar kitchens is to keep your plans simple and adaptable. I never plan a complex meal for the first night in a new place. Instead, I buy ingredients that work whether I have great equipment or a single burner and a dull knife. Eggs, good bread, cheese, cured meats, ripe tomatoes, quality olive oil. These require minimal cooking, and if the kitchen turns out to be terrible, I can assemble a meal that’s still satisfying. By the second or third night, I understand the kitchen’s quirks and can attempt something more ambitious.

Market Shopping as Travel Research

The best meal I cooked while traveling started at 5:30 in the morning at the Or Tor Kor market in Bangkok. Emma and I had been in Thailand for three weeks by that point, and we’d eaten street food for almost every meal. Incredible street food. The kind of food that makes you reconsider everything you thought you knew about Thai cuisine. But I wanted to cook, to understand the ingredients from the inside, to see if I could recreate even a fraction of what the street vendors achieved so effortlessly.

Or Tor Kor is where Bangkok’s chefs shop. It’s the most expensive market in the city, which means prices are roughly a third of what you’d pay in any American grocery store. I spent three hours wandering the aisles, asking questions, tasting samples, and building a mental map of Thai ingredients. The vendor selling curry pastes let me sample five different versions, explaining the difference between Massaman paste from the south and the spicier Panang from the central region. A woman selling coconut products walked me through the difference between thin coconut milk for soups and thick coconut cream for curries. An elderly man with baskets of fresh herbs taught me to identify the specific type of Thai basil used in different dishes.

I left with ingredients for a green curry: fresh curry paste made that morning, coconut milk in bags, chicken thighs, Thai eggplants, pea eggplants, bamboo shoots, kaffir lime leaves, and three types of basil. Total cost: about 280 baht, or roughly eight dollars. Enough for four generous portions.

That night, in the cramped kitchen of our guesthouse, I made the best Thai curry of my life. Not because I’m a better cook than the street vendors. I’m absolutely not. But because I’d spent the entire day immersed in the ingredients, learning their names and purposes, understanding how they fit together. The meal was an expression of that learning, a way of synthesizing everything I’d absorbed. When I bit into a piece of Thai eggplant that popped with the bitter, vegetal flavor I’d first tasted at the market that morning, I understood Thai cuisine in a way that weeks of eating out hadn’t achieved.

This is why I tell every traveler to visit local markets, even if they never plan to cook. Markets are where food culture lives before it becomes meals. They show you what’s in season, what the locals prioritize, how prices work, how transactions happen. But if you actually cook with what you find there, the experience becomes something else entirely. It becomes participatory rather than observational.

My market shopping strategy has evolved over the years. I arrive early, when the vendors are setting up and the selection is best. I walk the entire market once without buying anything, just looking, comparing prices, noting which stalls have the longest lines of locals. Those lines exist for a reason. Then I make my purchases on the second pass, starting with proteins and produce that need refrigeration, ending with bread or items that can handle being carried for a while.

I always buy something I don’t recognize. Every single market trip. Maybe it’s a vegetable I’ve never seen, a spice that smells unfamiliar, a condiment in a jar with labels I can’t read. Sometimes these purchases are disasters. I once bought what I thought was a type of preserved plum in Vietnam that turned out to be intensely salty fermented fish paste. Not what I had in mind for the fruit salad I was planning. But more often, these mystery purchases lead to discoveries. A purple yam in the Philippines that made the creamiest mash I’ve ever tasted. A preserved lemon paste in Morocco that transformed every tagine I made for the rest of the trip. A jar of fermented black beans in Chengdu that I’ve been trying to find again ever since.

The language barrier is less of a problem than you’d expect. Numbers translate through gestures. Pointing works. Phones can translate basic questions. And in my experience, market vendors worldwide share a characteristic: they want you to leave with the right ingredients. They’ll correct your selections, suggest alternatives, demonstrate how to tell if something is ripe. The transaction is a form of communication even when words fail.

Camping Cooking: Constraints Breed Creativity

The most transformative cooking experience of my traveling life happened not in a professional kitchen or a well-equipped Airbnb, but on a flat rock beside a river in Patagonia. Emma and I were five days into a backpacking trip through Torres del Paine, carrying everything on our backs, exhausted from a long day of hiking, and facing the dinner challenge that every backpacker knows: how to make dried food palatable when you’re tired and cold and cooking on a tiny flame.

