PSA: Here's how to cook in Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Cut down a field's worth of grass and still can't find any recovery hearts in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? You never will. In this post-apocalyptic Hyrule, foraging and cooking are the only reliable ways to keep your health meter topped off. Breath of the Wild throws a ton of new concepts at you in its first hour so don't feel bad if you missed out on how to make your own meals - here's how to get cooking.

Gather your ingredients

First, you'll need something to cook. You can forage for mushrooms, climb trees to pick apples, go bow fishing (it's easier than it sounds), or hunt game in the forest to get started. You can eat many ingredients raw if you're hurting, but you'll get a lot more nutrition (read: hearts) from cooked food.

Light your fire

Next, head to a campfire with a pot over it. Open flames won't do you any good for making food, though you can use one to light a torch or other wooden weapon if you need to get your cooking fire started. Go into the "Materials" section of your inventory, hit "X" to enter Hold mode, and pick ingredients with "A". Here's where the magic happens: you can hold up to five items at once and there's no recipe book to follow. Grab an armful of ingredients, toss it into the pot, and see what happens!

Fine tune your recipe

If your food keeps turning out kinda funky, make sure you're not mixing elixir ingredients with cooking ingredients. Each item's description will tell you whether it's meant for making food or elixirs but here's a rule of thumb: monsters usually drop elixir stuff, while larger animals drop food stuff. Smaller animals like frogs and bugs tend to be used for elixirs but again, you can check their descriptions to make sure.

Wait, what's all this about elixirs? Instead of life-giving hearts, they bestow useful effects like better stealth or faster movement speed for a limited time. You make them the exact same way you do food. Just don't mix the two types of ingredients! And make sure to check out the rest of our Zelda: Breath of the Wild tips.

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