As a sequel to Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom bears many similarities to it's critically acclaimed predecessor and is already receiving a lot of praise. Essentially, it takes everything that Breath of the Wild did and improves significantly upon it. Many systems and mechanics from Breath of the Wild have returned for the sequel.
One of the first things players get introduced to early on in Tears of the Kingdom is cooking. For those who played Breath of the Wild, cooking works pretty much the same way while also including some wonderful quality of life features. Here is how to cook food in Tears of the Kingdom.
How to Cook
While exploring the tutorial area known as the Great Sky Island, players will be introduced to a wide variety of mechanics that they will need to know as they begin their quest to find Zelda. After learning about combat and targeting, players will come across a friendly mechanical entity nearby a fire. In order to cook over just a fire, players must open their inventory and navigate to the Materials tab.
From there, select an ingredient like an Apple or Skyshroom. Aside from eating it, there is an option to hold the ingredient. Players can hold up to a maximum of five ingredients. Once holding ingredients, press 'B' to return to the game. Then drop the ingredients into the fire and wait. After a few seconds, the ingredient will transform into food.
Bear in mind, however, that simply dropping ingredients onto a fire has very limited results and only one ingredient can be used. In order to make food with more than one ingredient, players will need to find a fire that has a pot over it.
With a pot, players can drop up to five ingredients in and cook meals that are otherwise not possible when just utilizing a fire. For example, holding both an Apple and a Skyshroom and then dropping them into the pot creates a Fruit and Mushroom Mix. There is also a portable cooking pot that players get later on in the game.
What Are the Benefits of Cooking?
In previous Legend of Zelda games, players healed by finding hearts in grass and pots. Alternatively, potions and fairies could be stored in bottles and used for healing as well. However, in both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom the most efficient and reliable method for healing is by cooking food. Again using the example above, making a Fruit and Mushroom Mix restores a heart and a half.
There are ingredients scattered across Hyrule that have a variety of effects as well. In addition to restoring hearts, some ingredients used for cooking will restore Stamina while others will provide resistance to heat and cold in certain environments. One new feature introduced in Tears of the Kingdom is recipes, which allows players to see how to make recipes they have previously discovered.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now on the Nintendo Switch.