I’m a big foodie in real life. Anyone who knows me wonders where all the food I eat goes, because, well, let’s just say I can eat for England. Like Link in Breath of the Wild, I must have some black hole in my stomach that allows me to keep eating and eating and eating. It’s no wonder I love the game’s cooking mechanic so much.
Aside from drooling over the fresh ingredients and perfectly-prepared meals (am I the only one that thinks food always looks SO tasty in cartoons and games?), I love gathering ingredients and experimenting with different recipes. I find foraging incredibly relaxing and entertaining, and the cooking exciting and rewarding. The little jingle that plays when you toss in your ingredients, accompanied by Link’s happy humming, is particularly delightful. I’m sure we all get as excited as Link does when that rising jingle lets you know you’ve made a particularly good meal.
The menu’s extensiveness in Breath of the Wild is really where it shines. There are over 100 recipes you can make, from curries and skewers to soups and cakes. And they all look tasty (well, except for the dubious food). They’ve even inspired people to replicate meals and create an unofficial recipe book called “Banquet of the Wild”, which lists all the ingredients and recipes from the game.
Now, we sadly didn’t have this book on launch, so it was hard to remember all the recipes in the game, let alone where the ingredients were for each. So I’m sure, like me, you had a meal plan for Link. Mine was specially crafted with all my favorites in terms of design, benefits, and complexity. I always picked those that I would love to try myself, the ones that gave me the health and stat bonuses I wanted, and were relatively easy to make in bulk (Link’s gotta eat on the go!)
This menu did evolve the further I got into the game, but by the end I was preparing a staple four-course meal that kept Link happy and healthy. What were these you wonder? Well, let me tell you.
Here are the top 4 meals I always prepared in Breath of the Wild:
1. Creamy Heart Soup
Am I biased about this dish because Link learns it from Gerudo in a cooking class, and also because it’s pretty and pink? Maybe. But no one can deny that its presentation is so appetizing. The first time I made Creamy Heart Soup, my heart and belly fell in love. It looks so yummy and sweet! I want to drink it right up. On that note, I always thought it sounded more like a healthy milkshake than a soup, with its ingredients being Hydromelon, Voltfruit, Hearty Radishes, and Fresh Milk.
I always made this meal in bulk so I could quickly refill my hearts if I took a few unwitting hits, and so I wouldn’t need to consume my more valuable meals with stat boosts. Plus, it made my meal inventory look that much more colorful.
Aside from its appealing appearance, I often went back to this recipe because of its ingredients. I have a running joke in my family about how much I enjoy radishes (I honestly just eat them raw on their own as a snack), so they were a no-brainer for me.
The Fresh Milk is a little trickier to stock up on, but I quickly learnt which merchants sell them so I could make the rounds. Lastly, Hydromelon and Voltfruit are relatively easy to get if you know where to look, but — more importantly — they always gave me an excuse to go shopping in Gerudo Town, which I loved doing. All in all, it’s a handy little meal.
Presentation: 5/5
Usefulness: 3/5
Easiness: 3/5
2. Hearty Fried Wild Greens
Although not as interesting as my previous entry, these were a staple for me when playing Breath of the Wild. Until I finally got all my hearts, I often compensated with the temporary ones that meals could provide, and this dish was an easy, viable option.
You can use any vegetable, flower, or herb combination for Hearty Fried Wild Greens, plus a hearty ingredient to infuse it with heart-granting properties if you wish. Like I said before, radishes are a personal fave of mine, so I always threw those in when I could. Otherwise, I went with Hearty Truffles or another hearty ingredient. Given how easy it is to come across all these, it just made sense for me to bulk cook them and go on my Lynel-slaying missions prepared.
Plus, I always felt bad killing animals, so I often stuck to veggie-based dinners.
Presentation: 3/5
Usefulness: 5/5
Easiness: 5/5
3. Swift / Enduring Carrot Cake
I am completely biased with this one because carrot cake is my absolute favorite cake in real life. It’s the perfect balance of sweet and savory, as I often find chocolate cake for example a bit too sickly. Plus, carrot cake has carrots in it, so it’s totally healthy — trust me, I’m a food expert.
Other than looking so dang delicious, Carrot Cake is a great meal because you can prepare it in two ways: either for speed or for stamina recovery. Cook it with normal carrots, and you’ve got a great way to gain some foot speed when you want to whiz around Hyrule like a Blupee. Cook it with Endura Carrots, and you’ve got a stamina-restoring and boosting recipe for wall-climbing antics. This clearly reflects real life: eat some carrot cake and you’re buzzing for the rest of the day (or two hours before you sugar crash).
I regularly donned my chef’s hat for Carrot Cake because I weirdly craved it digitally. I’ve heard of projecting fantasy into real life, but real life into fantasy?! Madness. But like the other meals on my list, I also relied on it because it’s not too difficult to gather everything you need. It requires Goat Butter, Cane Sugar, Tabantha Wheat, and any carrot. Endura Carrots can be quite hard to come by though until you know the hotspots (behind Kakariko’s Fairy Fountain and the Malanya Spring, where the Horse God resides). I usually collected carrots specifically for Carrot Cake, but also as an extra treat for my horsies, who you can feed them to! So they served two wonderful purposes.
The only downside to the Carrot Cake is that it has way too little cream cheese icing on it. Link, you better slather that in cream cheese icing right now — I’m not really eating it to be healthy, okay?!
Presentation: 4/5
Usefulness: 5/5
Easiness: 3/5
4. Tough Mushroom Skewers
The last item on my menu is another less exciting option, but also an incredibly valuable and hilarious one to me. I’m actually not a huge fan of mushrooms in real life — well, I kinda go through phases where mushrooms on pizza sound like the best darn thing since sliced bread — but they are such good ingredients in Breath of the Wild that I found myself tossing them into just about everything. In fact, it got to a point where I found myself only tossing them into the pot. Five of the exact same mushroom to be precise: the Ironshroom.
With the Ironshroom being so abundant, especially early in the game, I rapidly ended up with dozens of them in my inventory. And because they have such great defense properties, I quickly discovered that you can literally cook five of them to create a pretty good defense-boosting “meal” (not sure five mushrooms counts as a meal but okay).
You can add Big Hearty Truffles if you really want to become a buff boi, but the idea of just cooking five of the exact same mushroom to make it power you up is so silly and brilliant to me. I guess they are a good source of protein.
I’ve been replaying the game on Master Mode lately, and with how hard just about everything hits Link, I think I’m gonna need my trusty Ironshrooms more than ever before.
Presentation: 1/5
Usefulness: 5/5
Easiness: 5/5
So, what were your favorite foods in Breath of the Wild? What did you force-feed Link while he ran away wildly from a Guardian or held onto a cliff for dear life? Let us know in a comment somewhere!
