The Guide to food is horrible

[Cheimon]

It's like it's trying to make figuring out the recipe for something as complicated as possible. Drinks part is fine, so I'm ignoring it.

Meatbread is in a 'breads' section. Great. All the breads nicely grouped. How do I make 'plain bread'? It's not here, but there's a link. The Plain Bread link just shows me the top of the guide. Ctrl+F 'plain bread' then. Microwave dough. Okay, how do I make dough? Another section, 15 flour and 10 water. Okay, so that's bread sorted. How do I make cutlets? Ctrl+F cutlet, it's better than the link. One entry for slicing, another for microwaving. Okay, cool. How do I get cheese wedges? Ctrl+F cheese wedge. Slice cheese. Well great, that barely helps at all. Find the 'cheese wheel' entry. 40 milk and 5 UE. That makes sense, I assume it uses the UE. Wait, no, in practice it doesn't.

Meatbread has three really simple ingredients. I've had to look at seven sections, finding them by opening new tabs or spamming the arrows after ctrl+F, to get a precise idea of how to make it.

Stop grouping things by tool. I don't look at the kitchen and go "hmm, I wonder what all the things I can microwave are?". I look at it and think "how do I make this finished product? How do I make these different types of meat?". Group things by that, so:

In any already specific section, specify how to make the basic elements. So "burgers" describes the exact process of making a burger bun (how to make dough, then to roll it, then to slice it). "Breads" describes exactly how to make plain bread (how to make dough, then to microwave it). "Pies" explains exactly how to make a plain pie, "pizza" how to make a pizza base, "pasta" explains exactly how to make pasta and spaghetti, "pastries" explains how to make a pastry base, and all these things that are obviously what someone is immediately going to want to know if they aren't aware.

"Meat products": how to make cutlets, steaks, sausages, faggots, boiled spider leg, anything like that which goes into other dishes or can stand on its own.

"Dairy/Soy products": tofu, cheese, slicing it (preferably right next to the bit about cheese wheels), making egg yolks and boiled eggs, soy sauce, chocolate, and so on. Things that are entirely based around adding raw ingredients to a dairy/soy product.

"Sauces and condiments": ketchup, sprinkles, all sorts of small things here.

"Vegetable products": anything made mainly with a vegetable and raw ingredients that doesn't fit elsewhere.

"Tortillas": with all the tortilla recipes.

Re-add some of the oddly separated recipes back into their main area. Is it in a burger bun? Shove it in 'burgers', barring extreme scenarios.

I don't know if all of this makes sense, but it sure would be nice with "how to make that thing" being grouped with "how to make that thing's ingredients" rather than just vaguely linked to it. This is one of the longest guides on the wiki and it's obtuse as fuck. I'd do it myself but I'm not convinced I can use tables properly, and I also worry doing it out of nowhere would be controversial.

[John_Oxford]

inb4

"Cooking is one of the few skill related jobs on SS13, you need experience to do it properly. Everything about SS13 shouldn't come with a guide or manual, figuring it out for yourself is much more satire than looking up "how make bread" on the wiki. The guide on the wiki is more of a thing that puts you in the right direction, rather than step by step instructions on how to make everything. "

[cocothegogo]

Cooking is one of the few skill related jobs on SS13, you need experience to do it properly. Everything about SS13 shouldn't come with a guide or manual, figuring it out for yourself is much more satire than looking up "how make bread" on the wiki. The guide on the wiki is more of a thing that puts you in the right direction, rather than step by step instructions on how to make everything.

[DemonFiren]

The sad thing is, I read Coco's post before John's and actually managed to take it at face value.

[Grazyn]

Or you can just click and drag the table to get all the recipes

[Cheimon]

Cooking is one of the few skill related jobs on SS13, you need experience to do it properly. Everything about SS13 shouldn't come with a guide or manual, figuring it out for yourself is much more satire than looking up "how make bread" on the wiki. The guide on the wiki is more of a thing that puts you in the right direction, rather than step by step instructions on how to make everything.

I know this is a joke, but I feel like responding to the argument anyway.

Cooking isn't a skill related job. You're not a chef, leading a team of servants for the crew's benefit. You're not an artist, coming up with new foods. You're not even hired for your knife skills or knowledge of how to tie a brisket. Anyone can do what you do, so you're not paid much to do it.

