Cooking is a great way to give yourself special boons and replenish your health and energy in Stardew Valley. Here’s a comprehensive guide on cooking, including how to get started and how to obtain recipes.
Table Of Contents
Get a Kitchen
The first step to cooking at home in Stardew Valley is to get a kitchen, which you’ll get from your first house upgrade. Upgrading your house is the same as upgrading any of your farm buildings—just click Make House Renovations at the Carpenter’s Shop to instantly begin.
The materials and price you’ll need for the first house upgrade are:
- 450 pieces of wood
- 10,000 gold
The renovation process takes 3 days to complete. Once it’s complete, you can now begin cooking from the comfort of your own home.
Your new kitchen will contain a stove and a fridge. Storing food in the fridge allows you to cook from the stove without having the relevant ingredients in your inventory. You can add a Mini-Fridge to your kitchen to add more storage space for food.
Get a Cookout Kit
The major 1.5 update introduces the Cookout Kit, which allows you to cook anywhere outside your Farmhouse. You’ll get its crafting recipe after reaching Level 9 in foraging.
The materials required to craft a Cookout Kit are:
- 15 pieces of Wood
- 10 clumps of Fibre
- 3 pieces of Coal
You can place a Cookout Kit anywhere outdoors to use it; however, do bear in mind that it will vanish the next day. You can also destroy a cookout kit with an axe, hoe, or pickaxe.
Obtain Recipes
Now that you’ve got your stove fire roaring, it’s time to talk recipes. There are a total of 80 different dishes in the game, and apart from the Fried Egg recipe (which you’ll automatically learn with the house upgrade), they’ll all need to be learned somehow.
There are three main ways to obtain cooking recipes in Stardew Valley.
The Queen of Sauce
The Queen of Sauce is a cooking channel that airs every Sunday from Spring 7 for the first 2 in-game years, and then every Wednesday after.
The Queen of Sauce features a total of 32 recipes which you can learn by simply tuning in to the channel. Don’t worry about missing a few—re-runs of all the old recipes will play every Wednesday after the first 2 years have passed.
Buying Recipes
Gus sells a list of recipes in the Stardrop Saloon from prices ranging from 50 gold to 5,000 gold. Here’s a list of the recipes that Gus sells.
| RECIPE | PRICE |
|---|---|
| Hashbrowns | 50g |
| Omelet | 100g |
| Pancakes | 100g |
| Bread | 100g |
| Tortilla | 100g |
| Pizza | 150g |
| Maki Roll | 300g |
| Triple-Shot Espresso | 5,000g |
| Cookies | 300g |
It should be noted that the recipe for Cookies will only be available to players who have seen Evelyn’s 4-heart event.
Gifts From Villagers
As you make friends with the townspeople, you’ll get more gifts in the mail. Sometimes it’ll be a Mega Bomb, and other times it’ll be a food recipe. Check your mail frequently, and don’t forget to experience heart events, as some may also unlock unique recipes.
Gather Ingredients
Finally, you can’t cook without ingredients. Fortunately, gathering ingredients for cooking is extremely easy—as most of them can be grown yourself! There are a total of 26 crop products that are used for cooking, not counting those foraged, fished, or cooked.
Below is a breakdown of the total item types used for cooking.
- 26 crop types
- 13 forageables
- 4 tree fruits
- 2 animal products
- 4 artisan goods
- 2 miscellaneous items
- 17 fishing produce
- 8 crab pot produce
- 5 Pierre General Store produce
- 6 cooked dishes
Knowing which ingredients you need for which recipe is also remarkably simple. All you need to do is stand over your stove or cookout kit and point your cursor over the recipe you want to cook.
You’ll see a list of the ingredients required to cook the recipe, as well as the amount of the ingredients you have in your fridge and your inventory. The food icon would be faded if you don’t have enough ingredients.
How to Cook
The actual process of cooking is effortless. Once you have all the ingredients you need in your inventory or fridge, click the icon of the food you want to cook. That’s all it takes!
Cooking is a hugely useful skill, as eating food replenishes your health and energy and grants you all sorts of buffs. Unleash your new cooking skills and sample all the foods that Stardew Valley has to offer you.
