>One wouldn't expect a brutish barbarian like Gharz Firepit to take interest in a "civilized art" as cooking when outside the field of battle, seeming more the type to blacken a haunch of meat over a campfire and call that dinner than to dice vegetables and seasoned meats for a rich stew to offer his traveling companions, but people can be surprising. >Food is life, you eat what you can find and prepare in order to survive. As a result of having had to improvise his dinners while living in the wilderness through times of both bounty and scarcity alike, as well as being exposed to various cuisines as a natural part of experiencing a host of different cultures during his time traveling from place to place as a mercenary, he’s developed quite a talent for taking whatever is at hand and concocting rather satisfying meals from them, albeit usually focused more on taste and fulfillment rather than a stunning presentation - his meals are not exactly a fanciful feast for the eyes like those served to kings and princes, but they're always full of flavor and a comfort to the body and soul of the hungry adventurer. >Not just that, but he's figured ways to take regular dungeon-delvers' equipment and adapt it into use as cookery tools so he doesn’t need to carry a ton of stuff everywhere just to cook - for example, using his wide-bladed greataxe as a griddle, turning a slain foe's helmet into a makeshift soup-pot, or using the slim blade of a throwing dagger to thinly-slice vegetables. >Gharz may never be seen serving elegant banquets to the lords and ladies of high nobility... but if you ask his companions, the grumpy half-orc could definitely give those that do a run for their money.
And before you ask, yes, this was partially inspired by Dungeon Meshi/Delicious In Dungeon...
Wouldn’t using an axe as a griddle ruin the temper of the edge?
Henry Roberts
Ideas for recipes, mostly. Ways one might take various D&D plants and animals and such and boil/roast/fry/bake/etc. them into edible results, or ways that equipment could be adapted into use as cookery tools.
But don't just tate a normal recipe and swap "beef" for "dragon". Be creative. By "don't just replace beef with dragon", I mean the description of the meat/vegetable/etc. itself.
I mean, for example, beef and bison meat are from similar animals, but the flavor, texture, and fat content are dissimilar enough to make eating one recognizably different from the other. Ditto for other similar-but-different things like carrots and parsnips, or leeks and green onions.
So taking, say, a recipe for pan-seared garlic chicken thighs and replacing "chicken" with "gryphon" because both have feathers and calling it done... it just doesn't sound very plausible, no more than taking a recipe for duck and substituting turkey but expecting the exact same results despite the two birds having different fat content and meat quality.
Surely fantasy beasts and plants would have some manner of different culinary qualities than real-life ones, even if there were some similar aspects. Maybe some dishes could even bestow magical properties to the eater (good or bad) when consumed.
I mean, if dragon meat were truly identical to beef, then why hunt dragons for a noble lord's feast? Just butcher a cow and stick wings on the serving platter.
Chase Gutierrez
He uses the wide flat part of the blade, not the edges.
I picture it looking kinda like this in general shape, but it's a big flat slab of steel, no cut-out bits.
Wyatt Bennett
Cured/smoked/salted meats (sausages included), campfire bread (carry the flour, mix with water and bake after making camp), biscuits, hard cheeses, nuts, mushrooms, roots/tubers (potatoes, turnips, swedes etc.), any pickled vegetable, and bulbs (onions, garlic, etc.) all lend themselves to long spells of un-refrigerated transport.
Cheese, bread, biscuit and cured meat would probably account for 95% of all the military rations ever provided to marching soldiers in all of human history, the last 5% being mostly dried and frozen mush from the last 20 years.
Fresh meat, leafy greens, fruits and eggs may not be quite so hardy, but they're all quite easily obtainable by hunting, trapping and foraging and can still be kept around for a surprisingly long time before actually going off. Modern "use by dates" are designed to avoid legal liability in freak outlier cases, remember, so they tend to err heavily on the side of caution.
Gavin Bailey
>then why hunt dragons for a noble lord's feast? Hedonism.
Elijah Cruz
You'd be surprised how little gear you need to cook a wide variety of things. A good skillet by itself is all you need for a world of options.
