How to Cook Efficiently in Tears of the Kingdom (TotK)

One thing you can easily forget when playing through Link’s latest adventure is that it has survival elements. You always want to be prepared to go exploring new areas. The best way to do this is to make sure to cook efficiently so that you’re set up to handle whatever Hyrule throws at you in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Why Cooking Is Important in Tears of the Kingdom (TotK)

I found that running out of food really interrupted my exploration, what with constantly having to stop, set up a fire, and cook more. If you’re out of food, you’re at risk of death or freezing if you’re in a cold area. And the last thing you want is to get most of the way through a new area, only to get your ass handed to you and have to backtrack when you could have just healed the damage if you had a meal on hand.

To make sure you have a better experience, I’d recommend following my lead and spending some time navigating areas with large amounts of ingredients and gathering as much as I can to be stocked up. You’ll want to look for things like mushrooms, meat, fish, and fruit and stockpile as much as possible as quickly as possible. Just be warned: it does get pretty tedious. 

How to Cook Efficiently for More Fun in Hyrule

Once I’ve got a good haul, I set up a cooking station, open my inventory, and select the ingredients to combine to make a recipe. There are tons of recipes that you can make in Tears of the Kingdom, and I found it quite enjoyable experimenting with different food to see what kind of recipes came out.

Don’t forget to select multiple items for each recipe to boost their effects. These effects include restoring more health and bolstering the length of time effects such as cold resistance last from meals. It’s more efficient to consume just one meal to restore the majority of your life in combat than having to spam a whole bunch of small meals and it’s usually a more efficient use of your ingredients too.

Cooking all your ingredients to big meals to fill your backpack in one go ensures that you’ll be well stocked for a good, long adventure. You won’t have to worry about running out (for a while, at least) and can instead focus on exploration and combat, then circle back to gathering and cooking later.

This is the way I found to cook the most efficiently to help me better explore Hyrule in Tears of the Kingdom. Hopefully it will help some of you as well! And if you’re looking for more tips to make the most of your adventure, be sure to check out our full set of guides to the game.