Phrasemaker

Best Recipes in Tears of the Kingdom

Branden Zavaleta
5–8 minutes

For the Master Chef with the Master Sword.

One of the great pleasures in Tears of the Kingdom is being able to survive almost anything. The second you’re squished by a Hinox club, you can pause, enjoy a bushel of apples from your backpack, then rejoin the fight at full health.

But did you know there’s a better way to heal? Yep, knowing how to cook in ToTk not only saves Link the trouble of speed-eating hundreds of mushrooms, it gives him the chance to enjoy delicious meals with bonus effects too. 

Still, there’s a big difference between knowing how to make a baked apple and making Salmon Meuniere.

So, to save you from cooking up dubious stews, here are The Best Recipes in Tears of the Kingdom:

Sauteed Peppers

Recipe ingredients: Five Spicy Peppers.

Effect: Long-lasting, low-level cold resistance. 

Going somewhere snowy? Maybe you’ve thrown a Spicy Pepper in a plain dish for the cold resistance effect. But if staying warm is your goal, you can skip the chicken and rice, and just throw five peppers in a pot. It might just taste like hell, but the upside is twelve minutes of warmth, and unless you’re going deep into the frozen wastes, the low-level effect will be enough to stop Link’s teeth from chattering.

Enduring Fried Wild Greens

Recipe ingredients: One Endura Carrot or Endura Shroom

Effect: Refills all stamina, and add bonus stamina

If Link gets too tired he’ll just give up. No matter if he’s dangling over certain death or gliding above the clouds, he’ll simply let go. So having a stamina boost in your back pocket for moments like these are lifesavers. The very best stamina boosts are enduring foods, which completely fill your stamina bar and then some. But you don’t need to cook a full meal for this effect, throw in one Endura ingredient and you’ll get this stamina refill. 

Frozen Cave Fish

Recipe ingredients: Cave Fish, or Hyrule Bass, or Ancient Arowana, or Any Crab

Effect: Grants heat resistance, and heals in a pinch.

If left out in the cold, or hit by a gust of icy wind, all meats will become frozen. It’s far from the best way to treat your meat, but frozen foods always grant a short and minor heat resistance effect, and some will also heal more hearts. It’s frontier food for the wild adventurer. Only crabs, and a couple of fish types will gain bonus hearts, but if you’re out in the cold and can’t start a fire, Link won’t mind crewing on the rock of ice for dinner. 

Hearty Mushroom Skewer

Recipe ingredients: One Hearty Truffle.

Effect: Fully heals Link, and adds a bonus heart.

The hearty family of food is by far the most useful– Hearty Truffles, Radishes, Salmon, Snails– cooking just one of these ingredients will serve a dish so succulent that Link’s health is fully restored with a little bit extra added on the top. So chuck spears at those bright blue bass and blue lizards, greedily sniff out those hearty truffles, pluck the pink flowers of radishes, and fry up those flame-decaled Salmon– Link will thank you for it.

Noble Pursuit

Recipe ingredients: Palm Fruit, Hydromelon, Voltfruit, and Rock Salt

Effect: Four hearts, and a happy Link.

Somehow Link can wood fire a perfect pizza in a flaming wok, but there’s no special effect? Sadly that’s the case for most of his best dishes. Fruitcake, Nutcake, a gorgeous apple pie with a lattice top? No special effects. The most special of these fine foods might be the Noble Pursuit, which you can buy in Gerudo Town after saving the city, or make it yourself. Sure, it does nothing special, but who could deny Link a sweet treat after all the world-saving he’s done?

Dark Rice Ball

Recipe ingredients: Dark Clump, Hylian Rice, Rock Salt

Effect: Adds minor Warding effect.

A Dark Rice Ball looks like it’d give you a stomach ache and worse, but somehow adding a “Dark Clump” to his dinner doesn’t curse Link, it protects him. If you’re braving the depths, buy Dark Clumps from a Bargainer statue, cook up a couple of dark dishes and eat. The Warding effect stops the Gloom from stealing his max health, and is a must-have for early-game depths-diving since you’ll have few hearts to spare.

Seared Gourmet Steak

Recipe ingredients: Gourmet Meat

Effect: Heal up in a pinch.

For a wild man of the woods like Link, having a cooking pot handy isn’t always possible. But cracking some flint and lighting a fire is, so Link can grill his food campfire-style. When you roast your meat and veg without a pot, it’ll be a little well-done and provide less healing, so throwing batches of five on the fire is the best way to do it. And of these baked goods, the best is searing Gourmet Meats. 

Gourmet Meat is hard to come by, but the bonus health is more than any other baked good. So if you see big-game like Water Buffalo, Tabantha Moose, or Honeyvore Bears, hunt them for their meat, and save it for the far reaches of the Hebra Mountain range, or the dark corners of The Depths.

Sunny Deep-Fried Drumstick

Recipe ingredients: Oil Jar, Raw Bird Drumstick, Rock Salt, Sundelion.

Effect: Heals three hearts of Gloom damage.

If you’re wandering among the Depths, and a Gloom Hand has sapped your strength, you’ll either have to cancel your exciting expedition to return to a Lightroot, or the surface– Or just cancel the curse with a Sunny meal. For a Sunny Deep-Fried Drumstick, just pan fry a drumstick in oil, season with rock salt, and garnish with a Sundelion. Wrap it in wax paper and save it for dinner in the Depths, the effect is enlivening.

Hasty Poultry Curry

Recipe ingredients: Two Rushrooms, Hylian Rice, Goron Spice, and a Raw Bird Drumstick

Effect: Grants Haste Effect

Rushrooms are common, eye-catching, and they don’t run away (like Hightail Lizards). They’re perfect for cooking up speed-buffs. Toss one into your delicious meal– here I’ve suggested a delicacy from the Goron region– and take a bite when you’re travelling on foot. 

But if this gourmet sampling isn’t enough speed from your shroom, and you want a high-level Haste effect, go all in on the greens with Fleet-Lotus Seeds, Swift Carrots, Swift Violets, and of course Rushshrooms. The meal makes for a perfect getaway, or high-climbing helper.

Parting Words

So long as you’re not tossing in bugs and monster parts, you’ll be benefiting from your cooking– even when it’s completely unappetising. So it’s worth just tossing anything and everything whenever you happen by a cooking pot.

But knowing the effects you like most means you can watch for those special ingredients that make Link’s life easier and tastier– Endura Carrots, Hearty Truffles, Gourmet Meat.

And there’s one other thing to keep an eye out for: Portable Pots. You can find these Zonai Devices in certain Dispensers (there are two on Great Sky Island) to cook cuisine on the go.