If you’ve played Breath of the Wild, then you might be glad to learn that cooking is making a comeback in Tears of the Kingdom.
Despite being a side activity, cooking actually plays a key role in your adventure. Not only will it allow you to cook recipes that grant amazing buffs, but it’s also a fun activity to get into.
In this guide, we’ll talk about the basics of cooking and how you can make the most out of it. Let’s get started.
How Cooking Works in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
As with most games, the cooking mechanic allows you to create dishes that will grant you various effects.
Depending on the meal that you cooked, you’ll be able to receive benefits such as increased health recovery, bonus health and stamina, resistance to elements, stat boosts, and more.
It’s also the only way to get temporary hearts which effectively increases your overall survivability. The problem is that it can be often too overwhelming for new players to get into.
As you can see, in order to cook something, you have to gather its ingredients such as vegetables, meat, and even monster parts.
And while you can find them in almost any location, certain recipes will demand certain ingredients.
How to Start Cooking Meals
This brings us to the exact mechanic of how to cook meals.
To do so, you’ll need to interact with a cooking pot. However, this means you have to find a cooking pot nearby to get started.
Alternatively, you can use a Portable Pot which is a single-use item that will let you cook a meal anywhere you are.
With a pot nearby, open your inventory and choose the ingredients that you want. Then, choose the Hold option to have Link hold them in his hands.
After that, a Cook option should then appear in front of the cooking pot. Press your hotkey to have Link throw the ingredients into the pot.
This is the basis of cooking in Tears of the Kingdom. Do take note that you can hold several ingredients all at once.
The right combination of ingredients will allow you to cook a certain dish. For example, 1x Warm Safina and 1x Monster Part will allow you to cook a Spicy Elixir.
It’s just one of the many recipes in the game, and you can discover a whole lot of them provided that you have the right ingredients.
The good news is, all of the recipes you’ve discovered will be recorded in the Recipe Book. Simply refer to it if you have a specific recipe that you want to cook.
Why Invest Time in Cooking Meals
Aside from adding an extra layer of immersion, cooking also offers several benefits gameplay-wise. As such, it’s an activity that you should also take time to do when out on an adventure.
Some of these benefits are as follows:
Stamina Recovery – There are certain dishes that can help recover your stamina, allowing you to perform certain activities even longer.
Health Recovery – A lot of dishes allow Link to recover his health. There are even some recipes that can increase your maximum health for a certain period of time.
Buffs – One of the most important things about cooking is that certain recipes grant you buffs for a certain period of time. These buffs can greatly make your adventure a lot easier.
Extra Source of Income – You can also cook certain recipes and sell them for extra money which you can then use to buy certain items.
As you can see, cooking is a mechanic that you don’t want to overlook during your playthrough. It doesn’t just help make survival easier, but it also greatly enhances your adventure experience.
Brought into the world of gaming by the time he was 10, Argie knew that gaming will bring him countless hours of fun, a thing that has never changed even up to this day. His passion for games is apparent in the articles he write, and as an expert in the genre, being able to share what he's learned, discovered, and accomplished to his fellow gamers is such an amazing opportunity.