Highlights
- Cooking in Tears of the Kingdom is essential, offering meals that replenish hearts and provide various boosts for Link's adventure.
- Recipes that combine ingredients like Hearty Radish, Spicy Pepper, or Hylian Shrooms with other ingredients can provide extensive health recovery or other helpful effects.
- Ingredients like Ironshrooms, Endura Shrooms, or Swift Violets can be combined with meat or fruit to create meals that boost defense, stamina, or movement speed, respectively.
Cooking is an essential part of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. In place of the traditional hearts from previous titles in the Zelda franchise, 2017's Breath of the Wild introduced the cooking mechanic, where gathered materials and ingredients could be blended together in pots to create meals that replenish hearts as well as give various boosts.
The mechanic returns with the same function in Tears of the Kingdom, though with some new boons that could be gained by creating certain recipes. These recipes that can be easily made by players with the right ingredients will likely be the ones that help out the most, whether it be because of their extensive health recovery or other effects.
10 Hearty Fish Skewer
While many combinations of ingredients will restore the player's health in Tears of the Kingdom, a lot can be gained from adding a Hearty Radish or Hearty Truffle to any recipe. Fish skewers are a good example of this, as they only require a single fish to cook, meaning players can get a lot of mileage out of combining a single Hearty Radish with a single fish.
Additionally, a Hearty Fish Skewer will grant Link full health recovery, as well as several bonus hearts depending on the exact recipe. Given the commonness of fish like Hearty Bass and Hearty Salmon in the Hebra region, it can be very easy to make numerous of these dishes early on in the game that will last for most of the players' adventure.
9 Spicy Pepper Steak
Cold resistance is a food benefit that will be very important for players who choose to rescue Rito Village as their first objective in Tears of the Kingdom. The Hebra region features a lot of snow-covered mountains that will otherwise freeze Link to death unless players adequately prepare. Thankfully, the Spicy Pepper Steak is a simple and easy recipe for these situations.
All that's needed to make the Spicy Pepper Steak is a meat ingredient, ideally Raw Meat, Raw Prime Meat, or Raw Gourmet Meat, and a spicy pepper. Raw Meat of any kind can be found by killing livestock like bulls or foxes around Hyrule. Spicy peppers are also common enough to come by in Hyrule, and are also frequently found in the Gerudo Desert.
8 Mushroom Rice Balls
Any ingredient that requires Hylian Shrooms or Skyshrooms will be useful, considering how common those ingredients are throughout Hyrule. While many players may automatically go to roasting just mushrooms, it's beneficial to combine them with at least one Hylian Rice to create Mushroom Rice Balls, which will replenish an adequate amount of hearts.
Additionally, using more unique Mushrooms in this recipe will result in some pretty helpful variations, including ones that increase attack power and defense if you use Razorshrooms or Ironshrooms, respectively. Of course, the small health boost of the standard Mushroom Rice Balls is helpful for when players want to recover health but not waste a valuable meal.
7 Tough Mushroom Skewer
As mentioned in the previous slide, Ironshrooms are useful ingredients in Tears of the Kingdom. When added to any recipe, Ironshrooms will increase defense. However, players can get a lot of mileage out of just cooking one or more Ironshrooms, creating a Tough Mushroom Skewer that recovers health and boosts defense for a while.
Furthermore, Ironshrooms are pretty easy to find throughout Hyrule, so making many Tough Mushroom Skewers will be easy to accomplish. Players can also increase the defense boost if ingredients like Fortified Pumpkins or Armoranths are added to the mix. Overall, these meals will come in handy right before a boss battle or while trying to defeat a large horde of enemies.
6 Enduring Fried Wild Greens
Any recipe can be given the "enduring" adjective by adding in an ingredient like Endura Shrooms or Endura Carrots, which both add temporary bonus stamina wheels, which are indicated by a smaller yellow stamina wheel. These can especially be helpful early on, before players have fully upgraded their stamina wheel and struggle to accomplish tasks without it.
Particularly, Fried Wild Greens are an easy recipe, as they can be made out of plant ingredients like Hyrule Herbs, Korok Fronds, or Brightbloom Seeds. By throwing in an Endura Shroom or Endura Carrot with a Hyrule Herb in a pot, Enduring Fried Wild Greens will boost health and give players extra stamina to spend wisely.
5 Hasty Simmered Fruit
Fruits are another frequent type of ingredient that can be found in Hyrule. More often than not, players will find themselves with an overabundance of Apples, and on rare occasions also may find themselves with a surplus of Wildberries or Palm Fruit if they've been exploring the right areas. However, it's easy to make Simmered Fruit recipes even more useful.
One of the easiest variations of Simmered Fruit to make is Hasty Simmered Fruit. There are many ingredients that increase movement speed, including Fleet-Lotus Seeds, Swift Carrots, Swift Violets, and Rushrooms. The latter ingredient is pretty common, often found on the sides of mountains, and when combined with fruit, makes for a practical meal.
4 Sunny Steamed Meat
Steamed Meat as a recipe can be made with any combination of meat and plant, such as Raw Meat and Hyrule Herb. However, the recipe takes on a new effect if players combine any meat ingredient with a plant known as Sundelion. Sundelions are quite rare on the surface world in Hyrule, but can be frequently found on Sky Islands in the game.
There are many side quests in Tears of the Kingdom that require players to gather a large number of Sundelions or Sun Pumpklins, so any extras players have lying around can be cleverly combined with meat to make Sunny Steamed Meat. The real benefit of this meal is that it recovers hearts that have been lost to gloom damage.
3 Bright Salt-Grilled Meat
Players who have spent time exploring the Depths already know how dark it can get down there. Plus, it can feel like a waste sometimes to carelessly fire Brightbloom Seeds all around to light the area. However, there are several ingredients that, when combined with a meat ingredient and Rock Salt, can help out players who want a little more consistent lighting.
Those ingredients include Glowing Cave Fish, Brightcaps, and Dazzlefruit. These can mostly be found in dark caves or the Depths, so make sure to save them up to combine them later on with Raw Meat and Rock Salt. The Rock Salt is a vital ingredient here, as each Rock Salt added will add 30 seconds to the duration of the Glow effect the meal gives.
2 Sticky Elixir
Elixirs shouldn't be ignored by players of Tears of the Kingdom. While they don't recover hearts, they can offer a smart solution to give Link a boon without wasting a meal that could be saved for recovering hearts. The Sticky Elixir is certainly one that many players will find useful, that others might wish they had back in Breath of the Wild.
Particularly, the Sticky Elixir gives slip resistance, allowing players to have an easier time climbing surfaces in the rain. Oftentimes, trying to climb while it's raining is a fruitless effort, but the Sticky Elixir changes that greatly, though slipping is still possible. All that the players need to make it is to mix a Sticky Lizard or Sticky Frog with a variety of monster parts.
1 Energizing Elixir
Loss of stamina will be the number one thing that impedes exploration for players early on in Tears of the Kingdom. Whether it's paragliding or climbing walls, it can feel like a waste of time trying to take the stamina wheel as far as it can to complete a task. That's where the Energizing Elixir comes in as one of the most useful recipes to know.
To make an Energizing Elixir, players will have to acquire a Tireless Frog, which is common in Hyrule Field, Zora River, or sometimes in caves and wells. When mixed with monster parts, the Energizing Elixir will restore Link's stamina wheel, and sometimes add temporary bonus stamina, making it an incredibly useful meal to have around early on.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available on Switch.