The Best Video Game-Inspired Recipes

Food in media always has a way of making fans wonder, "How can I eat that?" Many brave home chefs have dedicated their time to replicating recipes in the real world. Whether it's the delicious shrimp balls of Genshin Impact or Dante's favorite pizza from Devil May Cry, gamers are excited to get into the kitchen and create their own versions of their favorite video game comfort foods.

For instance, fans may know that food plays a huge role in Persona 5, as characters can peruse the city's best food stalls while boosting their skills. Atlus even created a pop-up restaurant to feature food inspired by the game. 

For players that want to eat like Joker or Skull, Victoria Rosenthal at Pixelated Provisions teaches gamers how to create their own Yakisoba Pan at home. Early in Persona 5, a food stall outside Shujin Academy advertises bread of all types, including Yakisoba Pan, which involves the age old classic kitchen technique of adding carbs to more carbs. 

The recipe walks home cooks through the process of making their own brioche buns and yakisoba, then putting those delicious carbs together to create a tasty Japanese-inspired dish. Rosenthal additionally discusses the larger context of Yakisoba Pan and provides a personal anecdote about her own experiences loving all things carb-loaded.

Link does a lot of cooking in Breath of the Wild, so much so that players might want to emulate their favorite hero with their own culinary experiments. Anyone wanting to master cooking in the great outdoors like Link needs to learn how to deal with one of the game's stinkier ingredients: durian. Binging with Babish, the YouTube series from Andrew Rea, integrates Breath of the Wild's infamous fruit by including it in Monster Cake, a treat Link can make in-game.

Rea adds durian to his Monster Cake recipe in order to make it truly ghastly. While Rea's kitchen may be a little more professional than most, and his ingredients rarer, his down-to-earth narration provides fans a step-by-step plan for making their own creepy creations at home. One thing's for sure, Rea's approach is a lot less chaotic than Brian David Gilbert making all of the Breath of the Wild recipes in one day.

Naturally, Mario needs a pick-me-up after journeying all over the world and saving Princess Peach. Brian at Lvl. 1 Chef has a step-by-step guide to cooking the Stupendous Stew from Super Mario Odyssey. The Lvl. 1 Chef blog provides information about how to make the tasty dish, but it also provides a history lesson on how white stews fit into Japanese culture. The soup features meat cooked in salt and a variety of fresh, healthy vegetables. Now gamers can taste the bubbling stew straight from the game, including all of its floating vegetables. They won't even have to fight a giant bird to do it. Well, probably.

Cooking in video games is hard to get right. Cooking Mama once thrilled fans, but has fallen into a weird corporate limbo, recently. Fans can feel rejuvenated by incorporating one of their favorite hobbies into a useful life skill. Plus, who doesn't want to nosh on a monster cake like Link?