Cooking with Jake: The Perfect ‘Adventure Time’ Sandwich

As any fan of Adventure Time knows, Jake the Dog is, in addition to being a loving husband, caring father, and the best friend a boy could ask for, a straight-up culinary genius.

We got our first glimpse of Jake’s kitchen wizardry at work in the episode “The Conquest of Cuteness” (season three, episode one), when he crafts the amazing Everything Burrito. This massive undertaking resulted in exactly what it sounds like—a giant burrito that’s stuffed with pretty much anything Jake can cram into it—and inspires nothing less than unconditional love.

Then in “Burning Low” (season four, episode 16), Jake returns to the kitchen and mixes up a little breakfast of Bacon Pancakes. The recipe is brilliant in its simplicity, as Jake reveals with this memorable lyric:

Take some bacon and I’ll put it in a pancake …”

If Jake had stopped there, he would have gone down as one awesome cartoon chef in the cartoon chef record books. But instead he upped his cooking game in “Time Sandwich” (episode 33, season five), when Jake receives a little instruction from the realm of creation and conceives a sandwich that would humble even Dagwood Bumstead.

After watching this episode (still one of my favorites), I thought about trying to recreate this masterpiece myself, but Jake’s Perfect Sandwich is slightly more complex than whipping up a batch of bacon pancakes. First of all, it has an impressive list of ingredients:

• steak prepared sous vide (with rosemary & thyme)
• loaf of bread
• cream cheese
• pickles (from Primso, naturally)
• dill
• diced boiled egg
• bird from the window
• common cucumber
• sliced roma tomatoes
• sweet yellow onion (organic)
• tears for salt
• bacon
• lobster soul

As for how to put all those ingredients together to make a legendary sandwich, take a look at how it’s done:

But let’s be honest here—obtaining some of these ingredients seems quite daunting. Although I don’t really have a problem using my own tears for salt (even if it’s a little weird), snatching a bird from a window in my neighborhood may not be the most health-conscious (or legal) choice. And sadly, I don’t have a line on how to get my hands on a jar of Prismo’s pickles. That said, I can figure out reasonable substitutes to overcome those hurdles—but it’s the lobster soul that proves to be the most elusive ingredient.

Luckily for all of us, Andrew Rea (a/k/a OliverBabish) is a more adventurous chef than I will ever be. Rea recreates all sorts of crazy and fantastic pop culture foods on his Binging with Babish YouTube channel, and he recently spent some time explaining just how to make Jake’s Perfect Adventure Time Sandwich:

His solution to the lobster soul conundrum is nothing short of brilliant, and I now feel inspired to try my hand at making my own version of Jake’s Perfect Adventure Time Sandwich. If nothing else, this is an excellent reason to finally pick up a sous vide cooker.