The pride of the Luncheon Kingdom and straight from Mount Volbano itself, you know I couldn’t stay away from this one for long! Although it may look like a normal chowder there’s definitely more to this volcano cooked stew than meats the eye!
When Super Mario Odyssey was announced it felt like a return to the Mario 64 style 3D-platformers that enthralled me as a kid. But in addition to the excitement of getting to play another amazing looking Mario game, the teaser trailer hinted at something I could have never predicted: an entire kingdom full of giant technicolor food!
all of the townspeople are pieces of cutlery wearing chef hats AND I LOVE IT!
Without getting too much into the story of Super Mario Odyssey, the game has a unique focus on travel and exploration. In this game, our globetrotting hero travels far beyond the Mushroom Kingdom into several new kingdoms each sporting their own themes and fun gameplay mechanics. You’ll explore a dense forest sanctuary full of robotic botanists in the Wooded Kingdom and walk the streets dodging taxis in a bustling facsimile of New York City in the Metro Kingdom. But, like I said before, it was the Luncheon Kingdom and it’s enormous pot of stupendous stew set atop an active volcano that truly caught my attention, and I’m sure you can understand why.
It goes without saying, that as soon as I finally landed at the foot of Mount Volbano I immediately set about searching the kingdom for clues as to the stew’s ingredients. I was actually surprised by what I found! In addition to the several vegetables that you can find floating in the stew (carrots, corn, potatoes, etc.) but what was really fascinating is the addition of a HUGE salt encrusted hunk of meat that’s been left out on a high plateau to age.
please excuse the amateur screenshots. I was still getting used to the photo controls .__.;
Now there was no way I could just overlook this ‘secret ingredient’ but it’s inclusion did give me some pause. I’ve cooked things in salt before, but never a whole roast! What i came up with was to create a salt crust with salt sugar and water to achieve a ‘wet sand’ consistency (you can also use egg white instead of water as I found out later) and pack it up all around the meat in order to seal it up. I suppose I should also mention that to me, the meat in the game most closely resembles a big hunk of prime rib. Needless to say that would be WAY too expensive to replicate (not to mention use so much salt,) so I went with a more manageable 2 pound top sirloin roast.
After salting up my roast and leaving it to rest for weeks 3 days, I transferred the whole thing to the oven and hoped for the best! Thankfully, it baked really nicely and wasn’t even overly salted! Nice! I know In the game they just toss the whole cut of raw meat into the stew uncooked, but there is a limit to how far I’ll go for recipe authenticity haha. Yeah, uncooked meat into a finished stew did not seem like the right choice.
it’s as if you could dive right in! ::spoilers::
Another interesting thing I discovered while researching this recipe is that ‘white stews’ such as this one have a history in Japan. Apparently they were introduced in school lunches as a way to get kids to eat more protein and boost their health after the end of WWII. Being somewhat of a comfort food, white stews saw a resurgence in popularity in the 1960’s and remain popular today. Who knew!?
I’m very happy with this recipe and it tastes just as stupendous as the name implies! This was a dish I made live on twitch during my weekly Lvl.1 Test Kitchen stream so if you’re in to video game food recipes make sure to come by Thursday nights at 8 pm EST! Also, if you try out this stew for yourself, I’d love to see/hear how it turned out! Let me know!
P.S. I used baby corn and baby zucchini because the stew is originally so massive! I thought it’d be cool in this normal sized recipe if the veggies looked as if they had been shrunken down.
Feel like making some stew of your own? Check out the full recipe on my blog right HERE:Stupendous Stew recipe
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