Tears of the Kingdom Best Recipes

• About
• Latest Posts

Linden Garcia

Linden Garcia is a video game journalist from the U.K. He’s covered everything from reviews, news, interviews, guides and editorials across a wide variety of websites and magazine publications. He’ll passionately defend the Dreamcast as the greatest thing to ever happen to gaming, and spends most of his time these days exploring the various iterations of Hyrule that Nintendo as blessed us with.

Latest posts by Linden Garcia (see all)

• Twilight Princess Stamp Locations - October 11, 2023
• Tears of the Kingdom Korok Seeds Guide - August 30, 2023
• Tears of the Kingdom Best Recipes - July 19, 2023

If you’d asked me what I thought about cooking in a Zelda game back when Twilight Princess launched—when waving a remote at the screen constituted cutting-edge combat and denotations of darkness and grittiness were the hot new thing in adventure games—I would have laughed.

But alas, even the game design juggernauts of Nintendo’s famed EAD division were enlightened by Minecraft’s success, it seems. So now, since Breath of the Wild, Link relies more on crafting mechanics than buying positions from shady salesmen.

While many scoffed at this inclusion when it debuted, their scorn ceased when we all realized that, actually, cooking was an excellent inclusion for the series.

Alongside the wealth of other improvements that made the latest iterations of Hyrule feel more real, sitting by a campfire, cooking up dinner, and then watching Link proceed to ravenously scoff the entire thing in a matter of seconds went a long way to making us feel like we were hardened warriors on a long journey.

In Tears of the Kingdom, the feature is back better than ever, with a ton of new recipes to discover and utilize for unique purposes, no matter your playstyle.

Having cooked my fair share of dishes in my many (many) hours with the game, in this guide, I’m here to walk you through the top ten recipes worth your time and to explain how the whole thing works.

Bottom Line Up Front

If you’re in a rush, here’s a quick rundown of the most important parts. If you already know how recipes work as well as the relevant status effects, scroll down past the section below to get to the main list.

• Food, in general, is going to be a crucial component to refilling your health and stamina, but carefully selected meals accomplish that and more by alleviating negative status effects and boosting your abilities.
• To cook a meal, you simply need to combine one or more ingredients in a cooking pot, which is dotted liberally across Hyrule.
• There are over 200 recipes to discover, and more are likely to be added in the future.

For some extra information, be sure to also check out the Frequently Asked Questions section at the bottom of this article.

Status Effects

Before we get onto the list, here’s a quick primer on stat effects so that you may better understand the recommendations.

Status effects can be thought of as specific buffs that enhance Link’s abilities. They’re typically activated by either consuming meals or wearing a specific piece of armor, and there are really only two categories of status effects: Ups and Resistance.

Ups increase Link’s abilities in a specific area. Now, these status effects also link to the initial word in the name of a meal: if you see the adjective hearty preclude the meal type, that means it’ll have the effect of adding extra hearts. Similarly, meals with the word energize restore Stamina.

These are the two most basic types, but below, I’ve included each of the other status effects and the name you’ll see attributed to each meal. Note that occasionally, Ups or Resistances are only offered by armor and cannot be altered by food. Let’s take a look at the Ups first.

• Attack Up: Mighty
• Defense Up: Tough
• Climb speed Up — Hasty
• Stealth Up: Sneaky or Silent
• Swim Speed Up: Hasty
• Skydive Mobility Up: N/A

These Up status effects enhance the abilities you’ll be using frequently in Tears of the Kingdom. Then, we have Resistance status effects: those that enhance Link’s robustness to the harsh elements and magic of Hyrule. They include the following:

• Heat Resistance: Chilly/Icy
• Cold Resistance: Spicy
• Shock Resistance: Electro
• Slip Resistance: Sticky
• Gloom Resistance: Sunny

I should also mention a final, smaller category. This category contains status effects that can’t be categorized as Ups or Resistances but offer novel abilities to help you navigate the world. They are the following:

• Glow: Causes Link to emit light to traverse dark areas.
• Flame Guard: Reduces damage from fire attacks and flaming environments.
• Rupee Padding: Causes Link to lose Rupees instead of hearts when hit by enemies.

Except for only a few, meals are going to be your go-to for utilizing these status effects. It’s important to consider them when planning a journey: if you’re heading to a cold area, it’ll be a good idea to pack some of the Cold Resistance-based meals you’ll find on this list to go with your protective clothing, for example.

Criteria

Here are the criteria I decided on for curating this list:

• Must be a legitimate recipe: For this list, we’ll be focusing only on consumables you cook traditionally with a pot. That means no Elixers or singular food items or ingredients.
• Will contain a breadth of recipes across the majority of available foods: I wanted to ensure the list covered you wherever you may go exploring, so for that reason, there will hopefully be at least something you can cook from this list using items you’ll find wherever you’re traveling at the time.
• In no particular order: There’s not really a single best meal within the game, given that most dishes you cook are situational, so there will be no particular order here.
• Entries will represent a balance between the ease of finding ingredients and their effects.

