One of the biggest departures The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has made from other games in the series's storied history is the move away from finding hearts to replenish your health; instead, this time around Link will need to don his chef's hat and craft some delicacies if he is to survive Calamity Ganon's onslaught.
With that in mind we've put together this exhaustive (and now freshly updated) guide which aims to take the effort out of cooking meals in the wilds of Hyrule, and we've also included some of our favourite recipes.
On this page: Zelda: Breath Of The Wild: Best Recipes And How To Cook Food
How To Cook In Breath of the Wild
Like real cooking, ingredients are key and one wrong thing can totally change the impact of a dish. We here at Nintendo Life have taken a crash course in the culinary arts and are going to share what we have learned about Hylian cuisine with you, dear reader.
To cook dishes which involve more than on ingredient, you'll need to find a cooking pot with a fire underneath it - these are often located at the many stables dotted around Hyrule. If you're just looking to cook individual ingredients to unlock their potential, you can use a normal campfire or alternatively any location in the game where the temperature is especially high - Death Mountain and Gerudo Desert being two examples. Just drop the ingredient on the floor and it will cook.
There are quite a few dishes you can make in Breath of the Wild - well over 100, not counting variations on the same dish. Those variations, however, are the most critical component of making of a successful dish, as they alter greatly the effect that meal has on our Hylian hero.
Most ingredients are neutral, meaning they offer no effects beyond restoring a heart or two when raw or more when cooked. What you really want to keep an eye on is the adjective preceding an ingredient's name, as it will give you insight as to what the ingredient will add to a completed dish. Below is a list of each adjective and what its effect on your cuisine.
Ingredient Categories and Status Effects
- Chilly/Heat resistance
- Electro/Shock resistance
- Enduring/Extra stamina
- Energizing/Restores stamina
- Fireproof/Fire resistance
- Hasty/Speed up
- Hearty/Full Recovery & 1-5 Extra Hearts
- Mighty/Attack up
- Sneaky/Stealth up
- Spicy/Cold resistance
- Tough/Defense up
It's important to note you can only add one status effect to your dish, so mixing ingredients with different categories will not do you any favours. You can, however, increase the potency of your ingredients by doubling up on ingredients of the same type. For instance, If you create an energizing risotto with one Stamella Shroom, you may get half of your stamina back; with two, that effect will double. Ingredients won't always spell out which category they belong to, but they'll give you a good idea.
How To Cook Successful Dishes In Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
Occasionally while cooking, a special jingle will play and Link will appear especially excited about the resultant dish, which is usually of higher quality than the average fare. These dishes will have a random effect applied to them, though the effect can only be one of the following five:
- Level of effect raised by one
- An extra yellow heart
- Restoration of three extra hearts
- Effect duration increased by five minutes
- An extra two-fifths of your stamina wheel being added or restored (yellow or green)
These effects seem to be applied at random, but there are actually ways to guarantee a successful dish. The first (and easiest) is to prepare your dishes during a Blood Moon. That's right, any dishes cooked while the Blood Moon is visible in the sky will be successful and have one of the five random boosts above applied to them.
If you can't wait for a Blood Moon, however, you can use certain items as part of your recipe to guarantee their success as well. If you use any dragon parts or a star gem as part of a recipe, that recipe will also be a guaranteed success, though we don't recommend this method as both dragon parts and star gems are incredibly hard to come by and should be used for much more important tasks.
Best Recipes
Knowing how to cook is one thing, but having the best recipes is quite another. We've compiled a list of some of our favourite dishes from the game to save you the bother of experimentation.
Baked Fruit
Ingredients: Any fruit
This one doesn't give you a massive health boost, but the abundance of fruit in the game makes it a quick and easy option. If you want to do this fast then simply fast-travel to Death Mountain and dump all of your fruit on the floor - it will cook in the heat.
Spicy Mushroom Skewer
Ingredients: 5x Sunshroom
This one gives you mid-level cold resistance for a whopping 12 and a half minutes. Sunshrooms are pretty common so you can stockpile plenty of this for when you're racing around snowy locations.