Backpacking forces you to rethink everything about cooking. Weight matters. Every gram you carry, you carry for days. Fuel is limited. You can’t simmer a stew for three hours when your gas canister has to last a week. Cleanup options are minimal. You’re eating out of the pot you cooked in because carrying plates is ridiculous. And yet, precisely because of these constraints, I’ve learned more about fundamental cooking technique from backpacking than from almost any other experience.

That night in Patagonia, I had dried pasta, a small container of olive oil I’d decanted into a lighter bottle, some hard cheese wrapped in cloth, garlic powder, chili flakes, and one fresh lemon I’d carried from the last town. Not exactly a pantry. But I cooked the pasta until it was almost done, drained most of the water into my drinking bottle, added the oil and seasonings to the pot, and tossed everything together. Then I zested the lemon over the top, squeezed in the juice, and grated on the cheese. Total cooking time: maybe twelve minutes. Total fuel used: barely a dent in my canister.

It was a simple dish. Objectively, it was far simpler than meals I’ve made in well-equipped kitchens. But sitting on that rock, legs aching from the trail, watching the sun drop behind granite spires that had taken us three days to reach, I ate every bite with a joy that no restaurant meal has ever matched. Context matters. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.

The techniques I learned from backpacking have influenced how I cook everywhere. I learned to pre-measure ingredients into labeled bags before leaving home, eliminating bulk packaging and speeding up preparation. I learned that dehydrated vegetables rehydrate faster if you soak them in cold water during your last hour of hiking, so they’re ready to cook when you reach camp. I learned that a small container of bacon grease adds more flavor per gram than almost any other fat you can carry, and that instant mashed potatoes become genuinely delicious if you cook them with chicken bouillon and garlic instead of plain water.

I also learned the hard way about altitude cooking. At high elevation, water boils at a lower temperature, which means pasta takes longer to cook and sauces don’t reduce properly. My first attempt at cooking rice at 12,000 feet resulted in a crunchy, half-raw mess that I choked down out of necessity. Now I know to add extra water and extra time, and to keep the lid on as much as possible to trap heat.

For car camping or base camping, where weight is less of a concern, the cooking options expand dramatically. I’ve cooked on everything from elaborate camp kitchens with three burners and a griddle to a single cast iron skillet balanced on a campfire. The fundamental approach remains the same: simple preparations, quality ingredients, and techniques that work with the heat you have available.

One of my favorite car camping meals is a dead simple roast chicken. I bring a whole bird in a cooler, let it temper while the fire burns down to coals, then cook it in a covered Dutch oven for about an hour and a half. The smoky, crispy result is better than ninety percent of the roast chickens I’ve eaten in restaurants. The trick is patience. Wait until you have a solid bed of coals rather than active flames. Position the Dutch oven so it gets even heat. Resist the urge to check constantly. Let the process happen.

The One-Pot Philosophy

I need to talk about one-pot cooking for a minute, because it’s the secret weapon of every successful travel cook I know. The concept is simple: dishes where everything cooks together in a single vessel, building layers of flavor as different components interact. But the execution has subtleties that took me years to understand.

The mistake most people make with one-pot cooking is adding everything at once. They dump in protein, vegetables, grains, liquid, and spices, then wonder why the result tastes muddled and the textures are all wrong. One-pot cooking still requires building flavors in stages. You brown the aromatics first, then sear the protein, then add longer-cooking vegetables, then shorter-cooking ones, then liquid to simmer, then quick-cooking items at the end. The pot is single, but the process is layered.

My go-to travel one-pot meal is a simple rice dish that adapts to whatever ingredients are available. I start by cooking diced onion and garlic in a bit of oil until soft. Then I add any protein, usually cut into bite-sized pieces, and cook until just browned. Then rice goes in, stirred to coat with the fat, followed by liquid at a ratio of roughly two to one, liquid to rice. Into this goes whatever vegetables and seasonings make sense. Diced tomatoes and cumin for a Mexican vibe. Coconut milk and ginger for something Southeast Asian. Wine, herbs, and dried mushrooms for European flavors. The pot simmers until the rice absorbs the liquid, I cover it and let it rest for ten minutes, and dinner is done.

I’ve made versions of this dish in hostels, Airbnbs, campgrounds, and once on a ferry crossing the Aegean Sea when the onboard restaurant looked questionable. It works everywhere because the technique is universal, even if the flavors change with location. That’s the real power of learning to cook while traveling. You develop a repertoire of techniques that adapt to any circumstance, any kitchen, any set of ingredients you encounter.

