Cooking is an essential activity in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. While exploring, Link must collect materials and ingredients from the world in order to make nutritious meals to refill his heart containers. Sometimes, a meal or elixer is needed to grant Link cold, fire, or lighting resistance so he can safely travel extreme terrain if he doesn't have the tunic for it. Some food grants extra buffs as well, like heightened stealth or increased attack.

Some of these ingredients can be consumed raw in order to heal, but to get the most out of your food, and to receive any buffs, you must cook it first.

How to Cook in Zelda

Step 1: Hunt and Gather
Link must have ingredients on hand before he can cook! To make a heart-refilling meal, hunt animals for meat and gather fruit, nuts, mushrooms, and vegetables. Animals are very wary of Link, so you need to be sneaky to get close enough to fire off a deadly arrow or throwing spear.?

If your aim is to make a stat-boosting or resistance-enhancing elixer, collect bugs, critters (like lizards), and monster parts from the enemies you defeat.?

If you don't know whether the material is meant for a recipe or an elixer, just check to see if it grants hearts and read its description. Food grants hearts (generally speaking), elixer ingredients do not.?

Step 2: Find a Cooking Pot and Fire

Try to remember where there are cooking pots for you to use in the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's world, especially ones nearby fast-travel points. If the pot's fire isn't lit, you'll either need to light a torch at a nearby fire and bring it to the pot, or place flint below it and strike it with a metal weapon to light it. You can find flint by breaking the glinting rocks jutting out of mountain walls with bombs or weapons.?

If it's raining, and it's uncovered, well... You'll just have to wait!?

Step 3: Cook!

With ingredients gathered and pot hot, it's time to cook! Go to your materials inventory and choose to hold an ingredient. From here, every item you select will automatically be held. Once you're holding everything you want to go into the pot, up to five ingredients, exit the menu and choose the cook option in front of the cooking pot.?

That's it, you've cooked!?

Things to Consider

Definitely take care when choosing your ingredients. Only put elixer ingredients in with elixers, and only choose yummy foodstuff to go with your food. How off-putting would it be to find a Keese eyeball or Moblin guts in your stew??

Also, when trying to make an elixer or recipe that gives you a buff, make sure you aren't choosing more than one type of buff at a time. If you do, the effects will cancel each other out and you'll get a plain, heart-restoring meal. You can choose different ingredients with buffs as long as they buff the same thing for an extra boost.?

Other Cooking Methods

Roasting

If you're in need of a quick health boost and there is no pot around, but you can find a more common fire, you can simply drop food items into the fire for a quick?roast.?Make sure to pick up the food quickly before it burns--you'll see it's name change in real time. Roasting doesn't grant as big as a health boost as cooking does, but it increases the ingredient's health benefits a little.?

Environmental Cooking

While in a hot volcano, you can drop food to have it quickly roast in the environment. In very cold areas, some food will flash-freeze into something even more delicious and beneficial to link.

Tricks

Some food can be roasted straight from the source. Hold a torch below apples to bake them right from the tree, for example. Get creative and tell us what you find!

For more on different materials and ingredients, see: Cooking, Materials, and Food