Some of the best recipes in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom will help you out of a tight bind. Whether you’ve found yourself in an icy region without a warm coat, on the side of a cliff too tired to reach the top, or in a boss fight you are too weak to win, a well-picked dish can boost your stats enough to overcome your ability deficiency.
As in Breath of the Wild, the best recipes in Tears of the Kingdom require key ingredients that you forage in Hyrule. Combine these stat-boosting ingredients with neutral foods that have no special qualities – like Hylian Shrooms, Raw Meat, or Hyrule Bass – in a cooking pot and end up with food that heals and buffs you.
Below you’ll find the ingredients to look out for that give you the bonuses you are most likely to need while adventuring in Hyrule. You’ll want to pick these up whenever you find them to make the best recipes in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
Best recipes in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
Below, you'll find some of the best recipes and ingredients to try out in Tears of the Kingdom. These range from dishes that will give you stat boosts, to those that will improve your combat abilities.
Anti-Gloom recipes
If you go exploring under Hyrule in the dark depths opened up after waking Ganondorf, one of the main dangers you will face is gloom. If you get too close, this toxic purple spill will corrupt your heart containers. Once corrupted, you won’t be able to heal those hearts until you return to the surface or make your way to one of the Lightroots that dot the underland. And, as many of the gloom-filled enemies you face in the depths will not just damage you with your attacks but corrupt your heart containers, too, exploring the depths can become something of a war of attrition.
Happily, you have two ways to counter gloom with recipes: gloom resistance and gloom healing. The former slows the impact of gloom, saving your hearts from being corrupted in the first place, and the latter will reverse the damage without a trip back to the surface.
For gloom resistance, you’ll need an ingredient called Dark Clump, which you can get by trading ten poes with the bargainer statue in Lookout Landing. Poes are the small blue flames you find in the depths below Hyrule. Mix the ingredient with neutral foods, and you’ll create a meal that slows the corrupting impact of walking in the gloom. It won’t, however, diminish the gloom you receive when hit by a gloom-corrupted enemy.
To undo the damage of gloom without visiting a lightroot or returning to the surface, which you may find particularly useful if you want to know how to beat Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom, you’ll need an ingredient called Sundelion. This flower can be found on many of the sky islands floating above Hyrule. Mix it with neutral foods, and you’ll make recipes that restore your heart containers to normal – though you’ll still need to consume healing items to regain that health.
Cold-resistance recipes
Much like in Breath of the Wild, cold weather is one of the most persistent threats in Tears of the Kingdom. When you find yourself in a snowbound region of Hyrule, you’ll find your health sapped by the biting winds. If you aren’t equipped with some of the best armor in Tears of the Kingdom, then you can lean on some handy recipes to boost your resistance to cold, letting you explore the icier parts of Hyrule freely.
Keeping warm is relatively straightforward; you need to find some Spicy Peppers. These red chillis grow throughout cold regions and often come in bushels of three, so if you see them in the wild, you’ll have enough to make a batch of warming foods.
Combine a spicy pepper with a neutral ingredient, such as apples, meat, or fish, to create food that gives you cold resistance. You can even cook the peppers on their own to make sautéed peppers and get that warming boost.
Damage-boosting recipes
When fighting Zelda Tears of the Kingdom’s bosses, you may need a little performance enhancer to give them a whooping. It’s nothing to be ashamed of: we’re not competing in the Olympics here, we’re battling for the future of Hyrule itself – doping is fine.
There are many ingredients around Hyrule that you can include in recipes that will increase the damage your attacks deal. The key word you’re looking for is ‘Mighty’ – such as Mighty Banana and Mighty Thistle. Other reagents, like Bladed Rhino Beetles, can boost your attack, too, but the plants are easier to come by.
You can find both Mighty Bananas and Mighty Thistles on Hyrule’s south coast in the Faron region. As they don’t grow all over, it may be worth doing a big farming session to stuff your stocks with the damage-boosting ingredients.
Combine Mighty ingredients with neutral ingredients, such as meat, fish, or mushrooms, to create a food that will raise your attack damage.
Stamina recipes
If you have a particularly daunting climb ahead, you should stock up on stamina recovery and stamina bonus recipes. Like mixing Lucozade with espresso, these quick-fix edibles will give you an energy boost (and probably leave you quite sick and with a heart rate that doctors would worry about).
Stamina Recovery recipes are straightforward tools, chow down on one when your stamina ring is low, and it will refill with green, allowing you to continue your strenuous activity without pause. You make a stamina recovery recipe by combining a neutral ingredient with Courser Bee Honey, Staminoka Bass, Bright-Eyed Crab, Stamella Shroom, or Stambulbs. Stamella Shrooms and Stambulbs are the ones you’ll find most easily. The mushrooms grow in woods and caves all over Hyrule, and the bulbs on all the big sky islands.
Stamina Bonus recipes increase the size of your stamina ring, growing the energy pool you can use. To make one of these recipes, you’ll need to find an Endura Carrot, which you can find growing on the Satori Mountain, south of Hyrule Ridge, or an Endura Shroom, which you can find growing on the North Tabantha Sky Archipelago. As with the Stamina Recovery recipes, combine these reagents with neutral ingredients to make these foods.
Defense-boosting recipes
I don’t know if it’s age or incompetence, but I’m not very good at dodging anymore. This increasing slowness has left me more than once with a face full of Bokoblin club. It’s got to the point where I’ve accepted I will get hit and focus instead on reducing the damage I receive. I wear armor and upgrade it to increase its defense stat as much as I can, and in big fights, I chow down on a few toughening foods.
The key ingredients for developing thick skin are Armoranth, Ironshroom, and Fortified Pumpkins. Armoranth is a plant that grows in the east and northeast of Hyrule, you can find Ironshroom all over the southeast of Hyrule, and an easy place to find Fortified Pumpkins is a patch in Kakariko Village.
As with so many other recipes, combine these reagents with a neutral ingredient, like meat, fish, or mushrooms, to make a recipe that will bring out the defense-boosting stat.