Lessons From Failure

I’ve screwed up more travel meals than I can count. Spectacular failures that I still think about years later.

In Oaxaca, I attempted to make mole negro from scratch in a tiny apartment kitchen. The recipe called for charring dried chilies, and I charred them alright. I charred them until they caught fire, setting off the smoke detector and filling the entire apartment with acrid smoke that took two days to dissipate. The resulting mole tasted like an ashtray. I learned the difference between charring and carbonizing, a distinction that matters enormously when you’re working with dried chilies.

In Japan, I bought what I thought was rice wine vinegar for a salad dressing. It was actually amazake, a sweet fermented rice drink. The dressing was not good. Now I take photos of products I want to buy again, so I can match the packaging later, since I can’t rely on reading the labels.

In Morocco, I vastly underestimated how long it takes to cook chickpeas at high altitude using only a camp stove. After two hours of simmering, they were still hard as pebbles, and I’d burned through most of my fuel. We ate them anyway, pretending they were supposed to be crunchy. They were not supposed to be crunchy. I now pre-soak dried legumes for at least 24 hours before attempting to cook them while camping, and I carry a small pressure cooker for extended base camping.

In Argentina, I ruined a beautiful grass-fed steak by cooking it too fast over flames that were too hot. The outside charred while the inside remained cold and raw. An Argentine man camping nearby watched this disaster unfold, shook his head sadly, and spent the next hour teaching me how to manage a proper asado fire. Let the flames die down. Cook over embers, not fire. Be patient. His steak was perfect. Mine was barely edible.

Each of these failures taught me something I couldn’t have learned any other way. The lessons stick precisely because they’re attached to specific, embarrassing memories. I’ll never forget the mole fire, which means I’ll never over-char chilies again. I’ll never forget the chickpea debacle, which means I’ll never underestimate altitude and dried legumes again. Failure is the best teacher if you’re paying attention.

The Social Element

Cooking while traveling isn’t just about feeding yourself. It’s about connecting with other travelers and locals in ways that dining out rarely permits.

Some of my best travel memories involve cooking for strangers. In a hostel in Lisbon, I made pasta for the whole common room because someone had left groceries behind and they were about to spoil. Twelve people crowded around a table meant for six, sharing a meal that cost essentially nothing, trading stories about where they’d been and where they were going. By the end of the night, we’d planned a group trip to Sintra for the next day.

In a rental house in Tuscany, I cooked dinner for my wife’s extended family, twenty-three people across three generations. I spent two days shopping and prepping, starting with fresh pasta that I made by hand using technique I’d learned from an Italian grandmother in Bologna. The meal took six hours to serve, and we didn’t leave the table until midnight. Someone brought out a bottle of grappa they’d been saving for a special occasion. That meal became a family legend.

In a campground in New Zealand, I traded cooking duties with a German couple who had been traveling for a year. They taught me their technique for camp bread, a simple dough cooked in a covered pan. I taught them how to make a quick curry from powder and coconut milk. We camped together for four days, sharing supplies and splitting cooking responsibilities. I still email with them occasionally. They send photos of dishes they’ve made. I send back suggestions.

The act of cooking for others creates a different dynamic than eating together in a restaurant. It’s more vulnerable, more personal. You’re offering something you made, not something you bought. When it works, the connection is stronger. When it fails, you laugh together and order pizza.

Equipment for Every Level

After all these years, I’ve developed a tiered approach to travel cooking equipment based on the type of trip.

For trips where I’m moving constantly and weight matters above all else, I carry the minimal kit I described earlier: the stainless pot, the pocket stove, a small knife, the few essential tools. This kit adds maybe two pounds to my pack and takes up less space than a pair of shoes. It handles breakfast anywhere, simple dinners, and hot coffee or tea, which sometimes matters more than food.

For trips where I’m based in one place for a while but the rental kitchen might be inadequate, I add a few items. A decent chef’s knife, usually an inexpensive Global knockoff that I don’t mind losing. A small cutting board made of plastic that I can actually fit in my luggage. A silicone spatula and a pair of metal tongs. Sometimes a small instant-read thermometer, which makes cooking proteins in unfamiliar ovens far less stressful. This kit adds maybe three pounds but dramatically expands what I can cook.

