Crafting: Meals

Cooking in Breath of the Wild is an essential mechanic for survival, exploration, and overcoming challenging encounters. Meals restore Link's hearts, provide temporary stat boosts, and can even grant resistances to environmental hazards. Mastering the art of the culinary arts will significantly enhance your journey across Hyrule.

The Basics of Cooking

To cook, you'll need two things: ingredients and a cooking pot. Cooking pots are found throughout Hyrule, often near stables, villages, and sometimes even in enemy camps. Look for a large, black pot with a fire underneath it. If the fire is out, you can light it with a Flameblade, a Fire Arrow, or by dropping a piece of Flint next to it and striking it with a metal weapon.

Gather Ingredients: Explore the world! Chop down trees for Wood, hunt animals for meat (e.g., Raw Meat, Raw Bird Drumstick), forage for mushrooms (e.g., Hylian Shroom, Stamella Shroom), and pick fruits (e.g., Apple, Wildberry). Keep an eye out for glowing plants or unique creatures, as these often provide special effects.
Access Your Inventory: Open your inventory by pressing the '+' button. Navigate to the 'Materials' tab.
Select Ingredients: Choose up to five ingredients you wish to cook. Select an item and choose 'Hold' from the menu. Repeat for up to four more items.
Approach the Pot: With your selected ingredients in hand, stand next to a lit cooking pot.
Cook: Press the 'A' button when prompted to 'Cook'. Link will toss the ingredients into the pot, and after a brief animation, your meal will be ready!

Pro-Tip: You can also cook a single ingredient by holding it and dropping it into a cooking pot. This is useful for quickly preparing a single Hearty Radish for a quick full heal + temporary hearts, or a Spicy Pepper for cold resistance.

Understanding Meal Effects

Meals provide various benefits. The primary benefit is heart restoration, but many ingredients also offer secondary effects:

Hearty: Grants temporary bonus hearts (e.g., Hearty Radish, Big Hearty Radish, Hearty Truffle, Big Hearty Truffle, Hearty Bass, Hearty Salmon).
Enduring: Restores stamina and grants temporary bonus stamina (e.g., Endura Shroom, Endura Carrot).
Energizing: Restores stamina (e.g., Stamella Shroom, Staminoka Bass).
Spicy: Grants cold resistance (e.g., Spicy Pepper, Sizzlefin Trout).
Chilly: Grants heat resistance (e.g., Chillshroom, Chillfin Trout).
Electro: Grants shock resistance (e.g., Voltfruit, Electric Safflina).
Sneaky: Increases stealth (e.g., Silent Shroom, Sneaky River Snail).
Mighty: Increases attack power (e.g., Mighty Thistle, Mighty Bananas, Bladed Rhino Beetle).
Tough: Increases defense (e.g., Armored Porgy, Fortified Pumpkin).

Important: You can only have one special effect active at a time. If you eat a meal with cold resistance and then one with attack up, the attack up effect will overwrite the cold resistance. However, heart restoration and stamina restoration stack with any active effect.

Strategic Cooking for Early Game

In the early game, especially on the Great Plateau, focus on these recipes:

Hearty Mushroom Skewer: Combine 1x Hearty Radish (found near the Temple of Time) with any other mushroom. This provides a full heal and bonus hearts, invaluable for tough fights.
Spicy Meat and Seafood Fry: Use 1x Spicy Pepper (abundant on the Great Plateau) and 1x Raw Meat (from Boars) or 1x Hyrule Bass (from ponds). This grants cold resistance, crucial for exploring the snowy areas of the Great Plateau.
Energizing Mushroom Skewer: Combine 1x Stamella Shroom (found in forests) with any other mushroom. This will restore a portion of your stamina wheel, helpful for climbing and gliding.
Simmered Fruit: Simply cook 5x Apples. This is a basic, easy-to-make healing item that restores a decent amount of hearts. Apples are everywhere!

Advanced Cooking Tips

Elixirs vs. Meals: Elixirs are made by combining a monster part with an insect or critter (e.g., Lizalfos Tail + Fireproof Lizard for Fireproof Elixir). They provide longer-lasting status effects but no heart restoration. Meals are generally better for healing and shorter, potent buffs.
"Critical Success" Cooking: Occasionally, when cooking, you'll hear a special sound effect and see a sparkle. This indicates a "critical success," which boosts the meal's effects (more hearts, longer buff duration, or higher buff level). Cooking during a Blood Moon increases the chance of a critical success!
Dubious Food & Rock-Hard Food: If you combine incompatible ingredients (e.g., monster parts with food ingredients) or too many ingredients that cancel each other out, you'll get Dubious Food. If you cook a single mineral (like a Rock Salt), you'll get Rock-Hard Food. Both are terrible for healing, so avoid them!
Selling Meals: Cooked meals often sell for more than their raw ingredients. If you're short on Rupees, cooking up some simple dishes like Meat Skewers (5x Raw Meat) or Mushroom Skewers (5x Hylian Shroom) can be a good way to earn cash.

Experiment with different combinations! The joy of cooking in Breath of the Wild lies in discovering new recipes and finding what works best for your playstyle and current challenges.