Making meals of Monsters

[Longtooth Studios]

Do you, or your players enjoy making a meal of the monster they have recently slain?

I would love to hear ideas about making meals of monsters. What dishes have/can you imagine that the diverse pallet of adventurers would find appealing.

Being from Georgia, I will throw one out there that is sure to challenge the heartiest adventurer.

Troll Chitterlings

If you handle this one with care, you can potentially feed a small town with the frequent harvesting of troll Chitterlings.

20 lbs chitterlings, cut up (this is the hard part, bring some friends with weapons)
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 chili pepper, chopped
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons pepper
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 -2 quart water


1 Clean and wash troll chitterlings by pulling off the fat and debris. (Keep a sword handy, they can sometimes turn on you)
2 Soak in salted water to clean.
3 Put chitterlings in water.
4 Add garlic, onions, chile pepper, vinegar, salt and pepper.
5 Cook 3-4 hours.


(Yes, they really do eat this sort of thing down here. In fact a town nearby has an annual "Chitlin Hoedown" in which several thousand people show up to eat pig guts. You smell the festival long before you get there. They smell just like what goes through them, even after cooking. No joke.)

 

[MarkB]

Nice idea. I think monster meals should be able to provide some sort of benefit beyond pure sustenance, if prepared well. For instance, a really well-prepared platter of Troll Chitlins might be able to heal scar tissue and even regenerate lost fingers or toes on the person who eats it.

However, if prepared badly, the subject may regenerate troll-like features, or - on a critical cooking failure - be transformed into a half-troll.

 

[Goonalan]

Many, many, many years ago (20+) a fellow player had a 'combat chef', I'm wracking my brain for the PC class (A/D&D) it was some Fighter type- his 'thing' was to eat his kills, although I seem to remember Undead were off the list.

The character I think eventually gave up play and became some sort of patron with a restaurant in Greyhawk employing adventuring parties to bring back Owlbear Steaks, Mind Flayer Calamari and the like...

Sorry, just taking a stroll down amnesia boulevard there.

 

[Lanefan]

Many, many, many years ago (20+) a fellow player had a 'combat chef', I'm wracking my brain for the PC class (A/D&D) it was some Fighter type- his 'thing' was to eat his kills, although I seem to remember Undead were off the list.

The character I think eventually gave up play and became some sort of patron with a restaurant in Greyhawk employing adventuring parties to bring back Owlbear Steaks, Mind Flayer Calamari and the like...

This sounds very much like the game I currently play in. One character - Marek - who recently retired from the party was a master chef, and a Hobbit to boot. Another character - Aknot the Part-Orc - likes to eat what he kills; thus Marek was constantly having his considerable cooking skills put to the severest of tests.

The menu has at times included:

"Man-cow steaks" (a.k.a. haunch of Minotaur, a perennial favourite)
"Calamari" (a.k.a. Mind Flayer tentacles, as noted in quote above)
"Leg (and arm, and most other parts) of Derro"
"Seasoned Kuo-toa" (apparently they taste awful if not seasoned)

And now Marek's not around one of Aknot's more frequent meals is "Leftovers", a.k.a. the remains of some of the undead that our party Necromancer has got up and going....

Lan-"here, eat this"-efan

 

[Aeolius]

Suddenly I want to write up mountain oysters for my undersea game...

My first 3e PC was Nok, a portly half-orc bard with skills as a chef and taxidermist. He wore a bloodied leather apron and attacked with meat cleavers.

 

[cdrcjsn]

I think every other halfling I've seen had profession(chef) or some sort of culinary background, so yeah, I've seen lots of PCs that like to harvest their kills.

Not sure what the ethics of eating sapient beings though...but these characters were not prone to philosophical debates.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Dragon steak, burgers, etc. for the whole town it was terrorizing. For a week! And other very occasional treats.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Do you, or your players enjoy making a meal of the monster they have recently slain?

I would love to hear ideas about making meals of monsters. What dishes have/can you imagine that the diverse pallet of adventurers would find appealing.

It depends on the PC. As cdrcjsn alludes to, my "adventuring chefs" are more likely to be halflings than anything else.

(Though heaven help the DM that lets me play a Gnoll...)

Suddenly I want to write up mountain oysters for my undersea game...

Yeah, I can see Mountain Oysters being the slow and slimy scourge of some fantasy world's highland lochs.

Oh, wait a minute...

In your mind, what kind of critter are you getting those from? Minotaurs? Mountain Giants?

 

[Corathon]

Ugh. Not quite cannibalism, as the PCs are eating the parts of another intelligent species rather than their own kind, but still kind of repellent (IMO), unless the monsters are just dumb animals. So, haunch of owlbear would be OK, but no derro legs or dragon steaks for me...

 

[Alzrius]

Back before they decided to pull it (for no reason that I'm aware of), Empty Room Studios had a v.3.5 d20 sourcebook called Cooking with Class. It actually treated the concept of food in a fantasy medieval setting fairly seriously, discussing food types and adventure ideas with them, alongside new rules (e.g. the Adamantine Chef prestige class).

It doesn't go over this particular topic in too much detail, but does have a section on exotic ingredients, e.g. monsters.