Cooking in a rental property often lacks familiar tools and can undermine relaxation. Packing a few treasured kitchen items removes guesswork and helps guests unwind by ensuring essential tasks like opening wine or preparing garlic are manageable. Bringing versatile pieces such as rimmed sheet pans enables many meals to be cooked and served directly from them. A Dutch oven can double as luggage filler while protecting smaller items, and a reliable skillet is often preferable to unpredictable rental cookware. Planning what to bring should reflect group size, travel constraints and cooking roles to make each kitchen task feel like a win.
Nothing dampens the out-of-office energy more than stepping into your home-away-from-home and realizing there are zero cutting boards but 15 butter knives. Arriving prepared to a rental property takes the guesswork out, and perhaps more important, lets you unwind without worrying about how you're going to open the wine at dinner or how old that garlic powder above the microwave really is.
Dan Pelosi, a cookbook author who contributes recipes to New York Times Cooking and self-proclaimed Vacation House Mom, found himself getting tapped so frequently for advice on what to pack for a vacation rental that he created a guide on his website. He likes to pack rimmed sheet pans because they fit really easily in a suitcase and are so versatile. You can make almost any meal in a sheet pan and serve it from there, he said.
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