Chilly Mushroom Skewer
Ingredients: 5x Chillshroom
This one is like the Spicy Skewer, but in reverse - it cools you down in hot locations for 12 and half minutes.
Hasty Steamed Fruit
Ingredients: 2x Fleet Lotus Seeds, 3x Swift Violet
If you find that Link just isn't moving fast enough for your liking then this is the dish for you. It gives you a significant boost not only on foot, but when climbing, too. This one is especially handy for when you're trying to activate all of the towers with a small stamina wheel.
Sneaky Steamed Fish
Ingredients: 2x Silent Shroom, 2x Silent Princess, 1x Stealthfin Trout
This dish will give you increased stealth for 10 whole minutes, giving you more than enough time to sneak into enemy encampments and kill all of the monsters inside.
Hearty Mushroom Skewer
Ingredients: 5x Big Hearty Truffles
If you haven't unlocked enough heart containers to take down some of the game's tougher enemies then you might want to try this one for size. You'll get 20 temporary hearts to add to your existing total.
Tough Steamed Fish
Ingredients: 3x Armoranth, 2x Armoured Porgy
Finding that you're getting beaten down pretty comprehensively by the baddies of Hyrule? You need to bolster your defense, pal - and this is the dish to do it. Amaranth is as common as muck beneath Tarrey Town, and Armoured Porgys aren't hard to find either, making this the ideal way to toughen yourself up for those key battles.
Mighty Simmered Fruit
Ingredients: 5x Mighty Bananas
This dish grants a high attack boost, and Mighty Bananas are easy to find in Faron. Twin this dish with Ancient weapon and armour, and you can take down Guardians in double-quick time.
Enduring Mushroom Skewer
Ingredients: 1x Endura Shroom
This one seems like a waste of time, as all it does is overfill your stamina by a tiny amount. However, it also totally refills your stamina gauge at the same time, making it the idea solution to all of your swimming, climbing and paragliding needs.
And Finally, The Best Recipe In The Entire Game...
Hearty Fried Wild Greens
Ingredients: 1x Hearty Radish
This has to rank as one of the most stupidly overpowered recipes in the game. All you need is one Hearty Radish and you'll have a dish which totally refills your health. It also gives you additional temporary hearts, too. Once you know this, there's little point in bothering with any other healing dishes, to be honest.
How To Make Elixirs
Elixirs are an important part of survival in Breath of the Wild as well; think of them as potions with very targeted purposes. To make an elixir all you need is a monster part and an animal or insect. For instance, to make a Hasty Elixir you would combine a Hot-Footed Frog with any monster part, such as a Bokoblin Horn. Animals fall into the same categories as other ingredients, though the effects of a hearty elixir are different than those of hearty food, as elixirs don't restore health.
This is part of our Zelda Breath of the Wild walkthrough, which includes All Shrine Locations And Maps and help with specific shrines, including the Keo Ruug Shrine Puzzle Solution, Mirro Shaz Shrine Puzzle Solution, Sha Warvo Shrine Solution, Shae Loya Shrine Puzzle Solution, Eventide Island - How To Beat The Hardest Shrine Quest, and Shee Vaneer And Shee Venath Shrine Answers and Solutions.
If you're just starting out, Getting Started And Beginner Tips will be useful. We also have BOTW guides to help you with the Tarrey Town Quest, how to get equipment such as the Hylian Shield, the Master Sword, the Green Tunic, and the Radiant Set, plus advice on the Best Clothing And Armour Sets and How To Find Every Item in the Master Trials DLC. We can help you find key places such as All Captured Memory Locations, All Great Fairy Fountain Locations, and Where to find The Lord of the Mountain, too.
If you're looking for general advice on various topics, you might want to check out the Best Recipes And How To Cook Food, How To Farm Star Fragments, How To Farm Dragon Parts, How To Defeat Guardians, How To Shield Surf Like A Pro, and How To Get Unlimited Korok Seeds. And if you're wondering what amiibos work with the game, our guide to All amiibo Unlocks lists them all.