With that out of the way, let’s get onto the list!

1. The Hearty Fish Skewer

• Health increase: Full restoration plus ten temporary hearts
• Stamina Increase: N/A
• Status Effect: N/A
• Required Ingredients: One Hearty Durian, one hearty salmon, one hearty bass, or one Hyrule Bass

Like other Hearty variants of fish meals, this food item is essentially an enhanced version of a regular fish skewer. As well as providing a full HP recovery, it also gives you ten extra gold hearts to keep you going. To make this meal, you’ll need to find a special variety of certain types of fish: either the Hearty Bass, the hearty salmon, the Hylian bass, or the hearty durian.

In Tears of the Kingdom, you’ll oddly have to fish around the Sky Island regions to find them. Specifically, you’ll catch them at West Hebra Sky Archipelago and Necluda Sky Archipelago, respectively.

Hearty Bass can be found in the small ponds located on either island, and the best way to catch them is by shooting them with an arrow (no bombs this time around). 

2. Sunny Veggie Rice Balls

• Heath increase: Two hearts
• Stamina Increase: N/A
• Status Effect: Repairs gloomy hearts
• Required Ingredients: Sundelion and Hylian Rice

Because of the prevalence of Gloom throughout Hyrule, it’s always a good idea to carry some of these with you. To make them, you’ll need to acquire both Sun Pumpkins and scallions. Sun Pumpkins are found on patches of land within the Necuda region and to the right of Ginner Woods.

Sundelions, on the other hand, are found in abundance throughout Hyrule and are dropped by enemies; they’re everywhere and can be distinguished from other plants by their tall stems and yellow glow.

Once you have these two special ingredients, you merely need to combine them with Hylian Rice, which is easily obtained from any of the general stores found throughout the game.

3. Hylian Tomato Pizza

• Health increase: The base version restores five hearts.
• Stamina Increase: N/A
• Status Effect: N/A
• Required Ingredients: Hylian tomato, rock salt, Tabantha wheat, and Hateno Cheese

This is a healthful meal in the most literal sense, with a base replenishment of hearts, but as is the beauty of a pizza in real life, there are myriad combinations you can add to make it more exciting.

There’s one slot left for you to pair other ingredients with, so get experimenting and see what extra effects your own versions can provide.

For the basic recipe, you’ll need some Tabantha wheat, Rock salt, a Hylian tomato, and Hateno cheese.

The first three can be found with ease, but the Hateno Cheese will require you to complete a side quest called “A Letter to Koyin” to make the cheese available for purchase. To discover this quest, head over to Hateno Village and start exploring.

4. Sneaky Mushroom Skewer

• Health increase: A five-piece skewer restores five hearts.
• Stamina Increase: N/A
• Status Effect: Increased stealth efficiency of 10:00 minutes
• Required Ingredients: Silent mushrooms

Stealth has become even more fun in Tears of the Kingdom, and the aptly named Sneaky Mushroom Skewer is the perfect choice to help you realize your inner Sam Fisher through the lens of Link. You’ll need to locate a few silent mushrooms to put this meal together (you can find them anywhere, but especially in West Necluda).

A large skewer of five will afford you ten minutes of enhanced undetectability, making it easy for you to run rings around a camp of Bokoblins. The skewer will also restore several hearts, so it’s a solid all-rounder, too.

5. Hearty Lizards

• Heath increase: A temporary, scaled increase of your maximum heart rate
• Stamina Increase: N/A
• Status Effect: N/A
• Required Ingredients: One Hearty Lizard

Whenever I think of people eating Lizards, I can’t help but think of the roasted newt scene from Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away, though apparently they’re considered quite the delicacy in parts of Asia and South America.

This particular reptilian has also found a home in Hyrule, and unfortunately for it, it has suitably whetted the appetites of all who live there.

Their existence is good news for you, though, as the Hearty Lizard is a great choice for immediately replenishing your hearts when you need it most. These are quite unique in that they won’t increase your usual heart rate but will instead offer several hearts depending on how many you cook.

I’d recommend purchasing them from Beedle — the seller found at numerous stables — for just 100 Rupees each.

6. The Hasty Mushroom Skewer

• Heath increase: 1.5 heart increase when using one Rushroom
• Stamina Increase: N/A
• Status Effect: Speed Up for 1:30 minutes
• Required Ingredients: One Rushroom

Thankfully, this one is nice and simple to make—all you need is a single Rushroom. Yes, you read right, Rushroom (Nintendo has really been on it with their food-related puns over the last few years, haven’t they?).

The place to go hunting for these special pink mushrooms is Great Sky Island around Ukouh Shrine. You’ll see them boldly visible along the border of the building as they stand out against the otherwise beige color palette.

The Hasty Mushroom Skewer will replenish hearts, but as the name implies, it gives you a temporary burst in movement speed lasting one minute and thirty seconds. It’s not a huge amount of time, but gulp down a few of these sequentially, and you can get around pretty quickly if you don’t yet have a horse.

