We made all 78 Breath of the Wild recipes in one day | Unraveled

Breath of the

wild

! The most ambitious of the Zelda games confronts Link with perhaps the most difficult challenge a young man can face: feeding himself. Up to this point, Link has survived on Lon Lon milk, potions, and Grandma's soup, which means his bowel movements must be pretty rare. Link can cook now! And not only CAN you cook, you SHOULD cook, because these

recipes

replenish the hearts needed to survive in post-apocalyptic Hyrule. But looking at some of these

recipes

and ingredients, I wonder... Is Link a good cook? Are you seriously telling me that this hot mushroom and fruit puree will completely heal his wounds?

Survival is all about using the items you have at your disposal, but the food Link can cook and the ways Link can cook it make me quite skeptical about how beneficial they would be. And when I'm skeptical, I investigate. Today I'll be cooking every Breath of the Wild recipe and reranking their heart bonuses based on how delicious they are. *80s music plays* How delicious! I don't think I've used the word delicious since I was six years old. As always, we start with the parameters. If you were to choose every different iteration of food you can cook in Breath of the Wild, there would be HUNDREDS of recipes to cook.

Not only is it infeasible for me to do it in a timely manner, but it is also infeasible for me to eat in a timely manner without sending me straight to the hospital. So we're cutting back! We are removing all variations that modify your stats. There is no normal steamed fish versus powerful steamed fish. No matter what kind of fish I put on a plate, I won't tear myself apart anymore. I'm going to have a different fish inside me. We are also cutting out dishes like “Baked Apple,” which are just one ingredient that comes into contact with fire.

You don't have to be good at cooking to do this, you just have to be good at setting fires. We will also reduce our non-edible foods. I don't think I have to look to create questionable food. That will happen naturally. I'm also removing the gourmet and prime versions of the recipes. Judging by the pictures, it's more meat rather than better poor quality. Also, Polygon won't cost me Wagyu beef, so... WHATEVER. And speaking of quality over quantity, we're also eliminating the copious versions of recipes. Single-ingredient recipes are also out of here unless they are actively transformative like an omelet or a honey fudge.

But most of these recipes simply involve putting an ingredient on the fire. Oh, look at Gordon Ramsay over here, making HOT MILK. And finally, we will eliminate all recipes that include monster parts, because we all know that the real monster... is man. And cannibalism is frowned upon in New York. Now that we've narrowed it down to 78 recipes, let's talk about the ingredients. Some of these recipes call for specific ingredients, others are more vague, like calling for “any fruit.” Which, can I just say, is not how cooking works. Obviously, there's room for creative substitution, but when I can make the same fruitcake, whether it uses an apple or a durian, a fruit that smells like turpentine and wet garbage, it seems like a strange cop-out.

And it's a loophole that I'm going to make the most of. Link doesn't have the luxury of obtaining a wide variety of ingredients, so I will also use as few ingredients as possible. Obviously, some of them have very standard analogies in the real world, but others are a little stranger. As far as the kitchen goes, we'll keep it as true to Breath of the Wild as possible. We will not add any ingredients that do not appear in the recipe. That includes salt and pepper! *realizing he'll have to eat 78 unseasoned meals* That's going to suck. But I'll be a little indulgent with myself.

I will add a neutral oil or water to recipes that call for it, because I am going to be cooking in a wok or skillet for most of these recipes, and if I don't add fat, everything is going to burn. . And that is. 78 recipes. 33 Ingredients. Now all we need... is a kitchen. And luckily, our sister site Eater was willing to lend me theirs for a whole day because they obviously haven't seen how these Unraveleds are going. Of course, they wouldn't let me in without a companion, so we have Eater's own Zelda expert, Adam Moussa, joining us.

Do you know what you signed up for? - Ah, I don't know, let's cook some food! We will be fine. - Good, I'm psyched up. You can see that there is a lot of food here today, but we have 78 recipes to complete. And we'll reduce food waste by cooking them all as if they were a tasting menu. - Only small portions. - Mmhmm, yes, besides, we are two mortal men, and eating 78 square meals would kill us. - Oh Lord. - What are we going to do first? - Let's open a pumpkin. - Oh my God, yes!

In Zelda it is called fortified pumpkin. And this is definitely a huge ass fortified pumpkin. And I think that makes sense for us. Also, if I can't be exact, I'm sure I'll be extra. And with our mission statement established, we began the prep work for the entire day, planning our meals, discussing what could be precooked and combined later, and striving to correct any inaccuracies in the recipes by preparing them as extra as possible. possible. We also planned our rating scale. We will assume that 10 hearts is a full recovery. A dish that is amazing will receive a 10.

