Grilling At Home With a New Portable Stove | Mac's Cooking Diary

About a few months ago I was reading a post from @thisismy life about her new grilling pan.Around that same time, I also recently purchased the same pan and a new portable stove. I definitely shared the same excitement as her because I too love grilled food. Long story short, I shared the picture of the first time when I tried the pan. But to me, what was more exciting was the portable stove. The stove that basically is a marker of my hive and cooking journey here.

From Rice Cooker to Kitchen

If you’ve been around long enough, you probably know I was always cooking from a rice cooker, since at the time I couldn’t afford an electric cooker. But once the electric cooker was more accessible, I started cooking on them. I made all sorts of stuff with my rice cooker from Indian curry to Japanese stews. Then with my electric cooker, I was able to make more than that and even grilled some meat as I was starting to lean to a more carnivore diet. Somehow, I never got to actually buy a portable stove and it slipped through my mind. Then, only 4 months ago, I was able to buy this new portable stove. I certainly got excited, I mean I waited for this moment to come!

The portable stove is something I always see at cooking videos and foodies content creators use them a lot on youtube. I think it’s a lot reasonable given if the studio is pretty small and at home, it is more reasonable to have a separate stove especially with cooking, there are videos and camera involved. Not everyone can afford $3000 remodeling. So, it's one more reason why a portable stove can do the job while still making the video more aesthetically pleasing. That goes the same for me, even when I am home I have my own kitchen, in the future, I would use this portable stove to make cooking content.

These days with more brands offering portable stoves, there are more affordable options. I got this from Shopee, it’s a brand called Rinnai and they are a manufacturer of a stove. I got them in red and also from their authorized dealer which apparently was available in town. At first, I didn’t know how to use them because at home we’re using gas and not LPG. So, I was scared if I made a mistake in installing the portable gas. But I finally figured it out, well thanks to Youtube!

The first thing I made was filling up the grill pan with mac and cheese, grilled meat, and some random vegetables I tossed. It filled up the whole grill pan. I loved it. I was just beyond excited at the time because Yay! I could now finally make a proper cooking video, like the ones I keep seeing on youtube.

But..that has to wait.

I started moving and the pan alongside with the stove was neatly boxed. They were all waiting to be shipped and only yesterday, with the remaining of my junk arrived. They were all the last batch of my stuff that I accumulated for a decade living in a shoebox room. With the stuff being the last, I decided to invite my family members to have a simple housewarming party. These days, we also have a few additional guests like Reno’s gf and Ray’s wife. So, the house becomes a lot more lively. In the morning, I purchased a dimsum set that could be grilled and also prepared chicken for the grill.

Grilling at home!

Finally! I could grill at home and save a lot more money. Since I love grilled steaks and food, they can be pretty costly. Usually, grilling like this is only available at all-you-can-eat and it costs $6-$7 per person. Meanwhile at home, it can feed more than 9 people and everyone is happy.

The oil that you see above is sesame seed oil. We rather use that to give more fragrance to the grilled meat and dimsum. At the same time, we also grill garlic alongside adding garlic oil. For extra sauces, we were using gochujang, which comes from the dimsum box. It was more like a snack than a meal but what was important to me was that we all had fun together.

Then, I had to go back to cleaning and it’s going to be a while before my cooking space is finished and I can start making food again. I am also proud of how far I’ve come and even simplest things like this reminded me of my journey. Though there may be bad days, I am at least progressing in life. See you around!