Guide to Food

Nutrition
As you walk, run, and spend time on the station, your character's nutrition level will drop. Eating food that contains nutriment, protein, or certain other reagents (see below) will replenish this value. It isn't good to go without food for too long, or to overeat! Keep in mind how much you've eaten and how long it has been since you last ate, and try to stay comfortably full.

Note that nutriment and other reagents need to be metabolized by your body after you've eaten, so if you don't fill up immediately after a meal, you may after a few moments.

Several reagents will increase your nutrition:
 * Very effective: Corn Oil, Nutriment (found in most foods), Animal Protein (found in meat), and Egg Yolk.
 * Somewhat effective: Ketchup, coco powder, Hot Ramen, Hell Ramen, Sugar.
 * Minor increase: Soy Sauce, Hot Coco, Potato Juice, Bilk, Sprinkles, Dry Ramen, Flour, Rice, Cherry Jelly, Various Bar Drinks. There may be others!

Alien species have special dietary needs:
 * Vaurca are only nourished by k'ois paste, which is found in the k'ois products on station. These foods also contain phoron, which the species needs to survive. Consuming any other food reagent will poison them.
 * Unathi are only nourished by animal products: meat, eggs, dairy, and so forth. While they can eat other foods, they will not provide an Unathi with nourishment. Unathi are also sensitive to foods that lower body temperature.
 * Skrell do not have special dietary needs and are not allergic to animal protein. However, they do not have teeth and prefer soft foods.
 * Tajara do not have special dietary needs, but are sensitive to foods that raise body temperature.
 * IPCs do not eat food. They require power from cyborg recharge stations or station APCs.

Fullness/Starvation


These icons may appear on your screen when your nutrition level needs attention:
 * A burger with a grey marker means you are too full and will move around more slowly. If your character starts to 'unwillingly' eat food, they are probably getting full and will soon have overeaten.
 * The yellow marker means your character is getting hungry.
 * If you see the icon of a burger with a red marker on your screen, you will start to move very slowly due to starvation. This effect can be severe and will continue until you eat some food, so head to the chef for a wholesome snack!
 * IPCs that run out of nutrition due to a lack of power will be temporarily immobilized.
 * Vaurca are affected by nutrition like other species, but will also begin to suffocate if they do not replenish their internal phoron supply by consuming k'ois, or finding an external source of phoron.

Some things will decrease your nutrition quickly:
 * Sprinting by toggling 'Walk' to 'Run'
 * Vomiting
 * Being cold (by exposure to cold environments or because you were in a cryo tube)
 * Recovering from blood loss
 * Taking Lipozine
 * Some viruses

If you eat too much, your description when others examine you will note that you are "chubby." If you are starving, you will be described as "malnourished."

Food Recipes

 * Liquids, condiments, ground fruits and vegetables, and eggs that have been cracked into a container are all measured in reagent units rather than their own items. They can be poured directly into the oven or pan (whole eggs can be added directly to the oven and are considered a separate ingredient, so be careful!)


 * Sliceable foods can be divided into smaller portions by slicing them with a sharp object. Their reagents are divided equally into the slices. The slices noted here are the maximum number of slices, which you can get by using a precise cutting tool like a kitchen knife, cleaver, or scalpel; crude cutting tools, like axes, shovels, and saws will result in fewer slices.


 * Condiments and reagents can be added to food, possibly increasing their nutrition value or adding some fun extras. A chef can create condiments by grinding up things that contain them and isolating them in the CondiMaster in the back room. Condiments let you put ketchup on your fries, salt in your soup, dylovene on your fish fingers, or psilocybin on your ghost burger--the possibilities are endless. Foods hold a maximum of fifty units of reagents.


 * Some poisonous foods can be prepared safely if Dylovene is added to the finished product, or if the poisonous reagent is neutralized somehow(try using syringes!). Experienced chefs only!


 * Poisonous reagents are marked in red text . Reagents which have other, non-deadly effects--like intoxication, sleepiness, or the effects of hot or cold sauce--are marked in blue text.


 * Traitor chefs can make some sneaky substitutions:
 * Poisonous apples can be used in all apple dishes, and the final dish will be poisoned. Unlike poisonous mushrooms, cyanide apples can easily kill.
 * Slime jelly can be substituted for cherry jelly, and will poison the resulting food.
 * Anything made with meat can be made with human meat. (It's still necessary to emag the gibber before butchering one's murder victims.)

Mixed Recipes
Cooking has been revamped since the 2nd of September, 2020, so the page below is somewhat of a work in progress. Microwaves have been removed, with most of their function relegated to plates, bowls, and stoves instead.

To create some mixed food, you first need a container to mix things in. This can be a skillet, an oven dish, a frying basket, a serving plate, and so forth. For recipes that simply require combining foods into a tasty mix, simply stuff them together in your container of choice, drag the container's sprite onto your character's, and watch the delicious goodies appear. If you can fit multiple configurations of the same recipe into your container, you can even speed up the process: for example, combining six cabbages, three tomatoes, three carrots, and three apples in a bowl before dragging it to yourself will net you three tosse salads.

