I Didn’t Have a Kitchen for 9 Months; Here’s How I Cooked

For most of the last year I have had the privilege of gutting and rebuilding my kitchen. I genuinely mean that, I’m very lucky I got to do it—but it wasn’t without its pains. If you’ve never experienced long-term construction while living in your house, it is, at turns, exciting, maddening, and depressing. It also left me without a kitchen for the better of nine months: no stove, no cabinets, no counters, nothing.

This would be a nuisance to most anyone, but I work at a food magazine. I was not trying to microwave my dinners or order takeout 200 days in a row.

I was determined to figure out how to set up a “kitchen” that I could use while my old kitchen was turned into a literal hole in the ground. It turns out you don’t need that much. And while I can’t say that I like sautéing on a folding table as much as I like sautéing on my new range, I did it five days a week from June 2023 until February 2024. If you have a kitchen remodel on the horizon or just want some ideas for how you can give yourself a little more cooking space, here is the gear I found indispensable.

A replacement for my stove: Duxtop Portable Induction Burner

This was the single most important piece in my ad hoc kitchen. It gave me the hardware to do most of what I would regularly do on the stovetop—searing, simmering, frying—but the ability to transport it to any room in the house. This particular induction burner is quite versatile. It has both power and temperature settings, which means you can do things like use a low power setting to slowly melt butter without burning it or a high one to rapidly boil water. And if you just want to heat oil to 350℉, you can do that too. It is a single burner, so that meant I couldn’t simmer a sauce at the same time I cooked a protein. My solution was learning to love Melissa Clark’s cookbook Dinner in One, with dozens of one pot dinners my Duxtop could take care of.

A mini oven: Breville Joule Air Fryer Pro

A perk of my job as the product reviews editor is that I get to have a lot of cooking gadgets on hand at all times. Unlike the Duxtop, which is a relatively cheap way to expand your stovetop by 20%, Breville’s smartest smart oven is an investment. But it did a heroic job of entirely replacing my oven. During the most frustrating stretches of “what do you mean the cabinets won’t be ready for four more months,” I used the Breville to slow-cook pork, roast chicken, bake cookies, air-fry a small mountain of chicken nuggets for my kids, and make miraculously crisp, but in no way charred bacon.

And a mini pan to go with it: Nordic Ware ⅛ sheet pan

I love Breville’s Joule Oven. I don’t love the pans that came with it. They’re fine, but because I was cooking full meals in it five days a week, I wanted something that felt sturdier. A countertop oven obviously can’t fit the half-sheets I normally use to bake or roast, so I went out and picked up a smaller sheet from the always affordable, always reliable Nordic Ware. The brand’s half-sheet pans consistently win product tests thanks to their durability and high quality, so I figured a smaller size would get the job done just as well. It sustained through many sheet-pan dinners and is still going strong today when I need a quick round of chicken nuggets for the kids or some roasted carrots for the grown-ups (or periodically vice versa).

The only piece of cookware you need: Le Creuset Round Dutch Oven

One of the biggest changes I had to make when I lost my kitchen was putting away almost all of my pots and pans. I kept two: a deep cast-iron skillet from Smithey, and the Le Creuset Dutch oven I’ve had for 15 years. It works for almost everything: I used it as a pasta pot, a sauce pan, and a slow cooker (it fits in the Joule oven by the way). If you ever find yourself needing to choose one piece of cookware to take from your house in a fire, make it a Dutch oven (although, with how well it stands up to heat, it’d probably be fine if you went back to get it the next day).

An inexpensive rolling island: IRONCK Rolling Kitchen Island Table on Wheels with Drop Leaf, Storage Cabinet, Drawer, Spice Rack, Towel Rack

When you lose all your counters you have to find something to do all your prep work on. I got this island, frankly, because it was cheap. It was supposed to be a temporary solution, but over the course of a year, it’s proven durable enough that it could work in a small kitchen long-term. I don’t need it in the kitchen any more, but I still use it almost every day down in the basement, where I test gadgets for the site. The extra storage space provided by the large drawer and cabinet is enough to hold a small collection of cookware, knives, and hand tools. Plus, the countertop has a fold-down extension that makes it amenable to tucking into the corner of a small kitchen or using it as an actual island in a bigger space.

Junk drawer: A little bit of everything else I’m using right now

My house doesn’t have air conditioning, so we’ve had the door open a lot this summer. As a result, we’ve been engaged in a slow-moving territorial dispute with flies. I recently picked up this new fly trap from Zevo and it eliminated the problem almost entirely in one day.

Until we got this easy-to-set-up and easy-to-fold-up gate for our porch, our two very old dogs had a tendency to wander down into the unfenced front yard and just sniff at anyone who walked past. Now they can laze on the sun-drenched wood while staying well within our sights (and away from any unsuspecting neighbors).

If I could have an endless supply of anything, it would probably be these socks. With every step I can feel myself sinking into their softness, like lying down on a big leather sectional couch. And putting on a new pair of padded no-shows before a run is one of life’s little luxuries. They cocoon my feet in a cushion of comfort like no other sock that carries me all throughout my workout (also great if you’re old socks made you develop a blister).