Stardew Valley: Here’s How To Eat

Stardew Valley is an extremely open-ended game. This means that while there are certain goals you need to reach, it’s up to you how you will do it. We’re aware by now that we can craft, build, explore, and interact with various NPCs. We can also consume various food items that we prepare ourselves our find throughout the world. Having said that, while eating is one of the options, how do you do it? In today’s guide, we’re going to cover how to eat in Stardew Valley and what are the benefits of it?

Do you need to eat in Stardew Valley?

Eating in Stardew Valley is optional, and you don’t really have to do it at all. However, if you decide to skip meals, you will lose some benefits. Eating provides you with numerous buffs, depending on what you’ve eaten, and restores energy. Energy is required to do tasks and undergo various jobs in Stardew Valley. It’s always a good idea to bring food if you plan a mining expedition or you’re planning to work on your farm the whole day.

While no food meter is implemented in the game, an energy meter affects everything you do, from using various tools to interacting with the world. The main way to restore energy is to simply go to sleep, and this is not always an option since we want to utilize the day to the fullest. Having said that, we’ve got another option at our disposal, eating.

Not all food items will have beneficial effects, some like, for example, sap, will cause us to lose energy. Eating sap is like eating poison, and it will make us weaker. The same goes for void mayonnaise. Most food items will simply replenish our energy and health by a certain % and some will give us powerful buffs. Luck lunch, for example, provides us with +100 energy, +45 health, and a +3 boost to luck. Beat Hotpot restores +125 energy and +56 health, boosts our maximum energy for 30 points, and gives a +32 points boost to magnetism.

The amount of energy and health that will be restored, as well as any buff provided, depends on the ingredients required to cook the meal and the overall difficulty of the recipe.

A fried egg is relatively easy to make, and it requires only a single egg to prepare. Thus it’s not surprising that it restores only a small portion of health and energy. Tropical Curry, on the other hand, requires 1x coconut, 1x pineapple, and 1x hot pepper, but it also gives you a foraging buff and significantly more energy and health than a mere fried egg. As you can see, more effort and ingredients result in better rewards when it comes to cooking.

How do you cook and eat in Stardew Valley?

Now that we’ve covered why beneficial is eating in Stardew Valley, it’s time to cover how to do it.
You can eat in Stardew Valley by following these steps:

1. Start by placing food items in your hotbar.
2. Once you’ve done that, you need to select them or rather “hold them in your hand.”
3. While holding the food item, right-click anywhere on the screen, and a prompt will appear asking you whether you want to consume the food item.
4. Click yes. You can observe your energy and health recharging.

You can eat most crops, fruits, animal products, foraged goods, fish, etc., without cooking them first. However, in that case, you will not enjoy the full benefits as you would if you used the ingredients in a full recipe. You can unlock the full potential of an ingredient by cooking it. You can start cooking in Stardew Valley as soon as you unlock the first upgrade for the farmhouse.

Upgrading your farmhouse will unlock the kitchen, which will provide you with a stove and fridge. A stove is used to prepare the food, and a fridge is used to store prepared food. The fridge acts like an extension of your inventory, so it means that you don’t need to place the ingredients from the fridge directly in your inventory to use them in cooking.

Similarly, you can unlock a “cookout kit” as soon as you reach level 9 foraging, to cook anywhere, even while you’re on the go. To prepare food, you need both equipment and recipes. Recipes are unlocked as you progress through the game. So far, there are 80 recipes implemented in the game.

Prepared meals can serve as both nourishment and gifts for other NPCs. Certain prepared meals can significantly raise your relationship with other NPCs, depending on the quality of the meal and whether the NPC in question simply “likes” the meal or “loves” it. The quality of the meal depends on the quality of the ingredients used to prepare the meal.

Summary

As you can see, eating and preparing food in Stardew Valley is easy, but if you plan on unlocking powerful buffs, you’re going to have to spend time and rare ingredients on it. Cooking is also used to raise relationships with NPCs, as most of them have certain meals that they like to receive as gifts. However you look at it, while it’s not obligatory, cooking and eating can only make your game easier, and besides, it adds extra realism and immersion to the game.

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