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| High Altitude Cooking Instructions |
 Title text: 1,300,000-1,400,000 ft: Ask a crew member to show you how to use the ISS food warmer. |
Explanation
At higher altitudes, cooking experiences extra complications. This was previously mentioned in 2153: Effects of High Altitude. This comic imagines food preparation instructions with additional caveats specifically for high-altitude cooking.
While the first two sections are reasonable accommodations, the instructions - as is typical for xkcd - soon veer into absurdity. At an altitude of 250,000 ft (approximately 76,200 meters), the instructions assume the user is partaking in some kind of controlled spaceflight. The "cooking instructions", therefore, are instead instructions for reentry; basically, telling the user "You can wait until you get home".
The title text goes a step further and assumes that the user is in orbit - specifically, on the International Space Station. Anyone on an orbiting space station is presumably going to be on that space station for an extended period, so they cannot wait until after they return to Earth for a meal, so the "cooking instructions" simply direct the user to someone who can show them how to use the on-board facilities.
In 2022, spaceman extraordinaire Scott Manley uploaded a rigorously scientific presentation titled Can You Cook a Turkey by Dropping It From Space?. A similar question was discussed in the What if blog's 28th post, "Steak Drop".
Transcript
[Two notes are attached to a thin grey board, only the bottom of which is visible and slightly slanted in the frame.]
[The higher note, mostly cut off:]
- [...] remove from the [...] for 3 minutes before serving.
[The lower note:]
- High altitude cooking instructions
- 3,500-6,500 ft: Add 1/2 cup water, increase cook time to 12 minutes
- 6,500-9,500 ft: Add 1 1/4 cups water, increase cook time to 18 minutes
- 250,000-450,000 ft: Orient reentry vehicle for aerodynamic stability. Deploy parachutes at 10,000 ft. Descend, keeping crew capsule tightly covered, for 3-4 minutes. After splashdown, follow sea level cooking instructions.
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