Overcooked 2 is a wildly popular couch co-op party game that puts up to four players in the roles of chefs in increasingly strange and fantastical kitchens. You and your friends are supposedly honing your culinary skills in order to become masters of cooking and teamwork in time to satisfy the endless hunger of the Unbread.
The sequel isn't quite as punishing as the original Overcooked when it comes to gathering stars, but you'll still probably find your group beating their heads against a level or two. Some of the recipes in the game are complicated already; paired with the nonsensical terrain you'll typically find your friends yelling at each other as your kitchen burns down. But what's the hardest recipe? We're counting them down.
10 10. Salad
Salad is a softball recipe. Nothing needs to be cooked, only chopped and assembled. There are only a few ingredients to even the most complex salad dish. Some are even just a plate of plain iceberg lettuce because the Unbread has no taste. You have to pay a little bit of attention to the composition because you don't want to send out a lettuce-cucumber-and-tomato if there isn't a ticket one.
But if you just set it on the counter and wait a few seconds, you can probably send it out eventually. The game sometimes makes fulfilling these simple orders a little harder by making volcanoes constantly spew fire into your kitchen, but it's still the easiest recipe in the game.
9 9. Nuggets and Fries
If you love to pelt raw chicken and potatoes at your friends, then the nuggets and fries levels are going to be heaven. Usually, these kitchens are divided in two somehow, forcing players to throw food around if they want to get anything done. It results in a lot of chicken being thrown overboard accidentally, but the recipe itself isn't too difficult.
Making the most efficient use of the fryers seems to be the big sticking point, since both the nugs and fries need to be, well, fried. But there's very little variation in the orders you get: it's either chicken, fries, or both.
8 8. Sushi
Sushi (and sashimi) is one of the first recipes you're given and at the beginning of the game, it is very easy. You're only tasked with making one kind of maki roll (cucumber) and otherwise are just expected to slap raw seafood down on a plate and call it a day. However, as the game goes on and you encounter more ingredients, the kinds of rolls start to vary significantly.
It's made more difficult by the continued inclusion of sashimi. In most recipes, there'll be an unchanging base: lettuce for salad, bun and beef for hamburgers, etc. For sushi, that's usually rice and nori. Onion King help you if you're trying to put out shrimp sashimi and your friends keep stealing all your chopped shrimp to make rolls.
7 7. Burgers
Burgers are a staple of the Overcooked games. They're not terribly complicated at their basic level, but the more ingredients you have, the more customizable they become.
What becomes an easy day of throwing together buns and burger patties becomes a hectic flurry of making sure any of four or five ingredients are chopped and ready to go at any moment. Burgers strike a great balance for Overcooked's mechanics. Easy to understand and just complex enough to make four people lose their minds.
6 6. Pizza
Pizza's another more late-game addition to the recipe catalog and so comes hand in hand with ever wilder kitchens. Often you'll find yourself in a magical castle, cooking personal pizzas for ungrateful students like overworked house elves, all while dealing with floating counters or teleportation arches.
The base for the pizza is easy to prep, since they all need dough, sauce, and cheese. But from there, any number of toppings can be added and then the whole thing needs to be cooked in an oven. Be extra careful not to let the ever-moving furniture separate you from your cooking pies because otherwise you'll have a devastating fire on your hands.
5 5. Pancakes
Pancakes might seem more complicated than they are because of how difficult it can be to navigate the later levels where they appear. However, just looking at the recipe itself reveals it's one of the easier options. They all require flour and egg and the only variation is that some batters can also include chocolate.
This means you'll rarely have a situation where you need one specific combination of ingredients that just isn't prepped anywhere. Still, you may have a little trouble balancing the mixers and the stove. The pancake levels can be challenging, but it isn't the pancakes' fault.
4 4. Pasta
Pasta is one of the few recipes that requires cooking two separate components before combining them into the finished dish. It's introduced fairly early in some of the tamer kitchens (if you can call several hot air balloons tame) to give you some time to get used to the timing.
And timing is absolutely crucial when preparing the pasta because then you might wind up with two or three pots full of cooked noodles sitting on the floor while your team scrambles to chop and cook even one pan of sauce.
3 3. Cake
Cake is one of the most complicated recipes you unlock over the course of the whole game and, if you look at the above image, features in some of the craziest kitchens. It's basic components are flour, egg, and honey but can also include ingredients like chocolate and carrot.
Everything needs to be chopped and mixed and then transported to an oven to bake. To add some extra difficulty to these levels, cake often appears alongside pancakes, which contain some of the same ingredients but have very different cooking methods. Juggling everything can be a real struggle.
2 2. Steamed Buns
Something about setting foot in a Kevin level shuts off your brain. We don't know what it is, but having to steam buns throws everything we've all learned about cooking out the window. The kitchen becomes a battleground, as your friends shove past you to cram flour into mixers, or throw a handful of ground beef in your face.
Some kitchens are completely divided except for a few small openings; the only thing that comes through these portals are the occasional plate of food and the sounds of suffering. On the surface, the recipe doesn't seem very difficult. Chop the filling, mix it with flour, steam, and serve. But it's deceptive. Kevin's levels are a proving ground and only the strong survive.
1 1. Burritos
We don't know how your group operates, but in our experience, the appearance of a burrito level sends all of our friends into a desperate, feral panic. On the surface, it's the same kind of situation as making pasta: cook the rice and the meet separately, assemble, and serve.
But actually executing any number of correct burrito orders is a Herculean task. Maybe it's something about the kitchen they appear in, often featuring a number of moving parts or even joysticks that players have to control. Maybe the burritos are just cursed. It's hard to tell.