How To Still Make Delicious Food When Your Stove & Oven Goes Out

What do you do when your stove and oven give up the ghost for a long period of time?  Or maybe you’re temporarily living somewhere without a full kitchen?

Here’s my list of the tools & gadgets every kitchen needs!

I’ve had an odd run of kitchen luck when it comes to the week of Christmas the past couple years.  Last year, my LP (gas) tanks ran out on Christmas Eve (thankfully the kind LP man brought me new ones that evening). 

And this year, my stove and oven went out on the Saturday before Christmas—in the middle of a batch of cookies. We got the part we thought we needed on Tuesday (Christmas Eve), but it didn’t work and so a repairman couldn’t come until late Thursday.  And then it didn’t work and it was determined I needed a new stove, which I couldn’t get until early the next week.

Thankfully, I don’t celebrate Christmas and so this wasn’t some catastrophic hosting issue.  But I *did* have my parents staying with me and other family in town, and was without a working stove and oven for almost two weeks.  Plus, I like to do a lot of baking and cooking over the winter break while I have time…if I want pudding, I make it.  If my mom wants fresh bread, I make it.

As I lay in bed (two weeks post-surgery as well…) and ruminated on it, I realized I had a number of different kitchen gadgets at my disposal that could be used rather creatively to indulge some of my cravings.  Among other things, I have an air fryer (two, actually), an Instant Pot, an electric griddle, and a small rice cooker.

Obviously you can go simple, particularly with an air fryer…chicken, salmon, roasted veggies and the like, or air fry frozen packaged foods.  With the Instant Pot you could obviously go soups or other crockpot dishes (they’re just not to my taste). On a normal day that’s what I would have done.

But in my determination to indulge my cravings, I decided to see how creative I could get, and wanted to share my techniques and successes with you for inspiration, if you’re in a similar “no stove or oven” situation.

So here are some of the things I made during this time:

Cookies – Baking cookies in the air fryer is so easy. Place the dough on parchment paper ideally, but it can go directly on if your air fryer is clean. If you have a “Bake” function, you can use a regular baking convection temperature (I go a little low), or on “Air Fry” take it down to maybe 325 F and keep an eye on them!

Sesame chicken with rice – I modified my go-to sesame chicken recipe and had to get a bit creative here. I have a small rice cooker, so that part was easy. I wanted to get the chicken crispy, so did it in the air fryer. Then I used my Instant Pot on “Sauté” mode to make the sauce, getting it nice and bubbly and thick.

Fresh bread – Y’all, you can bake bread in the air fryer! You want to go with small loaves so it can bake evenly and all the way through. I have a full recipe and instructions here.

Basque cheesecake – I made a (small) delicious orange almond basque cheesecake in my air fryer, and am dying to try other flavor combos. The key here is getting the right size of pan for your air fryer.

Chocolate pudding – I was super craving chocolate pudding after my surgery, so I used the “Sauté” mode on my Instant Pot to cook up and thicken some of my mom’s delicious chocolate cornstarch pudding. The biggest thing you have to be careful with is that the “Sauté” mode is quite intense, so you have to stir constantly as it thickens to avoid it sticking and scalding.

Massaman curry with rice – Again, my small rice cooker was clutch, and then I was able to use “Sauté” mode on my Instant Pot to go through all the steps of my favorite chicken massaman curry recipe (a true comfort food). I didn’t really have to make many modifications other than relying more on my instincts and vegetable doneness to determine cooking time, and needing to stir it more often since the heat is more intense.

Scones – Similar to cookies, these can be baked in the air fryer with only very slight temperature and time modifications vs. the oven.

Omelets, scrambled eggs, and pancakes on the electric griddle – It’s pretty straightforward, though trying to corral the eggs can be a bit messy. This is the griddle I have, it comes in handy for doing things like pancakes, reubens, etc. for a crowd. Now that I think of it, I could have made waffles in my waffle iron as well…

This doesn’t even count everything I could have done on my outside grill, which I use year-round. So hopefully this gives some inspiration for what to do if your stove and oven go out, and how you can still cook delicious and interesting things even without those big appliances.