Might I recommend looking into the rescue boot method provided by Matan? I suspect that if you combine the two, you can make a simple installable package which would allow you to completely forgo the need to load the kernel into memory from the flasher utility - thus allowing recovery without the dependance on another device.

At the same time, I definitely appreciate the value of having a recovery OS image available that can be deployed from the flasher without any previous installs. So my personal suggestion would be to do both, if you have the time to do so.