How to Cook Food | Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BotW)

This guide will show you how to cook food in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BotW). Learn the benefits of cooking, as well as how to find a pot and get started cooking right away!

Benefits of Cooking Foods

Recover Link's hearts

Cooking up foods is one of the best ways to recover hearts. Cooking food is very important, especially when exploring new areas and battling high-level monsters in the game. Be sure to stock up some food before going on an adventure!

Unlike other Zelda games, enemies don't drop hearts when defeated, so keeping food on you will allow you to heal whenever you need.

Gain special buffs

Cooking up foods in the game will provide you with a variety of powerful and useful buffs, some of which may be very helpful for traversing certain areas. The effect of each cooked food will vary depending on the ingredients you will use, and the method you used to cook it.

Buffs Obtained Via Cooking

Restore more hearts

Eating up cooked foods restores more hearts compared to eating the ingredients raw. You will need to cook more food when you manage to increase your heart to recover faster and efficiently.

How to Cook Food

Find a Cooking Pot

This is the best way to cook a food, as it provides stronger effects. To cook food using a Cooking Pot, follow the steps below.

1. Go to the Materials screen in the Inventory and hold the ingredient(s) you will use.
2. Look for a Cooking Pot (it needs to be litーcan be done via a fire arrow or weapon with fire, etc.).
3. Get near the Cooking Pot, press A button and it will automatically be cooked.
4. The result will be displayed after cooking, and you can check it manually on your Food tab in the Inventory.

List of All Recipes

Placing Ingredients Near a Fire

Cooking food using a fire is the most basic way to cook a food in the game. It won't provide the same effects as using a pot, but it is still better than eating ingredients raw. Follow the steps below to see how it works.

1. Go to the Materials screen in the inventory and hold the ingredients you will use.
2. Look for any fire source (burning grass, campfire, cooking pot, etc.).
3. Drop the ingredients near the fire. There will be an indication where your ingredients will drop.
4. Take the food. You can check the result by checking Food tab under Inventory Menu.

Note: There are some ingredients that cannot be cooked using this method.

Freezing an Ingredient

Another way to cook a food is by freezing ingredients. The steps below show how it works.

1. Go to the Materials screen in the inventory and hold the ingredients you will use.
2. Look for any Ice source (icy regions or ice weapons).
3. If you are using an ice weapon, attack the food and it will be frozen. And if you are in an icy region, drop it on the ground and wait for it to freeze.
4. Take the food. You can check the result by checking Food tab under Inventory Menu.

Note: Only meats and fish can be cooked using this method.

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