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Minecraft is one of the most popular survival sandbox games around and has been for the last decade. Its intricate building, exploration, and crafting system are just a few reasons why so many fell in love with the relatively simple game.
However, despite the game's deceptively child-like appearance, surviving in Minecraft isn't easy by any stretch. Hunger is one of the main concerns players will have along with building shelter for the night. Not just any food will do, either, and players preferring to thrive rather than just survive on rotten flesh should focus on finding the best food items in Minecraft. Here's how to find them, and why they're so good.
Hunger And Saturation: How Does It Work?
Before diving into the best foods in Minecraft, it's important to understand what makes food items good in the game. There are two metrics in the game: hunger and saturation. Players can monitor hunger easily by looking at the bar on the right side of their hearts. Fewer hunger points mean a player's character is getting weaker and hungrier and will stop regenerating health. At extremely low points, players will be unable to sprint. In Hardcore mode, there are some exceptions to these rules.
Saturation can't be directly seen, but it is visible on the hunger bar as well. The softer the animation of the hunger bar is, the higher the saturation is. Saturation determines how long the effects of fullness last. When the hunger bar starts to move quicker, players will know that their saturation is wearing off, and they will start to lose hunger points soon.
A final metric to consider is status effects. Some foods provide extremely beneficial status effects to the player, which have nothing to do with hunger or saturation. However, these effects naturally put these food items above others, because of their beneficial effects.
Mushroom Stew Or Beetroot Soup
- Hunger Points: 6
- Saturation: 7.2
Mushroom Stew and Beetroot Soup are on a tied spot on the list due to their identical values. Both of these foods in Minecraft are fantastic, but depending on the player's surrounding biomes they can be a bit tricky to get.
Beetroot Soup is made with a wooden bowl and six beetroots. Beetroots are usually found in villages where farmers are present.
Mushroom Stew requires a wooden bowl, and one brown and one red mushroom. Mushrooms have a chance of spawning in caves, swamps, taiga forests, mushroom islands, and in the Nether. Mooshrooms can also be milked directly for Mushroom Stew.
Suspicious Stew
- Hunger Points: 6
- Saturation: 7.2
The Suspicious Stew is a special food that was added in the 1.13 update. Each stew has a chance of giving the player a random status effect out of the following: saturation, night vision, poison, wither, weakness, regeneration, jump boost, fire resistance, or blindness. The saturation effect is by far the strongest for players who need to replenish their hunger meter, since it bumps up the hunger points to 13, with a saturation of 21.2.
While Suspicious Stew needs a bit of good RNG to work as a food, it's incredibly powerful and commonly favored by Minecraft speedrunners. It can be found in shipwreck chests at the bottom of the ocean, but it can also be crafted with one wooden bowl, one red and one brown mushroom, as well as any flower. Note that the recipe isn't found in the crafting book.
Rabbit Stew
- Hunger Points: 10
- Saturation: 12
Rabbit Stew is one of the lesser well-known foods of Minecraft. It's pretty niche since rabbits aren't found commonly, with the exception of biomes like the desert biome or taiga variants. They sometimes spawn in snowy biomes and flower forests as well.
Rabbit Stew is made with cooked rabbit. Rabbits have a slight chance of dropping their meat when slain. The recipe also calls for one carrot and one baked potato. Both carrots and potatoes are typically grown by villagers. Finally, add in either a red or brown mushroom, as well as a wooden bowl, crafted from three wooden planks. It's a pretty expensive meal to make, but it does have excellent value.
Cooked Mutton
- Hunger Points: 6
- Saturation: 9.6
A classic food item in the game, Cooked Mutton is one of the several types of meat players can hunt down and cook in Minecraft. Simply find a herd of sheep, and kill them for Raw Mutton, and cook it. Sheep tend to spawn in a huge variety of biomes, from forests to plains to even swamp and mountain biomes, so they shouldn't be difficult to find.
Porkchop
- Hunger Points: 8
- Saturation: 12.8
Along with Cooked Mutton, Porkchops have been a staple in the game for quite some time, though much longer than Mutton. They are similarly easy to find since players only need to slay pigs and cook the Raw Porkchops in an oven. Pigs spawn extremely commonly, just like sheep. Forests, plains, mountains, and swamps are all good locations to start looking for pigs.
Cooked Salmon
- Hunger Points: 6
- Saturation: 9.6
Fish aren't the strongest food type in the game, but between Cod and Salmon, Salmon wins by a long shot. It's a type of fish players can fish for using a fishing rod. Once cooked, it yields pretty impressive hunger and saturation.
Salmon can be caught more frequently with an enchanted fishing rod. In particular, the Lure II enchantment is extremely handy for catching more fish.
Steak
- Hunger Points: 8
- Saturation: 12.8
By far the most popular food in Minecraft, Steak is a go-to for most players since cows provide so much utility. They produce milk, and also drop leather, which is needed for a complete enchantment table set up. As such, cow farms are the number one choice for players concerned with getting the most out of the game.
Cows spawn in various biomes, similar to pigs and sheep. Simply look for any forest or plains biome of any type, and eventually, players should come across a herd of them. Cooking their meat will produce Steak, which has solid hunger and saturation values, making it one of the best "normal" foods in the game.
Golden Carrot
- Hunger Points: 6
- Saturation: 14.4
Golden Carrots are the first of the three unnatural foods in Minecraft that have amazing utility. They require eight gold nuggets and one carrot to make. Carrots are found in village farms, while gold nuggets are dropped by gold ore in the Nether. It's also possible to find golden carrots in bastion Remnants or in ruined portal chests.
Golden Carrots are typically not eaten as they are, but rather used to make Night Vision potions. However, they also make a solid food option due to their high saturation. While the hunger points are lower than in some other great foods, the saturation makes up for it and ensures the player stays full for a longer time.
Golden Apple
- Hunger Points: 4
- Saturation: 9.6
While Golden Apples provide slightly above average value as food, they still rank above other foods due to the immense benefits they give in the form of status effects. Consuming a golden apple gives the player Absorption and Regeneration II, which makes them withstand incoming damage and regenerate their health faster.
Golden Apples are a fantastic food for tough boss fights or dungeon crawling in Minecraft. They can be crafted with an apple, which usually drops from oak trees, and eight gold ingots. Due to this, they are quite expensive to make. Luckily, they can also be found as loot in dungeons, mineshafts, desert temples, underwater ruins, bastion remnants in the Nether, and occasionally even ruined portal chests. They are also guaranteed loot in igloos with a basement.
Enchanted Golden Apple
- Hunger Points: 4
- Saturation: 9.6
Just like the regular Golden Apple, the Enchanted Golden Apple provides very average value as a food. However, what elevates it above every other food item are its special status effects that come in handy in tough fights or sticky situations. The Enchanted Golden Apple gives the player Absorption and Regeneration II, Absorption IV, Fire Resistance, and Resistance. Note that each status effect has its own timer.
It goes without saying that this version of the Golden Apple can't be crafted and is rarer to find in chests. It can be found in all the same places as regular Golden Apples, including dungeons, mineshafts, desert temples, underwater ruins, bastion remnants, and ruined portal chests. Players will need just a bit of luck to find one.
Minecraft was released on November 16, 2011, and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Apple TV, Android, iOS, and many other platforms.