Charles Long
Don't need to weigh yourself down or rely on magical items like a Bag of Holding either... just using a few things that could be carried by hanging off the common adventurer's knapsack, you have a bunch of potential cooking methods.
Adam Phillips
AlmazanKitchen is basically just slav food porn, but almost all of their recipes are done innawoods, with basic equipment and techniques. Watching the videos you can see how someone might create a reasonably complex dish with nothing more than jarred and bagged supplies, a cutting board, an iron pan, and a pile of burning sticks and rocks. Take note of the surroundings, not the food.
Jas. Townsend and Son is focused around 18th century cooking, which is a little late era for most fantasy games. But still, we can see valuable techniques and idea's for how food stuffs might be preserved, prepared, and eaten on the trail. I recommend his videos on preservation, ash cakes, etc.
Using an axe as a cooking griddle, even on the wide part of the blade, would still ruin the temper, I think. Of course I’m thinking of a real world non-magic axe. Hell, Gharz could carry some sort of Fire enchanted axe specifically because he can control the temperature transferee through it, from low and slow to probably rend fat for later, or hot to sear something right away.
Might have to look to some exotic meats for this one. Use Crocodile/Alligator for dragon, both being large predatory reptiles for example. I know you can get things like Rattlesnake meat, but I haven’t much thought beyond this initial post regarding what exotic meats would used to fill in for fantastic animals.
Ayden Mitchell
Magic is wonderful, isn't it?
And regardless of origin, preserving and storing the meat would be important when preparing for a journey - if one chose to forego the use of magic preservation methods such as a refrigerated "Bag of Colding" (thanks for that idea, Critical Role) classical methods of salt-curing, brine-pickling, and cold-smoking work magnificently here.
Thomas King
'wizard bread' made from a wheat that changes color based on heat applied to it. Red through violet from bottom to top. Cut it open and it looks like a rainbow.
Noah Hill
But how does it taste?
Samuel Wright
Not really sure. I'm torn between each layer being a gradient of savory to sweet. Or if the whole thing is actually surprisingly bland and you need to mix in flavors to each layer.
Nicholas Nelson
...
Ryder Collins
I've always been partial to goblin cooking. I know, most non-goblins don't have a taste for it, what with all the salt, but it makes for some of the best trail rations I've ever had. Saltpack Carp with goat butter, in one of those flatbreads they make out of milled beans and black rye flour? And they're about the only non-dwarf folk other than halflings that knows how to make proper dwarven-style potato and cabbage mash, even if it's kind of weird they include leeks alongside the normal scallions. I tell you, salt fried sunchokes, that rich stew of mackerel, diced boiled eggs, and mixed greens they invented, and some spiced honeycake for dessert - I'd take that shit over the best Elven kingsfeast damn near any day of the week. If the little green bastards could brew a half decent drink, I wouldn't even talk to you assholes, but I swear, I can only do their roasted-barley tea with sweet goatsmilk for a short while before I need something that works up the blood proper like a good ale or stout.
Townsend and Son gives a lot of tutorials/videos on how colonial era food was cooked, along with campfire stuff that you could "build" off of in regards to fantasy foods.
I can so easily picture some of the stuff he could make...
Whole roast basilisk with garlic... fried harpy eggs... pan-seared giant crocodile tails... smoked worg sausages made with minced onion and dwarven goat-milk cheese... grilled dire bear steaks with herbed butter...
And his personal favorite moment of inspiration, slow-simmered bulette stew cooked in a "pot" make from a chunk of its own armor.
Gavin Williams
Cool idea, I like it. I had a chef character in a pirate-themed D&D campaign one time which was pretty fun, but I made him a monk and he specialized in using knives/daggers in throwing attacks and stuff.
It was also pretty fun being a big fat galley cook who could run along walls.
Logan Perry
>big fat galley cook who could run along walls >monk using kitchenware as improvised weapons
Kinda picturing Jackie Chan in a fat suit right now...
