The chef is a very versatile role, capable of cooking a wide variety of dishes to keep the crew well fed. You can also run a number of gimmicks, but every shift it’s just the same old “hmm today I will eat human meat” (CITATION NEEDED). As such, and by relatively popular request, I have decided to compile a guide of useful food items, both with and without botany. This guide will also be useful to botany, as it shows what plants are likely to be useful to chefs.
Part One: Everything is pro-seed-ing as I have forseen
Alright, let us for a moment assume that everything is perfect. Botany is at your beck and call, any plant you could ask for is whipped up within moments. You could cook ANYTHING. But what, pray tell, should you cook?
Chapter 1.1:- Species Preferences
Species have a wide variety of preferences for food. And by preferences I mean biological requirements. Some species will straight up die if you feed them the wrong things, so lets go through them all.
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Humans: Will eat anything that came out of the microwave, and anything that came out of a vendor. As long as they don’t try and eat a steak fresh out of the cow, humans are not difficult to please.
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Lizardpeople: Meat, and raw meat. Lizardpeople are actually something of a struggle to cook for, as even most of the “Meat” tab will prompt a reaction. There is always the easy way out of just slapping a pete steak on the counter and calling it a day, but assuming you want to try something more Sausages are one of your few viable options, and can be renamed to “sausage, seductively” for a bit of a lark.
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Mothpeople and apids: Mothpeople like veggies and diary. Once again, the option of just putting an carrot on the counter remains, but if you wanted to be more intensive things like butter noodles and I guess butter on a stick are there if you want them. Apids don’t exactly like diary, but veggies should still be fine. For an apid themed diner honey buns and honey nut bars are particularly on flavor, so maybe take a look at those
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Oozeling: Don’t feed them watermelons or soups, and all should be good under the hood there.
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Everyone else: Typically doesn’t eat, but if you ever find yourself serving at a plasma drive through, they like veggies and hate fruit. I have no idea why this would ever happen to you, but just in case!
A note on deviant tastes: For people with the deviant tastes trait, all of the above is swapped, with the notable exception of the moth allergy to meat. Most people keep notes on if they have this trait, but if they seem unenthused with the selection on display even though their species would probably enjoy it, you now know why. And they’d have to be a deviant to not like your cooking.
Chapter 1.2:- Things that do things
A lot of foods have special effects. These are colloquially known as things that do things. A list of rare things that do things that won’t be noted elsewhere are below
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Stuffed legion: Hard to get, but naturally contains tricordazine to heal miner wounds.
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Powercrepe: Aside from being a hilarious pun considering recent attitudes of coders, this hits harder than the captain’s saber used to craft it, with the downside of requiring a bag of holding to conceal. Also, you can explain the blood away as spilled jam.
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Clown’s tears: Less of a food item, and more of a drink ingredient, this can be ground to create quintuple sec, truly a delicacy for any self-respecting HoS. It does tend to lightly explode upon mixing, due to blending potassium filled bananas and a bowl of water.
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Cak’s and butterbears: These each produce a simplemob that rapidly regenerates health and can be eaten with disarm intent. If the brain used in the construction had a soul, that soul will possess the cak, but if it did not, it will simply act like a normal cat.
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Energy cake: Really only viable if you’re a traitor or ungodly lucky, the energy cake is less of a food item and more of a weapon, even moreso if you remicrowave it into the energy cakehat.
Chapter 1.3:- Tomatoes
Tomatoes are hilariously versatile, being a required ingredient in almost all pizzas, some soups, some pastas, and a smattering of other foods. Some of the highlights are as follows.
- Eyeball soup: Makes you look like you’ve commited multiple homicides, but not technically eating human meat because the eyes belong to a monkey. Right?
- Pizza. Pizza is amazing. It’s nutritious, can be split, and is generally just a wonderful time.
- Copypasta: I used the shotgun. You know why? Cause the shot gun doesn’t miss, and unlike the shitty hybrid taser it stops a criminal in their tracks in two hits. Bang, bang, and they’re fucking done. I use four shots just to make damn sure. Because, once again, I’m not there to coddle a buncha criminal scum sucking f------, I’m there to 1) Survive the fucking round. 2) Guard the armory. So you can absolutely get fucked. If I get unbanned, which I won’t, you can guarantee I will continue to use the shotgun to apprehend criminals. Because it’s quick, clean and effective as fuck. Why in the seven hells would I fuck around with the disabler shots, which take half a clip just to bring someone down, or with the tazer bolts which are slow as balls, impossible to aim and do about next to jack shit, fuck all. The shotgun is the superior law enforcement weapon. Because it stops crime. And it stops crime by reducing the number of criminals roaming the fucking halls.
Alright time for
Part 2: Botany fucked off and now all I have is a bunch of mushrooms
Well, let’s set up a scene. You are John Chef. You have no idea how the game works, and have barely figured out your role. You join lowpop to discover botany full of mushrooms and nobody in sight. What do you do? Well first off you have some food in your kitchen,so time for
Chapter 2.1:- Home Cooking
Breakfast. Is. Amazing.
It gives you a mood buff (which equates to a movement speed buff) for the first ten minutes of the shift if you hit up the kitchen at roundstart (within 15 minutes of server bootup). Things that provide the breakfast buff include, but are not limited to
- Waffles
- Donuts
- Pancakes
- Anything from the Eggs tab of the menu.
Breakfast is glorious, but once that fifteen minute time window elapses there’s very little reason to prefer it, and it might be exclusionary if you cooked 15 omelettes and now the apids are starving.
So what else to cook? Well, most of the main stock foods can be cooked from your basic supply, but there’s very little interesting here. Instead, let’s move on to the weed section.
Chapter 2.2:- Fungus Among Us
When a hydroponics tray is left untended, a number of plants can spawn to overgrow from the weeds. These are, in order of usefulness to us
- Plump Helmet
- Chanterelle
- Fly Amitana/Nettles/Reishi
- Tower Caps/Starthistle
The bottom two provide no cookable product at all, the lower middle three are all directly harmful to the consumer and effectively serve as biogenerator fuel, and Plump Helmet juuuuust edges out Chanterelle due to the ability to be exceptional (just like you) and provide omnizine.
Highlights of fungal cooking include:
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MUSHROOM PIZZA: Holy shit, a pizza that doesn’t need tomatoes to be created! It’s almost like it was made for this exact situation. What a godsend
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Plump Pie/Plump Biscuits: Both require pastry ingreedients, but can be exceptional. I would hand the exceptional ones to a competent chemist, as strange reagent helps you both, but to each their own.
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Amitana Jelly: This is here not as a commendation, but to note that this fucking kills you.
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Mushroom Soup: All the required ingreedients are infinitely farmable without any botany knowledge OR biogenerator, meaning that with enough goats, randomly placed dirt patches and a sink you too can feed an entire nation during a power outage.
And thus concludes the exploration of desperation. If you get so desperate you need to start cooking and eating human meat after reading this guide, then food is probably the least of your worries and the shuttle is likely coming soon. Or you’re just doing a tot gimmick. Who am I to say.
Closing Remarks
Most rounds will have a balance. Botany will not be a ghost town, but the entire station will not be delivering you saber after saber for your artisanal pancake sword empire. From there, assessing your options, talking to, and being open with botany is probably the best way to have a fulfilling chef shift. Most all the plants in the game are cookable, and even if they’re not there’s always the deepfrier.
Credits:
Me, for the idea of harvesting ideas from people and rewarding them with knowledge
Me, for writing the guide
@RogueNPS for having this idea and judging me for my sin
