Okay, so two weeks ago I created an affront to God and man, and last week I didn’t so much enjoy my efforts. It’s time to fix that, and it’s time to get back in the winners’ circle. So we’re keeping it basic. Meat. Rice. What could be any better?

The Dish: Prime Meat and Rice Bowl

This bowl is loaded with high-quality meat. Your hunt for a serious meal ends here. Ingredients are Raw Prime Meat, Hylian Rice, and Rock Salt.

The Research: Since this is Breath of the Wild, all of the research was predicated on looking at the dish and seeing what extras Link tacked on. And this one is wacky. In addition to some sesame seeds and some haphazardly-strewn-about full rosemary leaves (indicating Link doesn’t really get the idea of herbs for flavor), there’s a flower in there for…plating, I guess.

Imagine for a moment that you’re Princess Zelda. As far as you know, Calamity Ganon is about to break contain any second now. The world may be literal minutes from destruction. Meanwhile, this dingus is taking his sweet time plating up his dishes like he’s a dang Iron Chef. He’s not trying to unseal any of the heroic spirits or rushing to save you, he’s just playing with his food. It’s the sort of stuff like this that cracks me up. Anyway, with our research done, it’s time to get cracking.

The Method: This dish starts, like so many others, by generously rubbing the meat with salt and pepper (weirdly, despite the fact that Hyrule clearly has salt, they don’t have a version of black pepper) and letting it chill in the fridge. While it’s there, we’ll dice up some carrots, celery and onion for a nice mirepoix. Also, we’ll pour some high-quality beef broth in a cup and mix in some tomato paste and red wine, setting it aside for now.

With that done, we’ll pour some olive oil into a stainless steel pan and get it ripping hot, then cook our beef strips in batches, setting them aside once done. If you’re using a rice cooker, now is about when you’d wanna start the rice. But we’re not done with that pan yet – Link’s rice clearly has some sort of sauce – so we’ll kill the heat, throw in a pat of butter and our mirepoix, and scrape up all of the brown goodness that ChefPK calls “good-good” and everyone else calls “fond”. Once completely loosened, we drop in our broth-paste-wine mixture, turn the heat back on, and reduce it down, adding cornstarch and seasonings as necessary.

Once the sauce is good and reduced, we’ll pour it into a heatproof bowl and employ our immersion blender to blend everything into a nice smooth consistency. Afterwards we pour the sauce back into the pan, then put the beef back in and let it hang out in there for a few minutes before plating and serving over rice.

The Result: This was delightful. The beef was perfectly cooked, and the sauce wonderfully enhanced the dish. The sesame seed flavor disappeared into the meat and the rosemary didn’t do much of anything, but all in all, this is a dish I’d gladly make again. Mission accomplished!