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| SERVICE STAFF | |
  Cook |
Alternative Titles: Chef, Hash Slinger, Sous-chef, Culinary Artist, Culinarian Access: Kitchen, Morgue, Service Hall Additional Access: Hydroponics, Bar Difficulty: Easy Supervisors: Head of Personnel Duties: Make food, nag at hydroponics to grow you stuff, make meat from the odd lifeforms found in the morgue Guides: Guide to food Minimum Age: 18 Quote: Are you ready for a one way trip to the grinder? No? Well here we go! |
You are the less-alcoholic half of the Maltese Falcon.
You cook Food, blend veggies and fruits, grind bodies for meat, stick monkeys and xenos onto meat hooks. People on the station need to eat and that's where you come into play. If a shift is good and your future is bright you should be getting some crops into your fridge before too long, but every chef comes equipped with the basics. Whether baking is your calling or you want to serve up some burgers it's important that you get cooking quick and serve to order. Nobody likes a chef that can only throw some Donk Pockets on the counter, especially if they aren't even cooked! Don't be afraid to crack a few eggs along the way and respect your fellow Falcon the bartender. They're a big part of ensuring your fed customers have somewhere to eat that's not just their department. Remember, every recipe is an adventure; and if someone trespasses in your kitchen you CQC their ass out of it.
Bare minimum requirements: Make sure there's always some food on your counter, in case a hungry crewmember comes by.
Equipment
The first cook to join the shift starts with a fancy chef apron and a cool chef hat like in those movies. Any other cooks that join later will have a less interesting apron and a white cap.
Cooks get a lot of useful kitchen tools as well:
Dinnerware Vendor: Dispenses trays, plates, cups, bowls, rolling pins and knives.
Microwave: Cooks most basic things such as donk pockets, spaghetti and rice.
Smart Fridge: Stores ingredients from Botany. Contact the Botanist to keep it topped up.
All-in-One Grinder: Used for grinding and blending ingredients, as well as juicing fruits for drinks or otherwise.
Food Processor: Processes most raw ingredients into another more finished form.
Meat Spike: For hanging your corpses and their delicious meats contained within!
Gibber: Used to gib a human corpse for their meat. Targets need to be dead and fully stripped.
Ice Cream Vat: Wanna make Ice Cream? This is a key tool for delicious ice-cold treats!
Deep Fryer: Can fry almost anything you throw in it, including cooked food, making it edible (if it's not already) and adding minimal nutrients.
Griddle: Use this for grilling meats and burger patties. Just don't let it burn!
Oven: To bake dough-based products such as pizzas and cakes. Requires food to be placed on the oven tray before you can put the food in. Once you see brown smoke coming out, your baked treat is ready!
Cooking and You
The Basics
See the Guide to food for a list of recipes.
Cooking is mostly done by putting ingredients on a table and seeing what you can cook with them through crafting (click the crafting button
in the bottom-right of the screen). Most recipes are completed by crafting; place all your ingredients next to you, open the crafting window and look through the food categories. Certain types of dishes also allow you to make custom food by directly adding ingredients onto the dish.
The equipment and tools you should have ready are the processor, microwave, a mixing bowl, a knife and a rolling pin so you can prepare some raw ingredients (e.g. mix 15 units flour and 10 units water to get dough), check the cook book on the kitchen table for more info. You should read the cooking desserts book that you will find in your backpack as it will grant you access to a few more crafting recipes.
Use the griddle to cook raw meats and the microwave to boil eggs. Trying to microwave incompatible food (such as meats or dough) may make it dirty and unusable until it gets a spray of space cleaner or soap. And if a microwave gets broken, you need to use a tool box set to repair it (the tools, don't smack it more). The processor and the blender are much more forgiving. The processor will only take things that it recognizes and the blender will blend any food item (granted, you might not get anything interesting out of it). You also have a CondiMaster to separate and identify anything you produce with your blender.
To serve your food, you can use the tables that usually face into the bar, serve patrons in person with your food cart, or even add your superior creations to vending machines. Theoretically, you can work with the Bartender to serve patrons properly in the bar, but most chefs don't.
This is a Knife, and That is a Rolling Pin
See this guide to food section for a list of what these can be used on.
The knife
and the rolling pin
are invaluable in making food. You can cut cheese and meat very easy with the knife, as well as slice foods like pizza and cakes. Experiment and see what other foods you can cut with it! Some animals can be butchered with the knife as well. The rolling pin is used to flatten certain ingredients, such as dough.
