Even Gordon Ramsay praised these inventive quarantine hotel meals
Who needs room service when you can cook like a pro using an iron, a coffee maker and other hotel appliances to whip up an impressive meal.
Before Jago Randles starts cooking in the professional kitchen, where he will be a chef during peak ski season in Whistler, Canada, he shared his inventive quarantine dishes with the world on TikTok.
"I had to quarantine when I arrived in Canada. I picked a hotel room with a microwave and fridge, but I got bored and decided I would try and cook a bacon sandwich on the iron," Randles told "Good Morning America" about his first attempt with the non-traditional cookware. "I decided that I didn’t want to eat ready meals and takeaway for the next two weeks and started looking at the other appliances and next fried an egg on the coffee machine hot plate."
Randles, 23, filmed and shared his first culinary concoction on TikTok -- seared salmon with baby bok choy that he steamed inside an electric kettle -- and racked up tens of thousands of views and praise from users.
"I was stuck in a room with not much else to do so I started getting really creative -- I made a steamer basket for the kettle out of an old takeaway pot that I had," he explained of the crafty innovation. "I woke up the next day and it had over 100K views so I thought I best make more and now 16 days on I have nearly 138K followers and millions of views."
Randles has made an array of sweet and savory dishes from bacon cheeseburgers and perfectly poached eggs with hollandaise to crème brûlée with fresh strawberries.
"I think the best dish that I’ve cooked is the sous vide chicken wrapped in bacon with mushroom cream sauce because it was probably the most technical of all the dishes and also the tastiest," Randles said.
So far, the biggest challenge with the hotel cooking, he said, is "trying to make sauces" because they take a very long time and you can’t reduce it as fast as you would in a normal kitchen. "But overall I would say I’m pretty happy with how every dish has turned out so far."
Randles first started cooking in his parents' restaurant at age 13 and continued honing his skills across the U.K. and abroad.
Now, his culinary creativity has captured the attention of another notable British chef.
"My favorite response is by far the one from Gordon Ramsay, I think any chef would be happy with being complimented by Ramsay, especially when you’re using an iron to cook on," he said. "The only criticism he had was that I needed to add salt -- which I actually did -- but just didn’t put it in the video."
As for any advice to other travelers looking to spice up their hotel eating experience, Randles said try to keep things clean.
"Go for it, just make sure you’re respectful of the hotel and don’t mess the place up," he encouraged. "I left no trace and got my deposit back!"
