Cooking in Stardew Valley is a great feature in the game, except for the fact that you can’t taste what you make. Luckily, ConcernedApe is releasing a cookbook for the game on May 14, 2024, so here’s 10 recipes that we’d love to see included in the Stardew Valley Cookbook.
Tropical Curry
Tropical Curry is just what it sounds like: a curry with all the spice you’re used to but cut with some sweet, juicy tropical fruits.
In Stardew Valley, the recipe only calls for a coconut, a pineapple, and a hot pepper, but it’ll take a little bit more than that to make in your kitchen. Generally, these recipes will call for more fruit than just the coconut and pineapple to give a wide spectrum of flavors that you have to taste to believe.
There are plenty of ways to spice up your tropical curry (pun absolutely intended), using different fruits like pineapple, mango and cherries. You can also throw in some protein like chicken, but if you want to keep it vegetarian, you can surely do that too. If you don’t like your foods too spicy, there are always plenty of ways to cut back on the heat to make it more palatable.
Mango Sticky Rice
Mango sticky rice is a perfect dish to replicate and elaborate on in the cookbook. It’s a bit involved to get the rice to just the right consistency, but all good things come with both patience and hard work. The rice shows off it’s versatility in this dessert, opening up the doors for you to make a plethora of different dishes.
Adding the mango in there makes for a dish quite unlike anything else, but if mango doesn’t do it for you — or if you’ve got allergies that don’t agree with the fruit — you can substitute plenty of other sweet, tropical fruits to the dish. Just make sure that you’ve got the proper sweet rice, otherwise you’ll be in for a much more dull-flavored surprise.
Crab Cakes
Who doesn’t love a good crab cake? Actually, myself if we’re being honest, but that’s not to say I couldn’t make one that I liked!
While it’s certainly going to take a bit more than what you need in Stardew Valley, crab cakes are the perfect option to throw in the cookbook. It’s super subjective as to how you want to season them, how big you want them or how…crabby to make them. Just make sure your ingredients are as close to fresh as the ones off your farm and you’re sure to love the end result.
Maple Bar
When it comes to making bread, it can be a little scary to try for the first time, so you wouldn’t expect donuts to be anything less challenging. However, you can throw together a batch of maple bars with ease, and you’ll be rewarded with some of the best homemade desserts you’ve ever had.
Stardew makes it look just a little bit easier than it is in reality, but not by much! The main difference is that there’s no yeast in Stardew, but you’ll need that to make your maple bar dough. You’ll have to give it some time to rise, but after that you can fry ’em up, dip ’em, and dig in! Just like in the game, almost everyone likes them unless they really don’t have a sweet tooth.
If you tap your own maple syrup fresh from the tree, you can be sure that this dish will be no joke.
Lobster Bisque
There is absolutely nothing quite like a smooth, creamy bisque on a cool day. If it gets added to the Stardew cookbook, you can whip up your own lobster bisque in no time at all. Well, not exactly no time; it’ll take a bit of prep work, but like all good things, you’ll be glad you waited to have this end result.
Again, so much of the beauty of cooking for yourself or following a recipe is that you can really make your food your own! Don’t like lobster too much? Swap it for crab or a different shellfish. Don’t even like seafood? There are countless different bisques that you can create, or you might just have to play around with the seasonings depending on what you use. Cooking, like farming, really let’s your creativity take the center stage.
Poppyseed Muffin
If you’ve never had one, a poppyseed muffin might seem like a strange thing to have, but the people who like them absolutely love them.
The seeds add a certain nuttiness that is more subtle than what you’d get from other seeds or nuts, and it pairs brilliantly with lemon or other acidic flavors. They’re definitely something you’ve got to taste to believe.
The description says that it has a “soothing effect,” which won’t exactly be the case from having one of these in your kitchen, but it’ll still be a phenomenal experience. You can mix it up and personalize it with whatever fruits you want, how much poppyseed to use, or who to give them to, but you can be sure that you’ll always have a winning dessert on your table if you bake them yourself.
Fiddlehead Risotto
Looking to surprise your guests with something they never knew they liked? Try your hand at using some fiddleheads as the main ingredient in your risotto to bring out an earthy, herbal flavor that’s nothing like anything you’ve had before.
Some have described the taste as being “green,” which is probably going to take some getting used to. And yet, it’s always nice to try something you’ve never had before.
While Stardew’s description calls it “a little bland,” there’s nothing stopping you from adding a little extra spice and calling it in your own. The flavor certainly won’t be for everyone, but you’ll never know until you get a chance to try it. Just make sure to cook it all the way — the ferns are poisonous if left raw.
Pepper Poppers
If you’re having a gathering for a game day, birthday, or whatever else you can imagine, make sure you’ve got a dish filled to the brim with these spicy treats.
The name says it all: with a little of that hot pepper kick in a perfectly pop-able form, they’re great for quick snacking or for wolfing down a whole plate. After all, fresh ingredients make for the best quality meals. They’re also not too hard to make either, and there are plenty of different ways to try and prepare them. You can control the level of spice that they’ve got so you can keep ’em mild, or really amp up the flavor depending on how much of those seeds you use.
On top of that, you can try it with different peppers to see what unique flavor combos you can find. Be sure you warn people though, as a recipe that isn’t too spicy for you might be way too hot for someone else.
Glazed Yams
When you know the recipe for a great dish of glazed yams, it really doesn’t have to be autumn for it to be a great time to have some.
In Stardew, all you need to make it are a single yam and some sugar, and that’s basically all you need to do it in your own kitchen. And yet, while it’s simple to start, it’s not to be underestimated if you’re determined to make the best dish possible.
Getting into the kitchen can be something that people are worried about doing for the first time, so quick and easy recipes like this are the perfect way to get comfortable. You just have to chop up your yams, cook them lightly, and then glaze and season them before cooking it all until its soft, sticky and smells like the best oven you’ve ever opened.
Tom Kha Soup
Looking for something that appears a bit more unique than what other farmers have on their table? Try this Thai coconut-milk soup that’ll stand out like nothing else in your dinner spread.
Contrary to how it looks, it’s a hot soup in both temperature and spice, and there’s plenty to do while you’re experimenting. While Stardew Valley has only got a single kind that you can make, in reality there are plenty of different ways to customize the dish. You can make Tom Kha Gai or Tom Kha Goong – chicken and seafood, respectively.
If you’re a vegan or vegatarian, you can even adapt the recipe to use mushrooms as well, sticking to the ways of foraging that you learned in Stardew Valley.