A dish that is terrible and closer to a dubious meal will receive a 1. In the rare case that a dish is transcendent, we will reward it with hearts beyond the scale. And unfortunately... - There... there could be some food today... that will hurt us. And in that case, that is negative. We cut the pumpkin and roast it so we can easily incorporate it into other recipes. And although we promised to do most things in the wok, we decided to roast some things like pumpkin and chicken, because Link doesn't have to worry about things like food poisoning. - That's a Zelda game I want to play, where you can get food poisoning.

You can get salmonella. Would it be cheating if we finished them in the oven? - No. After deciding that our health was a little more important than being absolutely faithful to the game, we ordered the baked chicken, sautéed mushrooms, roasted and chopped carrots. You know your cooking. - That's cooking, honey! We have the fried steaks. I opened the windows because the oil was smoking a little, but you know, that's totally normal, we're all professionals here. - Hello David Chang, do you want me on your next cooking show? *pan sizzling* Walk away. Nobody needs to see this.

If people expected me to come here with perfect cooking skills, that's not true for Zelda! What I'm saying is that I'm role playing right now. - You're playing a guy who's been asleep for 100 years. - Yes. - Once again, I feel very free that we're not trying to do it right, just cooked. Our failures fully justified, we finally began to prepare the first dishes, which were four rice balls and five different curried rice dishes. These simply used our standard rice that we prepared on the back stove, combined with one or two of the other prepared ingredients.

None of these had salt. - Shall we start with the curry rice? Or the, uh... - I'm going to start with a ball. - Alright. - I'm going to go with the mushroom first. - I'm going to go with the carrot. - Hmm. Unseasoned rice in some sort of onigiri ball is... bad. - Yes. - I suspect yours is a little better than mine because of the mushroom flavor, while this one is just... carrot. - I'm going to put this at a solid three. Hmm. Okay, the taste of the meat is good... there's more. - Same, salmon really elevates this one.

You could use salt. - We will say it a lot today. I'd say for me it's a four of hearts. - I would put mine, well I'm going to put the first one in a two, this one in a three. - Health. - Health. *concerned laugh* - That's just... that's just mush. - That's spicy porridge! The chicken is really lifting this one, so I can't imagine how it goes for you. - Now I'm going to put this on a dubious food scale, I think. I think this will be a solid heart. Why would I take another bite of this? - This?

It's a two. - I'm going to say this is a two. Hmm, is it better that... maybe I ranked them too high? Those rice balls. Maybe I've already ruined my rating scale. - Very good sweetness of the pumpkin. - Unseasoned meat. Badly seasoned rice. That's a year and a half. - What's next on the list? Once the first tasting was done, we realized that we had spent more than an hour on nine of the 78 recipes we needed to complete. - We look for speed over quality. So we sped up and decided to make all risottos and recipes steamed AND grilled with salt.

I watched a video online on how to fillet a porgy and then proceeded to do a spectacular job. - Shit, he

made

it look so much easier than it is. Please don't close up this. Pat: You're actually doing great! - This looks great. - Hm... I mean... compared to what, Patrick? Compared to what I'm doing so well? With the snapper prepared and everyone fully supporting my hard work, we begin our steamed recipes, which call for the main ingredient plus any herbs, vegetables or flowers. So we just use carrots. While they were steaming, Adam started working on the risotto.

We cheated by using pre-cooked rice because we didn't have time. - This isn't even cheating, it's just doing it wrong. - You're just doing it completely wrong, yeah. Finally we could use salt. Salt grill recipes simply add salt to the main ingredient. We had some extra time while waiting for the food to steam, so we

made

the basic "cream of white" broth. - So I'm going to put some carrots in some milk with a little salt, and I'll keep it low over here, does that sound good? - That sounds horrible. But not everything sounded terrible. We used a lot of goat butter in the risotto, and all the food roasted with salt literally sounded good. *pan sizzling* - Hoo!

The meat was browning nicely, the risotto seemed creamy, and the beautiful aromas were almost enough to keep me from thinking about the fact that we still had 60 recipes to finish in about six hours. - Doing this in this kitchen seems like a sin to me. Our second recipe session ended, and the steamed recipes looked...not so good. But the salt roasts looked very good. So I enjoyed it. - We really enjoyed the first taste test. Now? This is a business. - Steamed raspberries. - Just spicy raspberries. Not bad. - Yes. - Seven hearts. Ready? One, two, three, pull! - Oh, this is incredibly difficult. - Nothing bad! - Seven hearts. - This is the grayest meat I have ever seen in my life. *off* oh my god. *sirens blaring outside* - *laughing, mouth full* oh god.

It's almost like jerky in its texture. - Oh my God, it's so dry. - Half a heart. NO! *Adam laughs* Ohhohoho no... - Steamed Porgy! *exasperated laughter* - It looks so bad... It looks so bad! Ohhhhhh no. It is tender. That's something I can say in favor. I mean... - It's better than steak. - It's better than steak! A heart! - I'll be back for a little more! - NO. Risotto time. Uh, let's start with the standard one, the mushroom. - Oh! - MMM! - That's good! - Adam! - Butter and salt. - Shit! That could be a transcendent experience.