Other than that, they are also weapons! The knife, in particular, is an excellent melee weapon. Tinker with your vending machine, and you can get even stronger knives!
Basic Ingredients
A chef starts with all of these ingredients in their kitchen by default. They will be located in the white storage units in your kitchen. Make sure to utilize them in many of your recipes, and if you need more they can be ordered from Cargo or created in Botany.
- Eggs: Boil them in the microwave, crack them in a bowl, or use them for crafting recipes such as fried eggs.
- Meat: Slice and process it into bacon, cook it straight onto the griddle, or process it into meatballs.
- Flour: Used to create dough and cake batter.
- Rice: Mix this with water in a bowl and you will find yourself with a delicious rice bowl.
- Sugar: Can be heated into caramel, or used in recipes such as cake batter.
- Universal Enzyme: This is found on tables around the kitchen, rather than the storage units. It will mainly be used to create cheese.
- Soy milk: Used in cake batter creation as an egg replacement. You can mix this with sulfuric acid to create soy sauce.
- Space milk: Grinded into butter, or used in cheese creation.
There are many more uses for these ingredients. How many can you find?
Ingredients Boxes
Besides the basics that your kitchen is initially stocked with, you will start out with a randomly selected box of less common ingredients in your backpack. The box should contain enough ingredients for you to get started before your botany buddies ignore you and smoke weed can provide you with a steady supply of fresh produce.
| Box | Contents |
|---|---|
| Fiesta | 1 tortilla, 2 corn, 2 soybeans, 2 chili |
| Italian | 3 tomatoes, 3 meatballs, 1 bottle of wine |
| Vegetarian | 2 carrots, 1 eggplant, 1 potato, 1 apple, 1 corn, 1 tomato |
| American | 2 potato, 2 tomato, 2 corn, 1 meatball |
| Fruity | 2 apples, 2 oranges, 1 lemon, 1 lime, 1 watermelon |
| Sweets | 2 cherries, 2 bananas, 1 chocolate bar, 1 cocoa pod, 1 apple |
| Delights | 2 sweet potatoes, 2 blue cherries, 1 vanilla pod, 1 cocoa pod, 1 berry |
| Grains | 3 oats, 1 wheat, 1 cocoa pod, 1 honeycomb, 1 poppy seed |
| Carnivore | 1 bear meat, 1 spider meat, 1 spider eggs, 1 carp meat, 1 xeno meat, 1 corgi meat, 1 meatball |
| Exotic | 2 carp meat, 2 soybeans, 2 cabbage, 1 chili |
| Seafood | 1 lemon, 6 randomly selected from (duplicates allowed): carp meat, dolphin meat, tuna, shrimp |
| Wildcard | 7 randomly selected from (duplicates allowed): chili, tomato, carrot, potato, sweet potato, apple, chocolate bar, cherry, banana, cabbage, soybeans, corn, plump helmet, chanterelle, cucumber |
Hydroponics
Your neighbor, hydroponics, is a necessity for you to make most recipes. Take a gander at the window early on and see if there are any botanists working, and if there aren't any inside, wait a bit for one to be sent on the arrivals shuttle or go ask the HoP for botany access so that you can grow your own plants. They will most of the time grant you access because hydroponics isn't a high-risk area. Good things to ask the botanists for to start with are wheat/flour, tomatoes, and potatoes. These three ingredients are used commonly in recipes, and after you ask botany for those you can ask them for other plants when they need to be used in a recipe. Please note that hydroponics has direct access to your smart fridge, and will often times load crops into it without saying a word. Check it from time to time to see if the hippies have left you anything.
If no one is working botany and you're too lazy to stop by the HoP, the Garden has some basic produce available (most usefully, wheat) and the ability to make more seeds, assuming no one's ransacked it.
The Best Meat Pies on Station
You can kill and butcher monkeys with your knife, granting you plenty of meat as well as their organs. You can use these organs as ingredients in a few recipes. Monkeys can be produced by adding water to a monkey cube; monkey cubes can be produced with the biogenerator or ordered in a supply crate. Some other critters can be gibbed with your knife for meat, just make sure they are dead first. Try not to kill Pete, as it is able to eat space vines if alive.
If you can't get Pun Pun or get the quartermaster to get you a monkey crate, you can head off to the morgue. That's right, the cook has morgue access to grab spent bodies and drag them to the gibber. Examining dead bodies can tell you more about them: suicides, literally brainless bodies and bodies with their souls departed cannot be cloned, so gibbing them is usually okay. Make sure to check with Medbay if you are unsure. Your gibber can only accept unclothed bodies, so remove any clothing or other objects the body may have on them.
