In this Clash of the Cookbooks, the Final Fantasy 14 cookbook and the World of Warcraft cookbook go head-to-head to battle for beef stew supremacy! ⚔
The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Cookbook (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/30YwC6Z
World of Warcraft: The Official Cookbook (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/3qldZnI
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:54 Exquisite Beef Stew
2:59 Westfall Stew
5:44 Judgement Round
5:59 Theme
7:19 Presentation
8:08 Taste
8:58 Decision
#FinalFantasyXIV
#WorldOfWarcraft
#Cookbook
#MisoHungrie
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The Exquisite Beef Stew is pretty close to how I do mine, but I like to give the tomato paste some time on direct heat, before the beef gets added back in, and use less beef broth but add in a dry red (usually a cabernet sauvignon). Oh, and nutmeg of course. As to the Westfall stew, I can't for the life of me make sense of the recipe not calling for the beef to be browned before adding it to the rest of the stew.
Yum 2 types of Caldereta
The results is really a surprise though.
In terms of themes, I would have expected the FFXIV 1 to win. In the game, you make the stew by using carrots, potatoes, dzo (beef), flour, and pepper. Which is basically almost the exact same ingredients as the cookbook, minus some due to ingrediants limitations in game for crafting. It also looks almost identical to the in game design and the theme where people were to eat it. So it would win the theme category.
On the other hand, the Westfall stew is purely an reimagination of the actual item as the stew is actually made with boar meat+water when crafted in game, and do not actually call for red wine nor any of the veggies used. The author has much more freedom to reimagine the stew as he/she wishes. The cooking method also does not really fits the way the stew is made, with how it calls for repeated use of an oven with precise temperature control thus further dropping the theme score. Additionally, despite how it is supposed to fit the theme, the author is just making his own recipe up from scratch, i don't really believe that with how poor the villagers are, they have free access to red wine, beef, and pearl onions.
Furthermore, lets be honest, with how much WoW retcon their lore, the story for the stew doesnt count for much either. So overall, Exquisite Beef Stew wins for theme.
For appearance, the Exquisite Beef Stew looks super appetizing and fits the game design to a T, which i think the author did a good job recreating the recipe within its limits. Whereas, despite how theres no full recipe nor picture of the westfall stew, the author put in almost no effort to make it look better and simply just made his own recipe of beef stew instead of the boar stew it is in game. So definitely the Exquisite Beef Stew wins in looks.
For taste, the exquisite beef stew uses standard ingrediants while the westfall stew uses pearl onions in place of potato, bacon w/ bacon fats in place of oil, red wine in place of tomato paste, and added in barley for texture. Its more of a soup than a stew with how watery it is. However, i would imagine it tastes much better due to how fragrant the bacon would make it and how the red wine adds a nice mix of bitterness and sour thang to it depending on the red wine used. So overall, i think the Westfall stew would be something that looks bad but tasted amazing and wins the taste round.
Also, to be fair, in the actual theme of the game, you would have to boil the meat rather than bake it as it is supposed to be a dish that could be made in a tavern with medieval themed cooking appliances like brick oven and steel pots. So the author messing about with the theme and the cooking method might have been the reason for the meat being tougher than ffxiv's.
Yo man spencer's has been having some cookbooks like the ones you feature lately, pretty great there's a ramen one too that has all kinds of ideas n stuff.
you should get more judge for this kind of content, not only maybe it could be biased but also i want to see another reaction for it lol
Overwatch vs Halo? Star Trek vs Star Wars? So much potential! Love this idea
What an amazing concept! Have a sub my good sir!
Westfall Stew is a bit of a stretch based the lore it came from. It's a humble stew made with accessible ingredients and yet the cookbook interpretation is far extravagant from it.
Pearled barley in beef stew??
I think the FFXIV beef stew doesn't have a lot of nuance like history and stuff to it because….well it's….just a stew. There are a few dishes in the game that has to do with some in-game quests, like for example the infamous Bacon Bread, which is related to a series of fetch quests where you're told to get this exquisite rare wine called……I think it was called a Dalmascan Red. Man that chain of quest was nefarious
Oh or god forbid, the Archon Loaf
Coming at you again much later to request FF XV food content. Thank you.
The fight of the century!
FFs beef stew looks like our own Beef Menudo. 😅
Honestly, if you want the best of both worlds just deglaze the hearty beef stew pot with red wine before adding the vegetables, swap onions with pearl onions at your choice, and maybe add some 'northern spice mix' for a bit of complexity.
Barley can be added as desired but remember to add an appropriate amount of water to match.
Viola, the best MMO stew.
I love this please make this a series it would be great to see
These both look great! Though, for me the easy winner is the Exquisite Beef Stew, just because I'm really not a fan of strong onion flavours, and mushrooms are one of the things I dislike the most out of any food, so the full onions and presence of mushrooms at all just immediately puts the Westfall one at a very harsh disadvantage. I'd eat it still, but I'd be doing a lot of picking to get the stuff I'm not really a fan of out of the way, sadly.
God damn it, I shouldn't watch this while fasting.
Both the meals look amazing
9:20 what game?
Simple solution. Would eat both.
Personally, when I go for a beef stew, I'm not looking for the wheel to be reinvented. I want hearty, warm, and inviting. You can have all the flavors in the world, but if it doesn't fulfill that, its not worth its weight as a beef stew. I've made the one for FFXIV and wouldn't mind trying the WoW one, but based on how you described them both, the FFXIV one wins for me.
Aah I love FFXIV and I'm happy to see it represented in this format! Awesome video like always!
I literally just made a beef stew a few weeks ago almost exactly the same way as the ffxiv recipe which is both good and bad since it doesn’t seem special at all but I know exactly how it’s gonna taste. The west fall one seems more unique however maybe I’m just a lazy cook because it looks way more complicated, more dishes, and not sure if it’s worth the extra effort. Still it does look more like a stew from a fantasy world