Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill

Episode 11

At this point, my feelings about any given episode of Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill boil down to one key factor: Does the show provide any scrumptious new recipes for me to add to my cookbook, and does it make me chuckle at least one single time? Truth be told, the show has been struggling on the chuckle front; almost every single one of its jokes is some variation on “Fel and Sui are powerful, Mukohda is befuddled, and now they're all rich,” and stale repetition is comedy's kryptonite. The food has been pretty good for the most part, though, and this week continues that trend with some bomb-ass hamburger steaks that I am most definitely going to grill up this weekend. I guess there's a bunch of other stuff that happens, too, but let's be real. Just like Fel and Mukohda, we're here for the meat.

One thing that we need to address, though: It's weird the way that Mukohda has just adapted to eating the flesh of sentient creatures that have, like, faces and tools and societies, right? I know the show lampshaded it in the beginning, what with all of Mukohda's tears and whimpering, and it isn't like I'm expecting the show to suddenly veer towards psychoanalyzing the ability of its everyman protagonist to dehumanize demonstrably sapient creatures to the point that he treats their broken and defiled corpses like sweet grocery store hauls…but still. It's really fucking weird to eat something capable of making weapons and wearing clothes.

On the other hand, maybe all of those orc orphans (orc-phans?) will be happy to know that their shattered lives allowed Mukohda and Co. to fry up some “bloody” hamburger steaks. I, for one, would be less miffed about the genocide of my entire people if I saw that, at the very least, some doofus from another dimension defied the laws of physics and morality to bread my mangled meat in panko and turn me into some moist cutlets. It's the circle of life, after all.

Gladly, I can also report that this week, Campfire Cooking succeeded in making me chuckle out loud at least one time. It was a tiny chuckle, admittedly, the barely audible chuff that could be mistaken for a hiccup or the clearing of one's throat, but still! It happened after Mukohda finished reselling a bunch of soaps and beauty products to Lambert and his unreasonably pretty wife Marie, which was a storyline that reminded me of the much superior isekai effort, Parallel World Pharmacy. When Mukohda learns that this world does, in fact, supply baths that are not made of splinters and meant to be taken outside, our hero goes buck-wild with the fantasizing. I couldn't help but laugh a little when, after once again earning a disgusting amount of money for all of his recent adventuring and retail fraud, his one dream is to buy himself an absolutely decadent giant bowl to wash his ass in.

Really, though, let's get back to the cutlets before we go. If there's one thing I wish the show did more, it would be to provide some measurements and temperatures for those of us who want to replicate Mukohda culinary excursions with our own less existentially horrifying food products. What kind of oil is our guy using to fry these suckers? What's the heat range we're looking at? How long are we frying for? Anyone who has ever attempted a deep fry at home can tell you that screwing up the temp or the time is a recipe for disaster; no, I will never apologize for that pun. We've only got one episode left in the season, so far as I know, so I don't expect Campfire Cooking to immediately incorporate my feedback. Still, MAPPA, if you're reading this, feel free to reach out to me on my socials or though ANN if you need some culinary consultation for Season 2. I won't even charge a service fee if you let me taste-test all the food.

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Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.