Cooking Basics

You won't have a kitchen when first starting the game, but as you move through the game's tutorial and story introduction, the mighty Doc Jr will add one to your house. In the kitchen, you can cook tasty meals to give as gifts, ship for some money, or eat to recover stamina or status effects. Each meal requires combining one, two, or three ingredients, which combine together after a short processing period to make a new item.

The entry-level kitchen has space to cook two meals at a time. You can expand the kitchen size after you upgrade the size of the farmhouse. Each upgrade adds another cooking space to the kitchen, up to a maximum of four meals cooking simultaneously. You don't need to purchase separate utensils or seasoning sets.

• Kitchen upgrade after the first house remodel = 5 Board Lumber + 20 Iron + 10 Silver + 5000 G
• Kitchen upgrade after the second house remodel = 3 High-Quality Board Lumber + 12 Silver + 8 Damascus Steel + 10,000 G

Initially, the kitchen includes two free recipes: Green Salad and Stew. The remaining 138 recipes you need to learn via story progress or by purchasing from restaurant chefs and the wandering merchants.

The optional DLC also contains meal recipes, but these aren't needed for completing the Legendary Chef achievement. The Visitors from Afar DLC unlocks 1 additional recipe, and the Crops, Fish, & Recipes DLC unlocks 20 new recipes, bringing the total number of base game + DLC meal recipes to 161.

How to Cook Meals

Interact with the kitchen to view the list of known recipes. The recipes are categorized by all recipes (default) and then recipes that give a status boost: cold, heat, or energy.

• Cold-status meals are eaten to conserve stamina while exploring the volcano and daytime desert.
• Heat-status meals are eaten to conserve stamina while exploring the snowy mountains and nighttime desert
• Energy-status meals are eaten to temporarily remove exhausted status from staying awake all night

When viewing a category of recipes, the meals at the TOP of the list are ones you can make using ingredients in your bag inventory. The meals with an exchange double-arrow icon in the MIDDLE of the list indicate meals that you can make using items in your home storage. Meals you cannot make because of missing ingredients (and there are no alternatives) are at the BOTTOM of the recipe book.

Every recipe will list the number of stamina hearts recovered when eaten, any applicable status effects, the amount of that cooked dish you already have in your bag or in storage, the name of the recipe and how long it takes to make (based on in-game time and not real-time), and the necessary ingredients. The recipe will NOT tell you how much money you'll earn if the meal sells via the shipping bin.

To make a dish, select a recipe and then follow the prompts, which change depending on whether it is a Top-list recipe or a Middle-list recipe:

• Top recipes are ones where all the required ingredients are in your bag. Selecting one of these recipes using the action button will automatically prompt you to choose how many meals you want to cook based on the number of valid ingredients in your rucksack.
• Middle recipes need more input before the kitchen can make the dish. Selecting a double-arrow recipe will move the active cursor to the ingredient options. You can then choose each ingredient from your storage, including alternative ingredients that work in the recipe, such as selecting a Snow Carrot instead of the plain orange Carrot in a Stew recipe. After all ingredients are active, press the Select Recipe button to choose the number of meals to cook.
• Nothing will happen when selecting bottom-listed recipes because those meals can only be cooked once you acquire the necessary ingredients.

You can choose stored ingredients instead of bag ingredients when making a top-level recipe by pressing the right directional button on your controller to move the active cursor from the recipe name to the ingredient name. After selecting the ingredients from storage, use the left directional button to move the active cursor back to the recipe name, which will open the prompt to select how many meals to produce.

After confirmation, each meal will be processed on the stovetop, bubbling the lid of its pot and producing a boiling sound. The fastest recipe takes 1 minute to make (Baby Formula), and the slowest recipes take 6 hours (Washed-Rind Cheese and Blue Cheese). When the meal is ready, a green checkmark icon will appear above the cooking pot. Examine the kitchen to collect the meal into your rucksack. Making multiple meals can result in partially processed pots, where the green checkmark appears while the pot is brewing. You can collect the completed meals and let the rest finish or wait until the whole stack is done.

An entry in the Doc Pad's encyclopedia will be added every time you obtain a meal for the first time, whether cooked in your kitchen or received as a request reward. The Legendary Chef achievement requires you to cook at least one of the 140 total recipes in the base game. If your entire cooked meals encyclopedia entries are filled and you still need to unlock the Legendary Chef trophy, look through the encyclopedia entries for the Times Cooked noted on each recipe card. A "0" indicates that the meal was received as a village request reward and not one you made. Go into the kitchen and make that dish to clear the achievement requirement.

If you want to cancel a meal order, examine the kitchen to open the list of meals being processed, then select the pot you want to stop. You will lose any ingredients currently being processed in that pot.

If you need more warehouse storage space for ingredients, complete the first farmhouse remodel to unlock the Upgrade Refrigerator recipe in the house workbench. You'll need to combine 2 Platinum, 3 Crystal Corn, and 3 Snow Queen to increase food storage from 100 slots to 300 slots. Crystal Corn is a mutation of Fodder Corn when grown during winter, and Snow Queen is a mutation of Water Lotus when grown during winter.

Star Rank

Using higher star-ranked ingredients will produce higher star-ranked cooked meals. The meal sells for more money, restores more stamina hearts when eaten, and has longer-lasting status effects (if applicable). Using rarer ingredients doesn't seem to have an impact on star rank. For example, a 1-star Carrot has more of an effect on star rank than a 0-star Aqua Carrot.

From my experience, cooking a meal using Jersey Milk instead of normal Milk gives the resulting dish +1 star rank.