Recipe ratings (2 hours)

Information in this post is correct as of Saturday 10th May 2014.

It's recipe ratings time! We kicked off with the 1 hour dishes two weeks ago - today is the turn of the 2 hour foods.

There are 35 recipes of 2 hour length have featured in the game, of which two have been removed and a further nine are on removed appliances (but are still available if you have said appliances). At present this is the fourth largest band of dishes on offer, so competition for that Hall of Fame spot is fierce.

 Previous recipe rating posts

 26/04/14 1 hour

Profit is the most significant factor in determining a recipe rating, so let's start with it. Top of the charts is the NY Strip Steak (Basic Grill) with 2,130 coins of profit. If you truly want to maximise income then this is the ultimate dish - on a per hour basis only five recipes give more profit, and they are all very short so would require your attention far too regularly. However at 2 hour duration, you'd still need to take only short naps through the night to fully make use of the steak's profit quality. I urge you not to put off sleeping to cook food!

Two other recipes are strong enough to earn a 10 rating for profit as well. They are Zucchini Soup (Spring Stove) and Black Pepper Chicken (Basic Grill). Like the steak, both of these look good on the profit per hour front too, but the soup has the added bonus of yielding the best profit per plate of the 2 hour dishes:

Zucchini Soup
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
10	5	8	10	5	7.9

With 3.50 coins of profit for every plate sold, the Zucchini Soup is the seventh best recipe on this measurement across all durations, so is a great choice if you have lots of counters heavily stocked and are looking to make a quick buck. Unfortunately it was a goal recipe, so is only available to those who completed the Spring goals in 2013. Meanwhile an average XP gain damages the soup's overall rating, and rules it out of the race for supremacy!

One of the recipes which trumps the Zucchini Soup is the NY Strip Steak:

NY Strip Steak
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
10	5	10	7	5	8.0

We already know about its excellent profit return, but it also scores a perfect ten for portions, a greater weighted factor than the profit per plate the soup excels in. The steak offers 50 more portion than its closest challenger, the Black Pepper Chicken, which itself still earns a ten. However, if we take a look at the chicken's recipe ratings we'll discover it does edge the steak overall:

Black Pepper Chicken
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
10	5	10	7	6	8.0

They have identical ratings, except for the availability which the Black Pepper Chicken shades thanks to being unlocked at level 49 whereas the NY Strip Steak doesn't arrive until level 54. It's small potatoes in the grand scheme of things though, and they do both finish up with the same overall rating (to one decimal place).

So far the recipes we've looked at have all suffered when it comes to XP. So which 2 hour food is the best for levelling up? The clear victor for this variable is the Disco Fries (Basic Stove):

Disco Fries
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
8	10	8	7	4	8.3

With 78 XP for 2 hours work, no longer recipe can give you more XP per hour, and only a select few which are shorter can beat it. And the Disco Fries rate favourably for the other major factors too, making it a serious contender for best all-rounder. The two next best XP gain dishes are Chocolate Drizzle (Basic Stove) and the Fruit Bowl (Basic Stove), both of which are recent additions. The latter bombs on profit and portions so isn't worth considering for the overall prize, but the drizzle is worthy of further analysis:

Chocolate Drizzle
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
9	7	9	7	4	8.0

That's some good numbers there, placing the Chocolate Drizzle level with the Black Pepper Chicken and NY Strip Steak. But none of these three could beat the Disco Fries' 8.3 rating, which earns it the title of the best all-rounder among 2 hour dishes! You have to wait until level 66 to unlock the fries, but most of the top 2 hour recipes have a low availability rating, so if you haven't opened up the fries yet, just be patient!

So the Disco Fries joins the Portabello Mushroom in the Recipe Hall of Fame, with the Black Pepper Chicken, Chocolate Drizzle and NY Strip Steak all tying for second place.