You can absolutely just run a recursive resolver on your laptop use that resolver in every[+] network. There is literally nothing special about a recursive resolver except it doing some legwork that a stub resolver / filter resolver (like glibc or dnsmasq) doesn't do.

If you run e.g. Linux or BSD, you'd just install knot-resolver, enable the service and put "127.0.0.1" in your /etc/resolv.conf. That's it.

Similarly if you run something like pihole it is very easy to have it run a recursive resolver as well, I bet pihole has a page on how to set that up, and I doubt it is hard in any way.

If, of course, all you have now is a router provided by your ISP and you want to run your own intranet DNS resolver, then, yeah, you'll probably need some hardware for that. Obviously.

[+] some networks hijack outgoing DNS.