The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild adds a lot of new mechanics to the series that we haven’t seen before. Some are important and tough to figure out, while others are trivial. One of the more important new elements is cooking food, which allows you to concoct special meals that boost your health, or give you special powers, like surviving the cold. But the way you do it can be a bit hard to understand at first, so here’s our guide on how to cook in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
To cook in Breath of the Wild, you first need two things, food and a stove. Food can be found everywhere throughout the world, so just watch for the tiny sparkle that indicates something you can pick up. Once you do, the game will provide you with a short description of what the item will give you, if cooked into a dish. This usually involved filling up your available hearts, but some items will give special boosts, including heat resistance, stamina effects, or even raising your overall heart count temporarily.
Each dish can only have one single effect on top of refilling your hearts, so don’t combine items unless you don’t care which effect takes precedence. For example, if you take a stamina boosting mushroom and a heat resistant lizard and cook them into the same dish, only one of these things will end up in the final meal.
Decide what ingredients you want, with a maximum of five, and select each individually, choosing “Hold” from the submenu. The cooking system in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is fun, but it’s not ridiculously robust, so don’t worry too much about getting five items every time. Stacking items usually just stacks their effects, without a benefit to bulk use. For example, peppers that let you resist the cold each contribute 2.5 minutes to the timer, so putting five into a dish just makes for less menu interaction. However, there is a random boost sometimes, and having more items might trigger that more often, but I wouldn’t waste stuff trying for that bonus.
Once you have your ingredients in hand you need to walk up to a lit stove. These are found in camps, towns, and pretty much anywhere where people or Bokoblins dwell. If it’s not lit, you cannot cook on it, but using any piece of wooden equipment on a fire and then on the stove should fix that. Once lit just walk up to the stove and hit A when it changes to “Cook”. You’ll drop the items in and cook them up.
If you simply don’t have access to a stove you can still do some cooking by simply placing ingredients into nearby fire. This works best for meats, but you will not get the same boosts to the effects as you would if you used an actual cooking pot.
And that’s how to cook in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Let us know if you need help with anything else in the game.
