The Complete Guide for Kosher Observers Abroad

There are places abroad where kosher food is the least of your problems – New York, for example. Many other cities that don't claim to be the capital of kosher restaurants still offer some stores and falafel stands where you can buy kosher food. But what do you do if you're unfortunate enough to travel to an area without any stores, restaurants, or Chabad houses offering kosher food? If you manage to arrange an apartment or hotel room with a kitchenette – you're all set. If you bring a small pot, pan, good knife, and cutting board from home, the sky's the limit (disposable cutlery and plates can be purchased). Vegetables, fruits, rice, legumes, kosher fish, and eggs can be bought anywhere, allowing you to manage for the long term. Alternatively, you can buy portable cooking equipment from travel stores (buy the gas in your destination country), which will give you the same effect.

Don't want to drag around a portable stove and couldn't find a hotel with a kitchenette? Don't worry, you've come to the right place. You don't have to stay hungry!

1. First, pack an entire suitcase full of food (depending on how many days you're traveling). Some products you can purchase locally - in every country you visit, you can find a list of products sold locally that are kosher despite not being labeled as "kosher." These are products that the Jewish community has checked for kashrut in terms of ingredients and production methods, and community members regularly buy and use them. The same applies to fruits, vegetables, and similar items. For other products – you'll need to stock up in advance.

2. You have products - what do you do with them now? The first thing is to check (in advance!) what you have in your hotel room: an electric kettle? Mini-bar? Iron? You're in luck. A mini-bar means the ability to preserve fruits and vegetables for more than a day or two, and an electric kettle will provide hot water for preparing many dishes (see section below). If there's no electric kettle, bring an immersion heater and an electric spoon (preferably with a two-prong plug rather than three, so you won't need to adapt it for foreign outlets), which will provide you with boiling water in any situation, and will also allow you to make hard-boiled eggs. And why is the iron important? You'll soon understand.

3. If you have hot water, all you need to do is bring instant couscous, fine bulgur, rice noodles, or instant mashed potato powder. Bulgur requires the longest soaking time to become edible, but the other three require shorter periods. With bulgur, you can prepare tabbouleh salad (+ tomatoes, cucumber, and chopped herbs that can be purchased locally), for mashed potatoes you can add slices of kabanos sausage (which doesn't need refrigeration), in couscous I mix drained canned chickpeas/peas and carrots or canned beans in red sauce, and for rice noodles – you can add a few drops of soy sauce if available. On supermarket shelves in Israel, by the way, you can find more sophisticated versions of these foods (mashed potatoes with onions/mushrooms, couscous with vegetables). You'll be surprised to discover how much their taste improves when they're the only option you have abroad.

4. Vegetable and fruit salads can be regularly prepared from products bought locally. This is a golden opportunity to taste fruits and vegetables that are only found there (fresh blueberries are a hit!). A salad I really like to prepare abroad is an improvised version of Niçoise salad: tomato + cucumber + bell pepper + lettuce leaves + hard-boiled egg (from an electric spoon...) + canned tuna. If I want to treat myself, I sprinkle cashews/peanuts on top. The salad is seasoned with olive oil (can be purchased in a miniature bottle in Israel – don't forget to pack it well in several bags and put it in your suitcase – as a liquid it won't pass through the scanning machine), lemon bought locally, and salt and pepper. It's worth bringing pre-packaged dressings in small sachets (Thousand Island, mayonnaise, garlic sauce, etc.).
A nice canned salad, for example, consists of: corn, mushrooms, pickles, and diced red bell pepper (fresh). The disadvantage is that the total ingredients are heavy for one poor meal, and the amount that comes out is relatively large for a couple. Maybe it's good for a family.
Another salad you can prepare is lettuce + fruit (nectarine, mango, whatever is in the store) + Chinese pecans and cranberries that I always bring from Israel.

5. In the bread department: My warmest recommendation is for Angel's whole wheat rolls. The package says "Best for Break Time." They stay fresh for up to four days, without refrigeration. Very tasty, and also healthy. I'd bet that even on the fifth day they'd be better than any cracker. In addition – it's worth taking a package of your favorite sliced bread. When it dries out and loses its freshness, there's a good trick to bring it back to life: wrap a slice in aluminum foil and place an iron on it. It's an improvised but effective way to make nice toast. You can sear just one side, and then the other side also returns to freshness. Run out of bread? No escape, move on to the cracker stage. Here you can also vary with pita crackers, breadsticks, and the like. (After publishing this post on Facebook, I received additional recommendations from readers: 1. Take tortillas – they keep well 2. Take a bread machine – so you can bake fresh bread anywhere...)

6. What do you eat with bread/crackers? It can be sweet or savory. The sweet category is easy: all you need to bring from Israel is quality jam or peanut butter. I have a preference for the savory category, and since regular salads don't keep without refrigeration, the main options are: a. Tahini salad (bring raw tahini, and each time prepare one portion for that meal; raw tahini keeps without refrigeration at a reasonable temperature for up to a week, some claim even longer – I personally don't take the risk. You can always bring two small tahini containers instead of one standard one). b. Avocado salad made from avocados bought in foreign markets; it's always good to add tomato strips. As a start – stock up from Israel with two hard avocados. c. Hard-boiled egg and tuna sandwich (I also add garlic sauce/mayonnaise that comes in the small sachets I saved, as mentioned, from the salad bar near my home). d. Canned tuna spread, salmon spread, sardines, or spicy tuna salad.

7. Tip I received on Facebook for preparing a quick breakfast: bring tiny packages of shelf-stable milk (250 ml) from Israel and your favorite breakfast cereals/granola, and you have breakfast in no time. You can use this milk for making coffee, of course. In supermarkets in Israel, you can buy coffee sachets that come in packs of 20.

8. I haven't tried it but I think you can make soups with an electric spoon and a large immersion heater. The concept is simple – use dedicated soup powder + the relevant vegetable (corn soup powder + corn, sweet potato soup powder + sweet potato slices cut with a peeler, lentil soup powder + lentils). The iron-made toast seems like it would go well with this. I must admit I haven't tried making soup with an electric spoon, but I made such soups in a kitchenette with a small burner that we surprisingly had in one of the hotel rooms. A little soup powder (don't kill me, please! Abroad has its own rules!), some chopped vegetables, canned chickpeas – and you have a great soup for couscous.

9. In the snacks and sweets department – here everything is open; most things we bring from Israel will keep well (energy bars, Bambas, etc.). We personally like to take Medjool dates + nuts. I put them in a separate bag (not in the suitcase with the rest of the food), and they're always in the car and make a great snack for the road. On our last trip, I discovered a nice snack, which is a type of sweet potato chips. We munched on it at the Finnish airport, but in retrospect, I think it could have made a great salad with lettuce. (Another recommendation I received on Facebook: canned pineapple slices are a tasty, sweet, and refreshing snack)

10. If you've taken a hotel that by default includes breakfast – it's always worth going down and seeing what you can take. Many hotels have a dedicated machine for squeezing oranges, fruits and vegetables, and maybe also products from the list. There are all kinds of small things that come in sealed packages, like butter or jams, that go great with common iron toast.

11. Wine for kiddush is worth bringing in advance – but transfer it from a glass bottle to a plastic bottle so it doesn't break in the suitcase. If you've done this – you must keep it refrigerated. If someone has connections with a winery – please recommend that they make small bottles – like those for mishloach manot, but made of plastic. It would be a hit.

12. Most important – take some quality chocolates. There's nothing better for comforting in moments of severe hunger, when you're looking at the buffets in the bustling boulevards, and desperately missing not only mom's food but even the neighborhood pizzeria.