Cooking in Core Keeper isn’t massively complicated, and with its great benefits for players, it's a no-brainer to get some dishes cooking in your next run. With that, here's how to take the most advantage of cooking in Core Keeper, including the best food recipes to make as of the Core Keeper 1.0 update.

Core Keeper Cooking Guide

How to Cook in Core Keeper

Core Keeper players must craft the Cooking Pot from the Basic Workbench to start preparing dishes. Crafting the Cooking Pot crafting station requires the following materials:

• 2x Wood
• 4x Copper Bar

On Core Keeper's map, you can find Wood in various places, especially in the Dirt biome. On the other hand, you must mine Copper Ore and place it in a Furnace to make Copper Bar. Tip: Choose the Chef background on the character creation screen to have the Cooking Pot from the beginning. Next, place the Cooking Pot at your preferred location. Interact with that crafting station and place two ingredients in the available slots to start cooking. Wait for the dish to finish cooking before getting it from the pot.

Best Cooking Recipes in Core Keeper

Now that you can use the Core Keeper cooking mechanic, you can prepare in-game dishes to your heart’s content. Note that the resulting dish has the best traits of the two ingredients placed in the pot. For example, adding a Bomb Pepper with +15 Food with another Bomb Pepper with +21% movement speed for 1 minute results in a Wrap with these two properties. Additionally, the game has a massive roster of cooking recipes, especially with the release of Core Keeper 1.0. Still, some of these dishes provide better perks than others, such as the following:

Hearty Pepper Wrap

Made by cooking a Bomb Pepper and Heart Berry, the Hearty Pepper Wrap is a good starter meal for Core Keeper beginners. Aside from sufficiently satiating the player, it also gives +21 movement speed for 1 minute, +2.8 health healed per second for 20 seconds, and +25 maximum health for 5 minutes.

Yellow Pepper Wrap

Another food recipe you can make during the game’s early stages is the Yellow Pepper Wrap. This dish uses 1x Bomb Pepper and 1x Yellow Blister Head, a fish caught in the waters of the Clay Caves biome. It provides the same satiation level as the Hearty Pepper Wrap. But it also gives +2.6 health healed per second for 20 seconds, +21 movement speed, and immunity to the slow debuff when stepping on slime tiles for 30 seconds. Tip: Eat the Yellow Pepper Wrap before fighting Ghorm the Devourer so you won’t worry about the slime tiles in the boss’ arena.

Moldy Mold Cheese

Preparing Moldy Mold Cheese requires 1x Mold Shark and 1x Puffungi, which aren’t rare ingredients. But eating this dish supplies your character with +32 to the food gauge, +5.5 health healed per second for 20 seconds, +38.6 damage for 5 minutes, and +8 damage reduction from bosses for 5 minutes.

Giant Mushroom Salad

Hailed as one of the best cooking recipes in Core Keeper, the Giant Mushroom Salad uses an extremely rare ingredient. In particular, it uses 2x Giant Mushroom, which only spawns once or twice per map. But cooking and eating it will provide +39 to the food gauge, +24 maximum health for 5 minutes, and +50 maximum health permanently.

Rare Spicy Oat Meal

This meal doesn't have "rare" in its name out of sheer coincidence, for it needs a Golden Bloat Oat and Golden Bomb Pepper as its cooking ingredients. However, consuming it heals the player for about 17.4 health every second for 20 seconds, which translates to approximately 350 health healed in that period. Additionally, this meal provides reduced hunger drained when running, increased movement speed, and improved melee damage.

Royal Shark Fillet

If you're a fan of using legendary melee weapons in Core Keeper, like the Rune Song Sword, then this dish should always be in your backpack. The Royal Fish Fillet significantly boosts the user's melee damage. It also improves your character's overall damage output and heals a decent amount of health for 20 seconds.

Gooey Worm Fish Balls

If ranged weaponry is your main equipment of choice, then the Gooey Work Fish Balls should be your go-to dish in Core Keeper. It needs 1x Devil Worm and 1x Larva Meat to prepare, and it significantly boosts your ranged damage for five minutes. Consuming this item also improves your critical hit chance.