What you do is take ingredients, shove them into various boxes, press a button, and the boxes automatically cook or prepare or butcher them. Then, you sprinkle those ingredients together and put it on a public access table. People walk up to that table, grab a piece of what is cold food at this point, and start chewing it. When they've had enough, they put the half eaten meal back for the other people. Crew that aren't interested come along to throw food back in, or to spike the food, or just to put their feet on it while climbing over the serving table for knives and rolling pins.

All a cook can do to become better is to memorise how to make different foods, and perhaps to organise their worksurface. There's no skill. It's rote learning. It's experience (and that is not the same thing). And since it's based on experience, and since we so often get new cooks (the turnaround isn't surprising, it's a shit job for most) we might as well make the recipe book as simple as possible. And not to make cooks flick back and forth among the pages to figure out how to make bread.

(Skill-based jobs either involve significant optimisation of routine, like roboticist, mastery of a very broad range of systems, like chief engineer, or physical robustness and good judgement, like nuke op. They are not just memorising lots of info.)

[John_Oxford]

>implying im not literally space gordon ramsay
>implying i'm not screaming


No, what i'm getting at is that if the knowledge required to do a job isn't common knowledge or easily accessable via a wiki, it's a skill based job. Believe it or not, there's no step by step guide to releasing plasma as a rouge AI, or steath oping it as a nuke ops.

[Cheimon]

Okay, but that sounds rather like

"basing jobs on skill is good"

"cooking has a rubbish guide"

"therefore, it is a skill based job"

"that is good"

"therefore, we must not make common sense improvements to the guide"

The skill in AI and the skill in Nuke Op are not your knowledge of how to flood plasma or stealth. Those are relevant, yes, but they come under experience or knowledge. And we do have knowledge based jobs. But the skill in an AI is in its ability to actually follow its laws and juggle the different requirements of that, and the skill in a Nuke Op is in working with your team, communicating effectively, and successfully executing a plan with your robust combat skills. This is similar to the difference between experience and talent. Also:

> implying any of the people with blue uniforms exist

> implying you're not yelling at the microwave for burning food

[Thundercoot]

I've made a page on the wiki to try out a different way of writing the recipes.
The 'breads and sandwiches' section begins with the recipe for making plain bread; all other recipes in the bread section assume you have (or know how to make) plain bread. For other ingredients, such as cutlets, the raw ingredients are given below and the method for creating them is given in the recipe.

[Cheimon]

I've made a page on the wiki to try out a different way of writing the recipes.
The 'breads and sandwiches' section begins with the recipe for making plain bread; all other recipes in the bread section assume you have (or know how to make) plain bread. For other ingredients, such as cutlets, the raw ingredients are given below and the method for creating them is given in the recipe.

Thanks dude, I think that's about what I was thinking of. I don't know if it's the right approach or if I'm thinking of too overwhelming a rework. Even just adding the basic recipes together in a big list might work (you know, so bread at top of breads, cheese nice and easy to see next to cheese wheels, that sort of thing). I don't play cook often, which is why I'm not doing it myself, I guess I'm not as fussed as I might be if I did.

[capi duffman]

Honestly, at this point I cook rather blindly (I ask for random stuff and work with what I have) but reworking a bit the basics on the food guide could help those who are only getting started.

Also, adding tips about what gives higher results, or what you could make easier if the brotanists ain't there would help too, it honestly hurts when I see a fellow chef making (normal) burgers and waffles, when with little effort he could make at the very least eggs benedict and multiple cheesy recipes even without help.

[Cheimon]

Honestly, at this point I cook rather blindly (I ask for random stuff and work with what I have) but reworking a bit the basics on the food guide could help those who are only getting started.

Also, adding tips about what gives higher results, or what you could make easier if the brotanists ain't there would help too, it honestly hurts when I see a fellow chef making (normal) burgers and waffles, when with little effort he could make at the very least eggs benedict and multiple cheesy recipes even without help.

That sounds great, not having botanists isn't unusual and I know I don't want to spend 15 minutes reading through to figure out what I can and can't do (obviously getting botany access is an option, but who wants to stoop to that level?).

[capi duffman]

I will write something tonight, but as a basis I could start with something simple.