Culinary Science
R&D can upgrade your processor, increasing the amount of food it produces! On long shifts with lots of people this will prove invaluable, assuming all the scientists haven't set themselves on fire.
Chef Defense
The kitchen is a notoriously popular target for greytiding and breaking in and you're the sole defender of it. A basic tip to help defend the kitchen is to close your door behind you when you enter. If you leave your door open, any murderer or greytider can waltz in and wreck the kitchen. If people are trying to break in regardless, close the shutters over the tables or shove them off. If all else fails, you can always just whack the trespasser with your knife (hopefully sharpened by the whetstone) or with a meat cleaver from the hacked kitchen vending machine. You can also smash plates over their heads to knock them down!
Another defensive feature worth noting is that the Cook, while within the Kitchen, has the powers of Close Quarters Combat, same as Syndicate agents have. If you're unfamiliar with CQC, go to the dedicated CQC tab in-game and click "Remember the Basics" in order to get a little tutorial on it. Experiment with different grab combos to find the optimal manner to tenderize any stranger who steps foot in your domain.
Homeopathy
All food contains the universal ingredient called "Nutriment." It's what nourishes you and heals your injuries when you eat. Although food might not heal you as quickly as the doctor can (or from the more exotic dangers of the station), it can often heal for more over time. Blending down a bunch of donuts and burgers into a nice nutriment shake can be just the right pick-me-up after having the shit beat out of you.
Healthy foods also contain "Vitamin" which heals you better and can strengthen your metabolism against viruses and harmful chemicals as well as increase the effect of medicine on you.
You can put your healthy food inside snack vending machines so crewmembers have more food choices.
Tips
- Combining Blood and Synthflesh will generate meat in the reaction - Chemistry can sometimes be your greatest supplier.
- Kitchen knives and cleavers can be stored on your Apron, and knives are small enough to fit in your pockets as well.
- You can color eggs with crayons or a clown stamp.
- You can make colored burgers by adding a crayon of your choice to the ingredients.
- You can put a tray on your belt slot. They can carry up to 7 food items of tiny or small size.
- Don't put food on the floor! Down there, mice can and will eat it.
- Do not put water or liquids directly into flour bags or the contents will tear out of the bottom and fall onto the floor, wasting flour and making a slippery mess.
- Pressing your action key (default Z) will allow you to set how many units the container you're holding will put in other containers. Use this to effectively make cakes at the speed of light and look like a true professional.
- Your clothing vendor contains mouse traps for when the mice are starting to be an issue.
- Not making food at all is very poor form and can get you on the bad side of the gods.
- Other than throwing people out, abusing or over-extending your CQC can result in brig time and, if you accidentally kill them, Perma.
- You can create caramel by heating sugar to high temperatures with a lighter. This can then be used to create some special dishes.
- Wearing eye protection while chopping onions will stop those pesky tears.
Tips for Traitoring
- A decent amount of food you can cook will actually cause damage. Some notable examples include:
- Fish & Chips, Fish Fingers, and Carp Sashimi are all fairly toxic.
- Enchiladas and Nettle Soup are both potentially deadly if consumed in full, dealing huge amounts of burn damage. However, nettle soup also contains omnizine which may heal the damage.
- Amanita Jelly, Jelly Burgers, and even just raw Slime Jelly is incredibly lethal in mere moments, making it not a bad option for some force-feeding.
- When you gib a human, the meat is marked with their name, so be careful not to leave it lying around, or people might start to ask questions.
- You can stash items in bread and a few other foods, so you can facilitate prison breaks by sending up tools, an emag, or even a small weapon to your buddies in the Prison Wing.
- For 7 TC you can buy a syndicate frying basket which will allow you to deep fry dead bodies.
A Meal to Kill For
Traitor Cook is pretty damned fun, especially if you get some some items to knock people out like the crossbow or the sleepy pen. You can even take syringes full of nasty chemicals and inject it into food items. The best part about being a traitor cook is the cleanup; seeing a cook dragging a locker with a dead body in it is pretty par for the course, so no one will question you when you toss your target's body in the gibber. If you have a compatriot in Hydroponics, they can grow you some poisonous shrooms which you can then refine with the Blender and CondiMaster. Don't forget your knife and rolling pin! In short, go full Sweeney Todd and make delicious meat pies out of people. You can also feed fat people mint, which gibs them.
