No farming simulator would be worth its price without a cooking mechanic to make meals out of all those crops. Stardew Valley is no exception. After cooking is unlocked fairly early in the game, players can use their kitchens to fashion all sorts of useful dishes. These dishes can often spell the difference between life and death in the game’s deepest dungeons, so learning how to cook in Stardew Valley is as important as it is fun.
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Why Is Cooking Important in Stardew Valley?
Most raw ingredients in Stardew Valley provide decent energy and health benefits for those deep Mine runs, but cooked dishes take this to another level. Generally, a cooked dish will combine the benefits of its ingredients, but may provide additional boosts like increased farming and mining speed.
Unlocking the Kitchen
The kitchen is unlocked after you upgrade your farm for the first time. Visit Robin at her workshop with 10,000g and 450 wood to purchase this project. After a few days, you will see a kitchen appear on the west side of the house. The fridge provides additional storage for your ingredients and dishes, and the stove is where you’ll be creating dishes. The kitchen remains the same no matter which upgrades are applied to the house from the first onward.
How to Get Recipes in Stardew Valley
There are many ways to acquire cooking recipes in Stardew Valley. Each is listed according to its general category:
- Several recipes are unlocked when the kitchen becomes available. These can be considered a ‘starter pack’ that requires no extra effort.
- Turn on the TV, and it will occasionally play a show called ‘Queen of Sauce’. She provides the player with cooking recipes on certain days. It’s a good idea to turn on the TV at least once a day to check, or you can simply visit the game’s official wiki page on cooking to see the exact dates if you don’t mind spoiling the surprise.
- Your neighbors will send recipes in the mail as you raise their heart levels, or when you complete quests for them. Some are sent early in the game without any action on your part as a way to welcome your character to the town.
- Recipes can be purchased from the Stardrop Saloon, the bar/restaurant in the middle of town. Better recipes will unlock as you progress, which of course cost more to purchase.
- Some recipes are unlocked once you reach a certain skill level; for instance, reaching level 3 in Farming will unlock a dish called ‘Farmer’s Lunch’ that buffs your farming efficiency.
Best Recipes in Stardew Valley
With 80 different recipes in Stardew Valley, it isn’t easy to know which ones are going to be the best. So, here is our list of some of the best recipes in Stardew Valley:
- Ginger Ale: This gives you +1 luck and it’ll stack on top of the food that offers Luck, such as a Lucky Lunch or Spicy Eel.
- Roots Platter: gives a +3 buff to Attack which is the best in the game
- Lucky Lunch: Adds +3 luck which can stack with Ginger Ale for a total of +4 luck!
- Spicy Eel: +1 luck (stacks with the other two recipes) and +1 speed
- Survival Burger: Adds +3 to foraging making this a great recipe for harvesting lots of wood
What is Qi Seasoning
Qi Season is a cooking item that is new to the 1.5 release of Stardew Valley. It is part of the storyline of Mr. Qi and involves trading in a special currency called Qi Gems at a hidden location (we’ll avoid spoiling that here). Qi Seasoning is one of the most useful items in the game, especially for cooks. Keeping it in the same place where you store ingredients raises the star level of every cooked item from its associated kitchen to gold. It also adds +1 to any attribute buff already present (a +1 mining buff would become +2, for example). Also, it extends the duration of the buff by 50% (a 6-minute buff would last for 9 minutes instead). We recommended following the Ginger Island plotline to its end as early as possible if you want to be the best chef you can be.
Learning how to cook in Stardew Valley is really a matter of unlocking recipes and finding their ingredients. Now that you’ve learned all the ways you can work magic in the kitchen, those trips underground and long days on the farm should be much easier.