Comments 75
The Master Chef!
Chef of the Wild!
Thanks for this. I was just about getting the hang of cooking but still needed a few things clearing up.
I've really only just begun but I'm already a chef of champions.
Had most of these already in the bag.
Head Chef, Dubious Master!
Thanks for this overview!
@Nintendolife @Steve_Bowling You say that you can only make dishes with 'one effect', but I don't think that's true is it?
I have several times made the same dish, but added an ingredient, like say, Chilli, to both increase hearts and give a timed boost to cold resistance. Similarly, I can increase haste and replenish stamina?
Isn't this against what you're saying?
@FTL We're talking about status effects here, not restored stamina / health.
The easiest and cheapest way to replenish all hearts is to mix one apple or fruit or piece of meat with a food item that increases max hearts. You are always guaranteed full recovery every time.
I've found that if you pick the same three items but in different orders you get different amount of hearts or different lenght of buff.
Example,
Mushroom, Apple, acorn = 1 heart
Apple, acorn, mushroom = 1.5 hearts
Acorn, mushroom, apple = 2 hearts
Am I to assume being struck by lightning cooks my apples as well?
Interesting....
Just like cooking in Fantasy Life 3DS.
@Lord - Interesting, I've wondered why the same dish can yield different amounts of hearts. Its a bit frustrating to not only pick the right ingredients, but also the right selection order to maximize a dish. Most basic ingredients seem to be plentiful though.
I've managed to make a veggie dish that restores 21 hearts. Still haven't used it yet though.
I do think they should have a seperare category that lists all the meals you've made thus far - I know you can look at a recipe, but the meal has to be in your inventory.
@Damo Cool no prob, makes sense.
If you use the flaming arrows when hunting, then your meat is already cooked. That made me chuckle!
@UnseatingKDawg The screenshot facility is handy for this!
I just chuck a load of stuff and hope for the best.
Nothing quite like finding enough heart adding foods to whip up a dish that adds 24 yellow hearts to your bar...
@Skunkfish: You know, I didn't even think of that. And I have more than enough space with my micro SD card. Thanks for the tip!
The cooking (and finding rupees) is the one thing that confounds me in this game. I end up hoarding all my ingredients and never making things because think I'll need the ingredients for something important later. I've been making a bunch of basic dishes, but I'm not bold enough to attempt making elixers for special travel or battle or anything at this stage of the game! I think it's going to be dozens of hours of just scaveging things in the forest just to make handfuls of food and low level effects before I can even think of experimenting with the more unique items I have less than 12 or so of.
I've made a few dishes that have added as much as 17 extra hearts.
so I still don't understand what the little number on the first heart of a dish means. so some dishes show 3 hearts but with a little 3 or 5 on the first heart. what does that mean?
What's the difference between meals and elixirs? I've been able to get the same effects from both.
@Kalmaro no difference, just that meals are made from food and elixirs from monster parts and critters
@manu0 Thought so.
@manu0 Instead of drawing lots of hearts, the one with the number represents that many hearts, so a 5 heart plus 3 more hearts will give you 8 hearts.
You can look at the top left health meter while choosing a meal and it will show you the effect you will get.
If, in this case, you have a limit of less than 8 hearts then the health meter will just fill up.
So far the best thing I've cooked was a meal that gave back thirteen hearts and gave two and a fifth extra stamina wheels. I'm not sure how I did it but I did get that extra little jingle on it so it was pretty exciting. I have five hearts right now so... No real reason to eat it just yet.
Little question.
Can I make Failed Dish like Harvest Moon if you put wrong ingredients ?
Just curious...
Yep, useful guides. The cooking can get stale to be honest, considering the fact that you need ten meals to traverse a region and up to twenty to prepare for any significant battle.
I'd love the ability to cook a recipe for ten times for instance.
Spoiler screenshot!?!? Wtf!?!
@MrYuzhai I don't see any spoilers in any of those screenshots.
