Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom: Best Recipes - How To Cook, Full Recipe List

Welcome to our list of every recipe to cook in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

If you enjoyed the culinary delights of Breath of the Wild, you're in luck — cooking is back in Tears of the Kingdom. In many ways, cooking up a restorative meal is very simple in these games, but various subtle elements can complicate matters, and while you're often able to predict the outcome of assembling specific ingredients in a pan, it's easy to produce something suspect if you're throwing things in the pot willy-nilly.

In this TOTK recipe guide, we'll cover exactly how to cook, how different ingredients can offer different status effects, and list every recipe in the game.

How To Cook In Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The actual method of cooking in Tears of the Kingdom is identical to how it was in Breath of the Wild. We're still experimenting to test the details and differences, but the basic principle of combining ingredients in a pot is identical.

Enter the Materials tab in your inventory, tap 'A', and select 'Hold', you are able to collect up to five different ingredients. Throw them into one of the many cooking pots found around the kingdom, make sure there's a lit fire beneath, and in a matter of moments you'll have a cooked meal.

You can also make use of single-use Zonai cooking pots when you're out in the field and need to whip up a meal.

Alternatively, you can roast individual items by lighting a fire and dropping the food onto it. It will burst into flames, and after a puff of smoke appears a few moments later, you can pick it up again to add a roasted or baked something to your Food inventory. (Be sure to collect your food promptly once cooked, though, as it will start burning and disappear if you don't.)

Roasted meals are generally less restorative, but better than eating raw ingredients.

There are well over 200 different recipes to cook in Tears of the Kingdom, from simple roasted fish and baked apples to fruity cocktails and more complicated delights.

Why Is Cooking Important?

Simply put, preparing and consuming meals offers a range of benefits, the most important of which is restoring health.

Different meals have different nutritional values. Indeed, it's possible to eat many things 'raw', although their restorative properties will increase many times by combining and cooking them in a pot.

Meals, drinks, and elixirs can also have a variety of status effects. For example, preparing and eating a spicy meal using Spicy Peppers will grant you resistance to cold — a vital part of surviving one particular early-game area, in fact. Having the correct clothing for the climes you encounter is also essential, but knowing how to cook and apply status effects to your dishes is an invaluable skill.

How Do You Learn Recipes?

To learn a recipe, you have to cook the meal once. This is typically achieved through trial and error, mainly, or by talking to NPCs and finding recipes in the world — or by referencing a guide like the one found below.

Look for recipe posters on the walls in stables and shops, too. These posters show dishes and their constituent ingredients, so make a note and follow the recipe.

Once you've cooked a meal, the recipe is saved and can be accessed from your Food submenu or your Materials submenu. Select any item and highlight 'Select for recipe' and you'll see a list of the recipes you've discovered that use that ingredient. Press 'A' again to hold the ingredients required (if you have them), and you're ready to cook.

Status Effect Ingredient List

Dishes with the following names indicate the status effects they bestow when eaten:

• Dark - Gloom resistance
• Electro - Shock resistance
  
• Enduring - Adds stamina
• Energizing - Restores stamina
• Fireproof - Fire resistance
• Hasty - Speed up
• Hearty - 1-5 Extra Hearts
• Icy/Chilly - Heat resistance
• Mighty - Attack up
• Sneaky - Stealth up
• Spicy - Cold resistance
• Sticky - Grip up
• Sunny - Heals Gloom damage
• Tough - Defence up

Recipes Can Be Altered For Different Effects, So Experiment!

One important thing to note is that altering the ingredients or the amount of a certain ingredient can change the effect of the meal.

For example, cooking a Spicy Pepper, a piece of Raw Meat, and a Stamella Mushroom will create a Pepper Steak good for restoring four hearts.

Substituting the meat for a piece of Prime Meat and adding a couple more Peppers produces the same dish but with increased restorative properties (seven hearts).

Throwing Raw Meat, an Acorn, a Skyshroom, and a Spicy Pepper together will create a Pepper Steak that restores four-and-a-half hearts, but also grants you 4 minutes 20 seconds of Cold Resistance.

There are far too many combinations to list them all here, although your personal recipe list (go to the Food tab and hit 'X' to find it) keeps a record of all recipe history, so make sure to reference that if you've created something extra special and you want to recreate it.

Best Recipes

See below for a full list of TOTK recipes, but here are some quick and easy meals to cook that will help you, especially in the early game:

Pepper Seafood

Ingredients: 1x Fish, 1x Skyshroom, 3x Spicy Peppers

This will restore five-and-a-half hearts but, more importantly, you'll also get eight-and-a-half minutes of Cold resistance — invaluable if you're navigating the Great Sky Island in the tutorial section.

Bright Fish Skewer

Ingredients: Glowing Cave Fish (the more fish, the better)

This will restore a bunch of hearts, but also makes Link glow in dark spaces — perfect for exploring the Depths without constantly firing Blightbloom Seeds. The more fish, the longer you'll glow.

Sunny Fried Wild Greens

Ingredients: 1x Sundelion, 2x Herb

If you're keen on going down to the Depths, you'll need a way to cure gloom, which reduces your maximum hearts temporarily. This recipe will restore four hearts, but not only that, it'll restore 3 hearts of gloom damage.

Mighty Meat And Mushroom Skewer

Ingredients: 1x Meat, 1x Mushroom, 1x Mighty Thistle

Tackling a strong enemy? Why not eat some strength-boosting food? This simple recipe will restore five hearts and give Link an attack bonus for 1 minute and 50 seconds. Add more thistles for a longer boost.

Energizing Steamed Fruit

Ingredients: 2x Apple, 2x Stambulb

Apples will be abundant in the early hours of the game, and Stambulbs are available on most of the sky islands, including the Great Sky Island. Cook with these to restore some hearts and restore stamina — perfect for those long gliding sessions from the sky.

Sneaky Elixir

Ingredients: 1x Sunset Firefly, 1x Monster Part

With the return of sneakstrikes, you might want to abuse your power even further by whipping up a quick Sneaky Elixir. Sunset Fireflies are everywhere in the evening, and if you grab one, cook it with monster parts for a 3 minutes and 40 seconds increase in your stealth.

Sticky Elixir

Ingredients: 1x Sticky Frog/Sticky Lizard, 1x Monster Part

A new elixir in Tears of the Kingdom, this potion will help you climb wet walls. It's not perfect, but it'll make you slip less, meaning you can be even more resolute about climbing to the very top of those rainy regions.

Bright Elixir

Ingredients: Deep Firefly, 1x Monster Part

Gives you a nice glow effect for when you're in the deepest darkest reaches of the Depths.

Hearty Elixir

Ingredients: Hearty Lizard, Monster Parts

An essential one for restoring those all-important hearts, you can make super-charged versions of this health replenisher by adding more parts and lizards to the mix!

Enduring Elixir

Ingredients: Tireless Lizard, Monster Parts

Last longer with this elixir which replenishes and extends your stamina so you can run, fight, climb and paraglide like a boss.

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Full Recipe List

Here is a full list of every recipe in Tears of the Kingdom. As we mentioned above, there are far too many to list every possible permutation of each recipe, but here's a list of the basics.

Note. This is a work in progress. We'll be adding more recipes in the coming days as we discover them, so please bear with us as we flesh this out!

You'll find every recipe listed by number, name, ingredients (for the base recipe) and any status effect eating it bestows. If no effect is listed, it will simply restore a portion of your health. Click on the headers to order alphabetically.

For more help on your journey across Hyrule, check out our full Tears of the Kingdom walkthrough for more hints, tips, tricks, and maps.