7. Sunny Veggie Porridge

• Heath increase: Five hearts
• Stamina Increase: N/A
• Status Effect: Partially removes Gloom
• Required Ingredients: Hylian Rice, Fresh Milk, One Sundelion, and a Herb of Your Choice

It’s not just for the sake of an old English relish for oats that I recommend you make yourself some Hylian-branded porridge. Like its real-life counterpart, this meal is both satisfying and simple to whip up—even if, oddly, there aren’t any actual oats in this version.

Mixing together Hylian Rice, Fresh Milk, any Herb of your choosing, and one Sundelion, you’ll have yourself a slurry that will restore five hearts and an extra three additional hearts that have been affected by gloom.

This is a great one to have on you at all times, but make sure you put it in something that won’t leak! The first three ingredients can be found plentifully across Hyrule, be it in stores or in the wild, and Sundelions are very common across Sky Island.

8. Fried Wild Greens

• Heath increase: Four hearts
• Stamina Increase: Fully restored stamina and an extra 1/3 bonus wheel
• Status Effect: N/A
• Required Ingredients: At least one Endura Carrot

Here’s an incentive to eat your greens, if any: raw speed! The fried greens recipe is one of the simplest endurance-fueling meals you can make: it will successfully fully restore any lost stamina as well as proving a one-third bonus stamina wheel, and the meal will even restore four hearts’ worth of health to boot.

You only need to find one Endura Carrot to make this meal, but these particular vegetables are unfortunately quite rare. The Endura Carrot can be found either singularly or in a group; the location I found them in was at the peak of Satori Mountain.

9. Hearty Mushroom Rice Balls

• Health increase: Full recovery plus sixteen temporary hearts
• Stamina Increase: N/A
• Status Effect: N/A
• Required Ingredients: At least one big, Hearty Truffle

Mixing together the staple Hylian Rice with one or more Big Hearty Truffles will offer you a meal that offers you both a full health recovery and a large surplus of bonus hearts (of which the number scales depending on the number of Big Hearty Truffles used).

Hearty Mushroom Rice Balls have saved my life on more occasions than I’d like to admit, mitigating stupid mistakes and saving me from a game-over when I went up against an enemy I’d ordinarily struggle to fight.

I’ve already covered where you’ll find Hylian Rice, but for the Truffles, you’ll find them in decent amounts in the Gerudo Desert region.

10. Mighty Simmered Fruit

• Health increase: Full recovery
• Stamina Increase: N/A
• Status Effect: Up Attack for a duration determined by the number of ingredients
• Required Ingredients: At least one piece of any type of fruit

This dish can be prepared by cooking five Mighty Bananas (even though this meal’s picture doesn’t look like it contains anything of the sort, but we’ll ignore that). Once consumed, the meal will increase your attack power for four minutes while also offering full recovery. It should be noted that the fewer bananas you use for this meal, the less the attack power duration is reduced.

This idea should be taken into close consideration; there’s no point wasting five bananas if you only need a quick boost in health.

Regarding finding the bananas themselves, head to the tropical forests that surround Lake Floria.

My Top 3 Picks

Considering my gushing descriptions of these particular meals, I’m sure you can assume that I’m very fond of all of them. And that’s true, but I still have three favorites!

1. Mushroom Rice Balls: A meal’s purpose should be to augment your chosen playstyle, but something common amongst all Tears of the Kingdom adventurers is their tenacity for a challenge. The Mushroom Rice Balls enable you to take on challenges that might ordinarily have been too difficult, so they’re always a worthy asset.
2. Sunny Veggie Porridge: I think most players can attest to the annoyance of Gloom, so I always make sure I have this simple but effective meal with me wherever I go if I can help it; I consider it essential.
3. Sneaky Mushroom Skewer: If you’re anything like me, stealth challenges are some of the most fun you can have in Tears of the Kingdom, especially when you have such an excellent physics engine at your disposal. For that reason, any meal that makes that experience even better gets a solid thumbs-up from me.

Honourable Mentions

Here are some other ingredients you should consider cooking on their own for big benefits.

• Endura Carrot 
• Hylian Tomato
• Hateno Cheese
• Mushroom Skewer

FAQs

Tears of the Kingdom Best Recipes: Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this article covering the best recipes available to you in Tears of the Kingdom. Remember, though, that this is just my personal list; there are an absolute ton of unique combinations to figure out on your own, so get creative and develop your own favorites.

If you have any more questions beyond the scope of this article, I highly recommend heading over to the Tears of the Kingdom board on Reddit and asking the community. It’s bursting with discussion at the moment, with the game only just released recently, so now is a great time to engage with other fans.

If you’re wanting to learn more about the game, check out our wealth of other Tears of the Kingdom content, such as our Tears of the Kingdom Depths Guide or our Tears of the Kingdom Garden of Time Guide. As always, thanks for reading Legends of Z!