And maybe it's just because I went SO LOW two minutes before this point. But I'm going to give it, I'm going to give it three hearts up. - Wow! I added a little salt to the carrots because I could. - Also good! - It's still not terrible. - Nine. This will be a nine. - Crab. - Salt and butter, man. - They do it. Put this on a six. - Salmon. That's good! That's a good dish! - That's very good, that's a 10. I still think that one, because of the experience of reaching something so good is more than three, but that's 10.

I'm going to start with the vegetables, which are the carrots. It's not terrible. - There's good coal there. - I would say a six? - Yes. A very hard mushroom. - But the salt is put on top of the steamed cooking. So whatever I gave the steamed mushroom, I give it one more heart than that. - Crab. - Crab. - It's great. Works. - Mmmm. Eight. The salmon now. It's not the worst salmon I've ever had. - I've literally had worse salmon in restaurants, so. - Eight? - Yes. - I'm going to take this piece with the big piece of fat there. - Oh, good choice. *not bad* *not bad* - I cooked it too long, but at least I cooked it over something other than steam. - Yes. - Yes, I would say it's like an eight. - Yeah! - Our camera operators went out to lunch, but we have all the food right here.

These are our cream soups that we created using basic carrot broth. Well, to the bottom. - Yes, health. - Hmm. - Mmm, beefy. - Thick. I'm going to have, I'm going to try the next one. HMM. Oh, the crab... doesn't go well with the carrot. What about the chicken? - Milky! *Pat laughs off screen* - Well, yeah, it's... we're just drinking milk and carrots. Let me try the pumpkin, see if it's different. No! Is the same. Can we just give one for the whole group? - Yes Yes Yes. - It's stuffed pumpkin, but we don't have time to roast a whole pumpkin and stuff it with meat. -very... two different flavors. - They are... at war in my mouth. - Better than egg pudding. - Oh, sure, it's still negative. - Thanks, something that's good, these are fried plantains.

Hmm! If they were still warm, it would be incredibly good. That's plus four. Now I realize that all the things Link should be eating are going to kill him, and they're just carbs, and this is a bad thing. But! Plus four. No doubt. Hot apple with butter. Nothing bad! Uhhhhhhhhh, nine. - Oh, it's fine! I was going to go down to five, but sure. - I imagined it was still hot. - Well! Seven. - I'm so full. Just go ahead and cut it in half for me. - I could have used more sugar but... it's okay. - Yes.

Eight. - Yes. - Oh my lord. - Ok, let's go. Two more. - Mmmm. Worse than that. It's still a six. - Sorry, I feel like this, this fruitcake is like looking into my soul. I... looks too much like me. Pat: What the fuck did you do? - Exactly what you told us to do, Patrick! It looks like a piece of brain. I'll post it there. Here's the thing, we don't have to worry about it being raw because it doesn't contain eggs. Latest. We can do it. - Please don't ask me to do this ever again. - Well! - Know?

It could have been worse. It could have been much worse. I don't want to swallow it, but... - Yes, it could have been much worse. My big thing: keep your fruits out of my cakes, I just want a super sweet cake. I was never going to like this. But I'm not going to give you a negative. I'm going to give you a heart. It is, at best, dubious. - I haven't swallowed mine, but... That's bad. - It is bad. - What a bad cake! - Adam, now that we have eaten 78 of Link's own recipes, how do we feel? - *sigh* I feel like I can't distinguish tastes anymore.

I feel like my taste buds have been shot to hell. Hmm. I have a new understanding and appreciation for Link in Breath of the Wild, cooking all of this up as I go. - Yes, this was a real challenge. I'd say what I learned here is that Link is definitely a better cook than I originally gave him credit for. Some of these were actually very tasty. That being said... Stick to what you know, Link. Don't try to make fruitcakes. Don't try to make egg puddings in the

wild

. I think you already have your fried egg and rice.

It's delicious! Stay with it! - You have a wok, you have a flame, why are you steaming things? Don't steam things! Do one thing well! That's all you need to do. - Never change. Stick to what you know. - Never try to improve. - Don't try to improve in life. Those are the things I learned today. And I think the most important thing is that it could have been worse. - It really could have been worse. - It's not the worst salmon I've ever tried. - It's not the worst! - It's not the worst! - It could have been worse. - It could have been worse. - It could have been worse. - It could have been much worse. - Yes, it could have been much worse.

It could have been worse! - It must be very nice to have a cooking show where all the ingredients are prepared for you. - And someone is cleaning up after themselves. - And someone is cleaning up after you! And the recipe you are cooking is good! Pat: And not 70. - And not 78 either. That must be good.