Elixirs don't restore health?!! I've made a health potion before. :-/
@Anti-Matter Yep, I got a something I think was called "barely edible" and it was pixelated as opposed to a full color picture of the dish. I had mixed too many cooking parts with elixirs bits
@Kit Indeed, adding a cooking part or two can add hearts to elixirs. I use mushrooms in my elixirs all the time. Seems like an obvious ingredient in potions
Also, radishes are your best friend
@TheLobster if you select a meal you cooked you can check out the recipe. Really helpful when people give you meals or elixirs and you're not sure how to make them.
FYI, "Hearty" ingredients all share that "full recovery" property.
Like Hearty Lizards with any monster part.
Hearty radish and Prime meat are great.
Also, 3 bananas and 2 apples during a red moon gets you 5 hearts and more importantly a 3:30 big attack boost(not always massive, sometimes it's medium, so reset and try again). Great for boss fights.
It's also a great way to earn rupees. Selling dishes will often net you more than selling the individual items that compose the dish.
I can't for the life of me think why Nintendo didn't think to make a recipe book in the game that you could fill in. It would encourage experimentation to discover new recipes instead of resorting to the same dishes you know work. Plus it would make cooking much easier and faster, if you could select a recipe and if you have the ingredients it put them in your hands automatically. They have the Hyrule Compendium, it could have been a part of that. Something else for completionists to fill in. It could have even been like Dragon Quest where you find recipes lying around towns and you can then cook up if you have the ingredients.
Cooking is a great idea on the surface, but I'm sorry to say for me it's one of the least enjoyable parts of the game. It just takes too long to dig through your ingredients and cook each dish separately, especially when you don't have any record of what works and what doesn't besides memory.
Also I'm pretty sure elixirs do restore health. Throw a fairy into the pot by itself (I'm a monster, I know) and you'll get an elixir that restores more hearts than before cooking it.
Use 5 Ironshrooms on the boss fights very helpful
@Baker1000: You can click on your baked dishes and see the recipe.
@bimmy-lee
For things like excess fireflies and hightail lizards, it's great. Just one critter to four monster parts, as you shouldn't be any sort of monster parts at all.
The worth of the meal in rupees is decided by the individual ingredients, not the properties of the meal. So even if you get a critical success that made a bonus effect stronger or something it's not more valuable.
Find yourself some hearty durian and cook them three at a time, it will give you dishes with lots of hearts, that can be sold for over 100 rupees each.
Just don't use the radishes, if they make it too easy. For shame, though- no recipes involving KFC? (Kentucky Fried Cuckoo)
@RupeeClock - Hmmm, I've seen just that. For example, a meat skewer offering more hearts, or higher tier/longer status effects will net more rupees. Am I misunderstanding you? Maybe a difference in the vendors purchasing the dish?
@Baker1000 How could you!? Every day, thousands of fairies are slaughtered to make elixirs. Entire families are cruelly and callously wiped out to become magical slush. The truth is, fairies can suffer too. Be kind, become a fairy vegan.
That Hearty Radish recipe is a good thing to know. Wouldn't recommend wasting the meat you get from wildlife for cooking anyway.
A Meat Skewer made from Gourmet Meat sells for 500 rupees and the same one made from Prime Meat sells for 200 rupees, making wild life hunting a great way of racking up cash fast!
You should be able to figure out the worth of each ingredient by cooking them by themselves (provided they don't make dubious or rock-hard meals), wouldn't surprise me if someone already figured it out.
That gourmet meat apparently sells for 500 when cooked is great, is that for a single piece of 5 pieces skewered?
Think if you add some nuts to an elixir recipe it will result in heart restorative effect as well.
Hearty Durian X5= full health+20 hearts. Problem is, you can't go past 30 hearts, I believe. That means, even if you have 20 hearts, you'll only get 8-10 hearts out of the expected 20 from your X5 Hearty Durian meal.
Adding nuts to your elixir will restore health, I believe.
@H1B1Esquire Durian aka the King of Fruit is OP hahaha.
