The five main cooking games in the Pokemon series ranked

A blocky Pikachu from the game Pokemon Quest up close as several blocky cooking pots and an equally blocky Meowth sit in the background on grass.

While not a main feature of the Pokemon games, there has been a surprising amount of stuff in the canon that have to do with food. And not just the mirky lore that involves Miltank and Farfetch'd and the like, I'm talking about the concept of cooking.

Even in the show, there was often a side plot about Jessie and James trying to score some free food.

In some of the Pokemon games, especially the more recent ones, cooking actually plays a fairly large (but not always mandatory) role in the games. For the list, I'm looking at the big five with official cooking minigames. We're talking the one from Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, the one from Sword and Shield, the one from Scarlet and Violet, the one from Pokemon Quest, and the one from Pokemon Sleep.

I know Pokemon Cafe Mix is specifically about cooking, but I'm, one, looking at the ones that have it as minigames, and two, I do NOT want to think about how mixing a bunch of severed Pokemon heads around in a box gives you sandwiches. Not gonna do it.

So here we go, from the worst to the best of the main five, starting with...

05) Making Random Stuff for a Snorlax - Pokemon Sleep

An image from the game "Pokemon Sleep" where a Snorlax, laying on a blanket, is about to eat a plate of curry.

This one is the easiest one to place on the list. Hands down. No regrets.

I was really curious to see what Pokemon Sleep was for the several years they floated this around. It looked like it could have been something really impress, especially in the beginning where they floated around the idea of utilizing a pulse oximeter (the finger clampy bit at the hospital) to help read your pulse as you slept.

At the time I was using sleep apps so I thought it would be a fun alternative and, after spending years on it, I thought it might be just the thing to help me.

Instead it was an evil evil app that targeted people with sleep problems and then asked them "what if your bad sleep could also cause a Pokemon to starve?"

As for the mini-game itself, it was a no-nonsense, dump some shit in a pot, and get something type game. And, unless you didn't have a hint of sleep problem, and spent a decent amount in microtransactions, you were eating like a single divorced dad.

04) Poffins - Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Brilliant Diamond, and Shining Pearl

A screenshot from Pokemon Brilliant Diamond where several Pokemon stand around a Poffin dish with a blue arrow pictured over it pointing counter-clockwise.

Let me gently state, as someone who loved the original Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Platinum...fuck Poffins.

In theory, Poffins are super fun. They involve the first cute mini-game in Pokemon games which involved you throwing berries into a nonsense machine and stirring it at just the right speed to kneed it into candy. Awesome. Adorable.

But that's how they get you.

First off, you have to often grow the berries yourself. And while the game expects you to be growing berries, there's random spots to grow one or two plants randomly scattered across the entire world and you can absolutely go to hell if you don't write down where you put whatever berry you were hoping to farm.

Then, after you go on a world tour trying to find the berries you plants that you need to make a particular Poffin, you need to do the thing that gets me checking out when it comes to Pokemon games...math. I'm not talking "three berries makes one size but four berries makes a bigger one." No, I'm talking you need to do some series fucking math if you want to achieve the best results. Or, as the amazing Bulbapedia explains:

A screenshot of a section from Bulbapedia where the mathematical formula for the smoothness of a Poffin is explained and it sucks. — I would rather DIE

For real, if I try playing through the slog that was the Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remakes and ALSO have to do this just because I want to do a cute mini-game my little buddies will starve to death and as it fades to black I will show them this formula and they will understand and forgive me.

03) Cooking à la cube - Pokemon Quest

Listen, this one might cause some confusion as, like Pokemon Sleep's this cooking game was heavily designed to convince people to purchase microtransactions to get more cooking pots, and two, there is less of an actual minigame here than the Poffins, but hear me out.

Utilizing something of a Minecraft crafting rig, you place special ingredients and, if you use your noggin, you'll make food that's smell will attract the kind of Pokemon you want to catch. You need some Poison Pokemon to visit? Throw some mushrooms in the mix. You want a Ground Pokemon? Throw some minerals in it. Who cares? Heck, is the Pokemon you're hoping to get red? Just cook a bunch of red shit in a pot and you'll make Red Stew à la cube which will bring all the red colored Pokemon to the yard.

It's simple and cute like Pokemon should be. And while there isn't an actual mini-game beyond setting up the recipes, it doesn't really matter because the end results are really fun to witness and, don't tell no one, but the game was actually a blast to play with your new Pokemon.

02) Sandwich Crafting - Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

Screenshot from Pokemon Scarlet showing a picnic table with a picnic basket sitting on a field with mountains in the distance.

In theory, this could have been the best one but it SUCKS. In honesty, this would have been third if not for the fact that this actually features a game mechanic and it also shows results more consistently.

But oh my god is this mini-game janky.

Sandwiches are one of the best foods on earth. You make a pile of things you like, hide them between two slices of bread to hide your shame and then eat it. Simple, easy, amazing. Not here though.

In Pokemon Scarlet and Violet you are given the most bizarre cuts of food and tasked to make a sandwich using the worst physics engine I've ever seen. Let's put three paper thin pieces of bell pepper on top of two whole ass cutlets and maybe a full on sausage. And then just watch as the top piece of bread rolls around like an old piece of masonry moved via logs and you end up feeling like an idiot sandwich.

No matter how carefully you place the ingredients, once that toothpick stabs the top of the sandwich at the end, you get to watch the whole thing slump uncomfortably without any sort of knowledge on whether or not it actually effected anything.

But damn it made shiny hunting so much easier.

01) Curry Cooking - Pokemon Sword and Shield

A screenshot of Pokemon Sword's curry cooking game in which a fan is used to stoke the flames under a large cooking pot. The words "Fan the Flames!" is underneath.

First off, I loved Pokemon Sword and Shield. I know it gets a bad rap but, honestly, I enjoyed it a lot. It had a cool sense of fashion, the story was more upbeat than most, it had a lot of mystery, some neat reveals, and it was the first time in a Pokemon game that the gym leaders felt like actual characters in the world and not reclusive bosses hiding out to just be a gateway to the next level.

And in this world we had the curry mechanic and it was kinda great.

You'd throw some ingredients together in a pot, use a stirring mechanic similar to the only fun part of the Poffin bit, fan the flames using either motion controls or careful button mashing, and then do a quick little bit of timing flourish at the end. Then you not only get treated to a stylized picture of your food, but also get a much more believable image of you and your Pokemon eating the food than Scarlet and Violet's thing of moving your characters head in front of a still image of the sandwich you made.

There was also the fact that you were still visibly in your camp instead of cutting to a different game mechanic. Because of this, while you're playing you could see your Pokemon in the background playing or sleeping. Some of the more hungry Pokemon would run up to watch. It made the world feel more lived in and cozy.

It created an experience that felt less like I was creating an item for my inventory, and more like I was actually prepping a meal for my family. My adorable, element harnessing, animalian family.