Cooking Basics

Food cooked with your kitchen can be used for gifts and recharging your STAmina and FULlness. When you first start out, the kitchen will not be included with your house. To start cooking you'll need to complete several steps:

• Step 1 - Hire Gannon to upgrade your house to medium size. You can either pay him 10,000 G or save up 200 Lumber and only have to pay him 3000 G.
• Step 2 - Go to Chen's shop and check his inventory. Once your house is medium size he'll start to sell the Tool Box, Beauty Box, Cabinet, and Refrigerator. Buy the Refrigerator for 2500 G, and the Kitchen should then appear in his shop inventory for 4000 G.
• Step 3 - Get the Cafe and Diner unlocked in E.Town by collecting 10 or more sub-villagers. Once Luke (Diner) and Madelynn (Cafe) move in, continue to unlock sub-villagers. You will need to unlock 20 sub-villagers for the Cafe to upgrade, and 25 for the Diner.
• Step 4 - Give Luke and Madelynn cooking ingredients and in exchange they'll give you recipes for your kitchen. You just have to equip a food item and then tap on the restaurant owners. They will ask if you want to cook the item, and if they are successful they will create a new recipe for you. For example, if you give Luke an Egg then you may get the recipe for Egg Soup.

The kitchen doesn't require you to collect separate utensils like in previous versions of Harvest Moon. You just have to know the recipe and have the ingredients necessary on-hand.

First, just walk up to your kitchen and tap on it to start Cooking. You can then select the recipe you want from the six types of dishes available; Salad, Soup/Drink, Appetizer, Main Course, Dessert, and Other. There is no way to cook a dish if you don't have the recipe in your recipe list. You can only cook a dish if you have the ingredients in your Rucksack or Refrigerator. Tap on the recipe twice to start cooking.

• Make best recipe - If you have made an arranged version of the recipe, and it is saved in your recipe list, then that is the one that will be used. For example, if you had previously cooked Ice Cream (Milk + Egg) and had added a Strawberry, then selecting this option will create the Milk + Egg + Strawberry version.
• Make basic recipe - The formula used for this option is the most basic version, regardless of what extra ingredients you have saved to the recipe. If you had the Milk + Egg + Strawberry recipe for Ice Cream and it is saved to your recipe list, choosing this option will just make the original basic Milk + Egg dish.
• Make some alterations - This allows you to start out with the basic recipe, but select extra ingredients until you have the maximum 6 ingredients.

After you have made your choice, you can then choose the type of ingredients. You can select your best high-quality (Qy) ingredients, your biggest (Sz) ingredients, your freshest (Fr) ingredients, or randomly select what you need from the ingredients available. The kitchen will take the necessary items out of your Rucksack and Refrigerator in order to make the recipe.

You also can choose the number of cooked dishes you can make. There's no longer a need to cook each recipe one at a time. Now you can make more than 1 with just a simple change of the number on the cooking confirmation screen.

The completed recipe's rank will determine how much Gold you can receive if you ship it and how much STA and FUL you can recover when eaten.

Adding extra ingredients to a basic recipe will increase the recovery power when eaten, and is necessary for any chance of winning the Cooking Festival on Spring 24. You can have up to 6 food items in one recipe.

To add the extra items, select them from your Rucksack or Refrigerator. An icon at the top of the touch screen will indicate which one you are looking through, and you can quickly swap between the 'sack and 'fridge by tapping on the icons, or just continue to tap on the left and right arrows.

A check mark on the item will indicate that it is selected for the recipe. You can only have 1 of each ingredient in your dish arrangement. For example, you can't add 2 Eggs to a dish.

Once you have finished selecting your items, tap on the Make button. The next screen will indicate if your arrangement is successful or not! If you see the name of the recipe then your added ingredients are acceptable, but if you see "Failed Dish" then all of your choices will not make a good dish. This is incredibly helpful when making the recipe for the Cooking Festival, as you no longer have to play trial-and-error and waste ingredients to see if your choices will even make something edible.