Honestly I've started using elixirs for stats and keep my food bonus free. Keeps it clean and I din't overwrite stat bonuses to keep hearts up.
Also, just fire roasting meats, fish, fruit, etc. means you can stack them in inventory, and since there's no fullness meter ala Yakuza or Muramasa you can eat as much as you need mid-fight.
Didn't know about the blood moon, that's really cool.
I spot with my little eye a typo
"To cook dishes which involve more than on ingredient"
That's definitely supposed to be
"To cook dishes which involve more than one ingredient"
@PlywoodStick: What about Cucco-fried Cucco? Granted, with how these birds act in the Zelda universe, this may become a Hylian installment of The Most Dangerous Game.
That hearty radish dish is news to me! I don't know if I will use it though since I usually only make stuff in game that I would enjoy in real life.
By the way, if your radish supply is low, a durian and a hylian shroom is awesome too.
@PlywoodStick It's a must for Kurisumasu!
@blackknight77
Or 4 ironshrooms and a monster extract. Hope to be lucky and see what you get.
My only problem with the cooking is that it is too limited. 1 Apple/Hylian Shroom/Palm Fruit/etc. + Anything with the name "Hearty" in it for healing... you just keep making the same thing over and over again. Replace Hearty with Endura for stamina, and with clothing, there is no need for other stuff really.
I understand this is the first time they have attempted it, but hopefully they will improve on the system in future titles.
@TheLZdragon
Or just one hearty item by itself. No matter what, it will always give you full recovery.
very good video. made me realize i can have a thousand hearts' worth of seared prime steak taking up just one slot.
Thank the Golden Godesses for Amiibo and Animal Crossing cards and their ingredients sent from heaven.
"Cook" and "Chef" are not interchangeable. A cook, well, COOKS. A chef knows his poop so well all he is techinically required to do is yell and point out when you mess up. A cook may run the kitchen but the Chef runs the restaurant.
@PlywoodStick - But... has anyone ever hunted cuckoo and survived?
@Fandabidozi
Eh, what ?
Animal Crossing Amiibo cards are compatible with Zelda Breath of the Wild ??
What items from those cards ?
@bluedogrulez yeah I know, and it's really the bare minimum they could have given us. I want something that records what you have cooked and gives you a shortcut to cook it again rather than toggle through all the ingredients you have. It's really not asking for much.
@PlywoodStick Had to be done! And I've found that adding chu chu jelly actually lessens the recovery potential. Pure fairy elixir is the way forward.
Big hearty truffles are harder to find/farm than hearty durians. Just farm those and cook them the same way. They fill up all your hearts and give you a 20 yellow heart bonus too. 21 hearts during a Blood Moon even.
I would argue that hearty durians are even better. Cooking just ONE of them gives you a full recovery + 4 yellow hearts. Each additional durian added adds an additional 4 hearts. They are super easy to get too.
1. Warp to Faron Tower
2. Glide to nearby cliff and collect durians
3.??????
4.Profit
botw just got a new patch that fixes the frame rate issues.
Very usefull !! Thanks XD
I loooove the cooking in BOTW. The only wish I have is that there would be a cook book in it to save recipes ;_;
It's interesting how everyone associates the op one cooked Hearty item with a different ingredient. For me it was the durian, because I found it out with the durian rather than the hearty radish. (And spiky fruit ofc!)
I was surprised to find out the jingle was random. For the longest time I thought it was whenever I had the recipe perfectly right.
@Baker1000 : that would be handy. One click and done.
@bluedogrulez right! Maybe it's something they could patch in (I doubt they will) but right now cooking is too tedious to be enjoyable.
Several days ago I'm purchased Switch Lite dark blue & just playing a Fortnite & demo games. Today I'm purchased TLOZ BOTW (have sales at $39.99) and already 4 hours in the game (I like to take my time searching & collecting everything). Right now already completed 4 shrine and I need to go seeing old man in the place that 4 shrine line crossing before getting my paragliding 🧡
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