You’ll need to learn how to cook in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom if you want to survive the wilds. There are lots of hard-hitting enemies and tough environments, but having good meals will help you overcome any challenge. Keep reading to learn how to cook, as well as some of the best early-game recipes and ingredients for you to use.
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Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – How to cook a meal
Learning to cook in Tears of the Kingdom is quite simple, but you need a few things first.
To start, you need a cooking pot. These are scattered all over Hyrule, but you can also use a Zonai Capsule to deploy one from your inventory if you have the ability. If not, you’ll just need to find a cooking pot – they’re on Great Sky Island, in Lookout Landing, and all over the rest of the game.
Next, you need to set the cooking pot alight to be able to cook your food. You can do this by dropping flint and wood next to the pot and striking either with a metal weapon.
You can also attach fire fruit to an arrow and shoot it. However, many cooking pots you’ll find will already be lit, so you don’t always need to do this.
When your pot is hot, go into your inventory and go to “Materials”. Click on a food ingredient – not all materials can be cooked, but things like meat, mushrooms, herbs or fruit can be.
Select “Hold”, and choose up to five items to carry. Back out of the menu and drop the items in the cooking pot with A. Watch the cooking pot work its magic and your meal will be ready for consumption!
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Best recipes and ingredients
Now you know how to cook, let’s take a look at some good early-game recipes. These recipes are all available to you quite early on in Tears of the Kingdom, as long as you can find the ingredients in the wild.
There are many helpful recipes with different effects in Tears of the Kingdom, but one of the best is the “Hearty” effect that gives you bonus hearts in addition to fully healing you. This is ideal for tough boss fights. You can obtain this effect by cooking a Hearty Truffle, ideally with some raw meat or Hylian Shrooms.
Another great recipe is “Spicy”, which can be added to a meal by including Spicy Peppers in the recipe. This will give you warmth in cold areas, and allow you to traverse those areas without cold-resistant gear.
If you want to restore stamina as well as health, you should cook Stamella Shrooms or Stambulbs. You can also get higher attack by cooking Mighty Thistles or Bananas.
Adding more items to one recipe will increase the amount of hearts a meal restores. Also, adding more of an ingredient with an effect will increase the potency of that effect.
There are all kinds of recipes to try, and ingredients are all over Tears of the Kingdom. Try different combinations to see what kinds of effects you can uncover!
For more The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom guides, keep reading The Games Cabin.