As you make your way across Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you’ll gather a variety of food and materials. You can eat the food by itself, usually to recover life hearts, but to get the most out of your scrounging, you’ll want to stop by settlements and campsites to cook some meals and make your food even more useful. Here’s everything you need to know about cooking in Breath of the Wild.

How to Cook in Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Like making elixirs, all you need to cook delicious meals in Breath of the Wild are ingredients and a cooking pot with a fire burning under it. You’ll usually find the latter in a stable or a town, but you can also find them at campsites and enemy outposts all over Hyrule.

Instructions in this article apply to both the Wii U and Switch versions of the game.

Once you’ve found a cooking pot, open your inventory and navigate to the Materials tab (it looks like an apple). Select each ingredient you want to cook with, and then press X to put them into Link’s arms. Link can hold up to five items at a time. Once he has everything, leave the menu. Finally, approach the cooking pot and press A to toss them in. An animation will play, and the food you’ve prepared will automatically go into your inventory.

Food Effects in Breath of the Wild

Depending on which ingredients you use, your meals might give you extra, temporary benefits beyond just replenishing Link’s health. Here are the different effects food can have.

To add these effects to your meals, add one of the corresponding ingredients to the base components.

The benefits of the Enduring and Hearty effects will remain until Link uses them, either by depleting the extra stamina or taking damage.

All Food Recipes in Breath of the Wild

The most useful meals in Breath of the Wild have specific recipes that you should follow. If you throw incompatible ingredients into a pot, you’ll get an undesirable dish like Dubious or Rock-Hard Food. These meals will provide a little health, but they’re mostly a waste of material.

You can make any effects last longer or more powerful by adding multiple boost ingredients, but you can’t add more than one effect with a single dish. For example, adding a Hearty Radish and a Mighty Carp will give you neither a Hearty nor a Mighty effect; the two “cancel” each other.

You’ll scavenge most ingredients, like fruit, on your travels through Hyrule, but some, like butter and seasonings, are only available from merchants.

Other Foods in Breath of the Wild

In an emergency, you don’t need a cooking pot to prepare food from your raw ingredients. You can both roast and freeze fruits, meats, vegetables, and plants to make them restore more health and give you a bonus.

To roast, expose the ingredient to high heat. You can use a campfire, a wildfire, or even a Fire Arrow. Roasted foods give you 150% of the health boost versus just eating the ingredients raw.

To make frozen food, expose any meat or seafood to extremely low temperatures, usually by placing them in the snow or shooting them with an Ice Arrow. Frozen items both restore health and give you temporary cold resistance.

Finally, you can place a Bird Egg into a hot spring to make a Hard-Boiled Egg, which will give you extra hearts when you eat it.

  • How many shrines are in Breath of the Wild?
  • There are 120 shrines scattered across BotW’s enormous map.
  • How do you shield surf in Breath of the Wild?
  • Equip your shield and find a good downward slope, then press the X button while running to do a jump, followed by the A button. Link should do a flip and land on his shield. Keep in mind, shield surfing on hard terrain causes durability loss and could break your shield.
  • How do you get the Master Sword in Breath of the Wild?
  • To nab Link’s iconic weapon, you need to make your way to the Great Hyrule Forest and the Great Deku Tree. The sword is embedded in a stone, and your Link needs 13 total heart containers to safely remove it. You can get more heart containers by defeating Divine Beast dungeons or by trading in four Spirit Orbs per heart.
  • How do you beat a lynel in Breath of the Wild?
  • Lynels are intimidating opponents, but they’re not impossible to beat. Prepare for the fight ahead of time, if possible, by downing some food, brewing some elixirs, and catching a fairy for that extra life. During combat, ice arrows or the stasis power can temporarily slow it down enough for you to get a few whacks in.

There are 120 shrines scattered across BotW’s enormous map.

Equip your shield and find a good downward slope, then press the X button while running to do a jump, followed by the A button. Link should do a flip and land on his shield. Keep in mind, shield surfing on hard terrain causes durability loss and could break your shield.

To nab Link’s iconic weapon, you need to make your way to the Great Hyrule Forest and the Great Deku Tree. The sword is embedded in a stone, and your Link needs 13 total heart containers to safely remove it. You can get more heart containers by defeating Divine Beast dungeons or by trading in four Spirit Orbs per heart.

Lynels are intimidating opponents, but they’re not impossible to beat. Prepare for the fight ahead of time, if possible, by downing some food, brewing some elixirs, and catching a fairy for that extra life. During combat, ice arrows or the stasis power can temporarily slow it down enough for you to get a few whacks in.

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