Many recipes aren't so easily mixed, however, and also require that they are baked, fried, boiled, baked, or otherwise heated up. Where this applies, pick up a container from its appliance, insert the various ingredients, and then put it back. If the appliance isn't turned on, your food won't cook. Make sure to turn your appliances on before putting stuff on there! There's no use in frying a nice steak or baking a delicious chocolate cake in a cold oven. Your appliances give helpful pings when the food inside is done, after which you should have plenty of time to grab your foods before they burn. Food is done when it reaches a set temperature, and it generally takes a while for burning to set in, so don't be afraid to put your fryer, stove, and oven to their max temperature values.

Stove
Cooking on a stove requires it to be preheated and the right pot or pan to be used. Some recipes like meatballs can be mass produced and reagents like spice can be left over in the pan if it is not used up in the recipe itself. You can take your pan or pot from the stove and fill in all the reagents before starting the cooking process by putting it back on. Same as with the oven, the stove will ping once a meal is done. To select a temperature and start the heating process use ctrl + left click.

Oven

 * Before you can use the oven, it must be preheated. Right-click and select Toggle Power to turn it on. Preheating takes several minutes, but after a short while it can be used to cook even if not fully preheated. The food will cook more slowly until preheating is complete. Examine the oven while next to it to see how hot it is.
 * You can alt+click the oven to open and close the oven door.
 * If the oven door is left open, heat will escape. Make sure it's closed, especially when cooking and preheating!


 * To add a single food item to the oven, use the food directly on the oven, which will place it into an empty oven tray. If you want to cook a recipe that requires multiple ingredients, remove one of the oven trays, put all recipe ingredients into it, and then put the tray back in the oven.


 * The oven can cook any variety and quantity of recipes simultaneously, as long as you have all the ingredients in a single tray.
 * Any leftover reagents will be absorbed into the cooked foods.
 * When not making a recipe the oven can also be used to just bake any food, which will cook it, give it a nice brown colour.


 * The oven can also be used for Combination Cooking, which allows you to make custom bread, pies, cakes, and pizzas with whatever fillings/toppings you want. To do this, right click and Choose Output, select the combine target, and then insert an oven tray full of ingredients.
 * The quantity of stuff used to make it will determine the size of the result.
 * Combination Cooking can only make one item at a time - whatever output is set will only work for the next item cooked.

Deepfryer

 * Before you can use the fryer, it must be preheated. Right-click and select Toggle Power to turn it on. Heating up takes a while, so be sure to do it early. Prepare other ingredients while it warms up!
 * The deep fryer has an oil level that you should keep an eye on - cooking efficiency will fall as it drops, and it starts off at a randomized level. For optimal cooking, keep the oil topped up to the maximum.
 * You can sometimes find a spare tank of cooking oil in the maintenance behind the kitchen. Otherwise, you can order one from cargo.


 * To add a single food item to the fryer, use the food directly on it, which will place that item into an empty fryer basket. If you want to cook a recipe that requires multiple ingredients, remove one of the fryer baskets by clicking the fryer with an empty hand, and put all your ingredients into the basket. Once everything for the recipe is inside, put the basket back in the fryer.


 * The fryer can cook any variety and quantity of recipes simultaneously, as long as you have all the ingredients in a single basket.
 * Many fryer recipes require an ingredient to be coated in batter or beer-batter for the recipe to work. See the next section for an explanation of battering foods.
 * Any leftover reagents will be absorbed into the cooked foods.
 * When not making a recipe the fryer can also be used to just "deep fry" any food, which will cook it, give it a nice brown color, and add some extra nutrition to it.

Batter
You can coat food in batter before putting it in the deepfryer!
 * Nearly everything you can fry can be coated in batter.
 * Put all of the ingredients of the batter in a container to create the batter, then use a food item on the container to cover it in batter.
 * The ingredients for the batter can be mixed in any kind of container.

Intermediate Ingredients
These items are usually steps on the way to more complicated recipes. Try to prepare them while waiting on the oven and the fryer.

Reagents/Condiments/Recipes from Blending or Mixing
To mix reagents, put them in the same container. You will hear a bubbling sound if mixing is successful.
 * To see exactly what you've mixed, use a beaker and then add it to a nearby All-In-One Grinder or ChemMaster machine.
 * Grinding a completed food item in the grinder reduces it to the reagents inside.

Junk Food
When there's no chef, the chef is serving toxic glop, or the chef is trying to murder you and your friends, most people resort to one of two things: grazing on produce, or the vending machines.

Junk food requires no chef or machinery, but it's generally not as filling or as interesting.

Advanced Cooking
Some reagents in finished recipes are poisonous or have undesirable effects. If you're a traitor that may be the point, but if you're just feeling fancy you may want to try and serve these items safely. A little creative chemistry or careful preparation can help get rid of the dangerous reagents in your food.

Any piece of food can contain up to 50 units of reagents, including those that are created with it.


 * When using medicines, be careful not to add too much to avoid triggering an overdose.
 * Reagents that react inside the food to neutralize a poison may be dangerous themselves until they react. Using too much will leave poisonous leftovers.
 * Reagents can be removed from food with a syringe, and separated using the CondiMaster in the kitchen. Get that Carpotoxin outta there!