-cake batter should be done with soy milk instead of eggs. You'll rarely make good use of soy milk, unlike the eggs.
-Without any help from botanics you can make: birthday cake, brioche, cheese cake, vanilla cake, meat bread, milky cheese bread, all of these are sliceable and give good results.
-Cheese is easy to do and replenish, milky cheese bread, cheese cake, omelette are easy things to do.
-If you have to break in brotanics, I consider cocoa to be fast to get and with very high results (Just a handful of it will yield more than a dozen choco bars, and you can make quite a bit of pastries and cakes with it)
-pizza and breads offer good results, most pies or bugers don't (the punkpin pie is sliceable, and thus worth your trouble)
-If you're swamped with work for a change, do remember the tray is quite useful.
-Butcher the monkeys unless you have improved the gibber, if so, prepare for the steakpocalypse.
More to come

EDIT: This is a list of all the things I served as a chef before I took anything of the fridge
1 meatbread
1 Creamy cheese bread
1 birthday cake
1 cheese cake
1 brioche
4 omelettes
2 fried eggs
4 eggs benedict
1 Rice and pork
2 rice pudding

not enough for a large round, more than enough for that one in particular (Gangs, before I left I checked the kitchen, and had a good deal of food left)

[Reece]

>implying im not literally space gordon ramsay
>implying i'm not screaming


No, what i'm getting at is that if the knowledge required to do a job isn't common knowledge or easily accessable via a wiki, it's a skill based job. Believe it or not, there's no step by step guide to releasing plasma as a rouge AI, or steath oping it as a nuke ops.

In fairness though releasing plasma isn't that hard even without a guide. It's just turning on the right pumps, and cucking the filters.

[John_Oxford]

[The Ultimate Chimera]

This guide needs to be redone, and so does the cook book the chef gets.

[capi duffman]

I really should, but I'm lazy

And then I see those burgers or worse in the rounds that I'm not being chef, and remember that some players would really do with a friendly push in the right direction.

The wiki article is complete in the part of knowing WHAT to do, since, hey, ctrl+F an ingredient and you'll see what you can do, but there are no tips in getting started, managing your resources, or easy ways to acquire new ones (especially if someone attacks you for visiting the morgue/taking suiciders)

Sometimes I feel like asking the coders to either remove the table that connects to botany, or more accessible tools to remove it yourself

My method without any brotanist tends to be like this:

-grab coin for cohibas, grab birthday hat.
-open fridges, put cooking book in disposals.
-make three cheeses, one by milking Pete.
-make a bit of tofu.
-butcher Pete and Pun Pun (optative, some barmans are bros, and pun pun is to be spared)
-Grab big beaker, empty two flour bags in it, add 15 sugar, and then 45 soy milk.
-add another flour bag, add water to the beaker until it's empty.
-add all to microwave, put the result with the cheese and the hat.
-put salt, pepper, sugar and milk on the same spot.
-slice one bread.
-cut some slabs of meat, process one or two for faggots, cook all the other meat.
-cook all the eggs
-Put everything on the same spot, help yourself with a tray.
-add water to three bowls, add 10 rice to each bowl, cook the ricebowls.
-make birthday cake, Brioche, cheesecake
-make tofubread and meatbread
-make one sausage
-make two rice with pork, another rice with sugar and milk.
-make one Scottish egg.
-make around 6 fried eggs, then turn them into eggs benedict.
-make a lot of omelettes and fried eggs.

From this point on, either enjoy the shift, go to botanics and grow your own ingredients, make ice cream, or loot the morgue.

[capi duffman]

http://pastebin.com/Xf9dwbkq

Proofreading and opinions would be appreciated, gentlemen.

[Zilenan91]

Looks good. Maybe consider putting the little food icons near each section so it's easier to find at a glance.

[Coalescent]

Remember that in a low-pop round (skeleton crew) you actually have access to Hydroponics. The only problem is welding&disassembling the table out of the way, and even that is easy.

[capi duffman]

Ok, I gotta improve

-cooking with botanics: I thought that was simply a matter of tastes, but people asked about it, so I'll improve that part, pointing to ingredients with multiple results, as oposed to low ones.

-antag chef: well, giving pointers about how to make use of the gibber and poisons could be useful, then again, my first move as chef is to pay a visit to the hop.

-explain better how to access hydroponics, and make use of science: few chefs ask to have their machines Improved, quite useful, but dependant on your timing.

And I should update the recipe list overall.

[Coalescent]

Sorry for the necroposting, but regarding the 'Cook Without Botanist' issue, I've noted down all the recipes that one can get from Kitchen without resorting to Botany (no vegetables or fruits, except for the cocoa-pods you can get at roundstart from Arrivals plants) in a notepad file:
http://pastebin.com/UTMK19cS

It includes some recipes that need stuff from outside (like Brains, Appendices, Wine or even Metal Rods) but not from Botany.

Should I try to make a new Wiki article for this situation with instructions for each recipe?