For car camping or road trips, weight stops being a concern. I bring cast iron, specifically a 12-inch skillet and a 5-quart Dutch oven. I bring a full knife roll with three knives. I bring a cooler stocked with perishables and a box of shelf-stable ingredients. I bring a camp stove with two burners and enough fuel to cook for a week. The cooking possibilities become essentially unlimited.

The key is matching your equipment to your trip, not carrying more than you need or less than you’ll use. I’ve met travelers who packed elaborate cooking setups they never touched, and others who brought nothing and regretted it when they encountered a beautiful market with no way to cook what they bought. Think about your actual plans, the kitchens you’ll likely encounter, and what you realistically want to cook. Then pack accordingly.

Practical Tips for the Real World

Let me share some specific techniques that have made my travel cooking easier over the years, things I wish someone had told me when I started.

Bring a small container of neutral oil. Rental kitchens often have dusty olive oil that’s gone rancid, or no oil at all. A small bottle of canola or vegetable oil solves many problems.

Pack a few sheets of aluminum foil. It creates makeshift lids, works as a grill surface, wraps food for campfire cooking, and weighs almost nothing.

Learn to cook eggs in every possible way. Eggs are available almost everywhere, they’re cheap, they cook quickly, they’re nutritious, and they adapt to any cuisine. If you can fry, scramble, poach, and bake eggs reliably, you’ll never go hungry.

Bring or buy a simple bottle of soy sauce. It’s umami in liquid form. A splash improves almost any savory dish, regardless of cuisine. I’ve added soy sauce to Italian pasta, Mexican rice, French omelets, and American burgers. Don’t overdo it, but don’t overlook it either.

Master the art of vinaigrettes. Oil, acid, seasoning, emulsified together. Every cuisine has a version. Learn the basic ratio: three parts oil to one part acid. Then vary the ingredients based on where you are. Rice vinegar and sesame oil in Asia. Red wine vinegar and olive oil in Europe. Lime juice and whatever oil you have in Latin America.

Understand how heat works in different stoves. Electric coils retain heat after you turn them off. Gas responds instantly. Induction only works with magnetic cookware. Propane camp stoves can be finicky in cold weather. The same recipe might need adjustments based on the heat source.

When in doubt, serve it over starch. Rice, bread, pasta, potatoes. They’re cheap, available everywhere, and they turn small amounts of interesting ingredients into complete meals. I’ve stretched a single beautiful vegetable or piece of fish into dinner for two by piling it on a mound of rice.

Finally, taste as you go. This sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget when you’re tired and hungry and cooking in unfamiliar circumstances. Seasoning levels change based on altitude, humidity, ingredient quality, and a dozen other variables. The only way to know if the food is properly seasoned is to taste it. I carry a small plastic spoon specifically for this purpose, and I use it constantly.

The Bigger Picture

When I look back at fifteen years of eating my way around the world, the meals I remember most vividly aren’t always the most technically accomplished or the most expensive. They’re the meals that meant something. The first dinner I cooked for Emma in a Hanoi apartment, when we were still new to each other. The Christmas Eve feast I improvised in a Santiago rental when we couldn’t find an open restaurant. The breakfast I made for my father on his seventieth birthday, camping at a lake in Oregon he’d been visiting since he was a kid.

Cooking while traveling gives you the ability to create those moments rather than just experience them. You become an active participant in your food journey, not just a passive consumer. You connect with food culture at its source, in markets and shops and conversations with vendors. You develop skills that serve you anywhere, whether you’re standing in a state-of-the-art kitchen or crouching beside a campfire.

I’m not saying everyone should cook every meal while traveling. Some of my best food memories are from restaurants, street stalls, and hawker centers where the cooks have skills I’ll never match. But having the ability to cook, the equipment to make it possible, and the confidence to try, opens up experiences that remain closed to the restaurant-only traveler.

Start simple. Buy a few basic tools. Visit a market in your next destination and pick up ingredients that look interesting. Try cooking them, even if you’re not sure what you’re doing. Make mistakes. Learn from them. Eventually, you’ll develop your own repertoire of travel recipes, your own packing list, your own techniques for making it work in any situation.

The best meal I ever had while traveling was scrambled eggs on a rock in Slovenia, eaten at dawn, made with ingredients that cost almost nothing. But that meal only happened because I had a stove, a pot, and the desire to try. Everything else followed from there.