Perhaps unsurprisingly based upon its title, Don't Starve has a rich and complex cooking system. While the basic consumption of foodstuffs is all that is actually required to prevent your character from, well, starving, the game also allows you to transform basic ingredients into hearty meals by use of the crockpot. In doing so, one can craft all manner of strange and exotic foods that will not only placate their hunger, but their health and their sanity too.
In this article, I shall be dissecting which foods can be best utilised to ensure your prolonged survival. This means that I shan't just be judging them based only on their raw statistics, but also on other external factors, such as convenience, bonus traits and accessibility of ingredients. To access all of the foods mentioned on this list, you will be required to use a crockpot, which can be easily constructed with three cut stone, six charcoal, six twigs and a science machine.
In the interest of transparency, I have also discounted from this list any and all recipes that are exclusive to the chef character, Warly, and his personal cooking apparatus.
10. Spicy Vegetable Stinger
You've gotta eat your vegetables before you can have your dessert.
- +3 Health.
- +25 Hunger.
- +33 Sanity.
- Spoil time: 15 days.
Starting this list at number ten, we have the spicy vegetable stinger. While technically a blended drink as opposed to a food per say, this dish grants the player a small amount of hunger relief and an even smaller amount of health. Its main benefit though is that it improves your sanity by a significant amount, enabling you to completely counterbalance the sanity drain encountered at dusk, so long as you stick to drinking one per day.
Doing so can prove to be a little tricky, however, as it requires quite specific vegetables to create: the radish and / or the asparagus. While these are both fairly common crops to grow, there is still an element of chance that one must consider. It also demands that you use ice, an item of abundance during the winter but can be a little bit harder to obtain in other seasons.
Recipe: 1 radish/asparagus, 1 ice, 1.5 other vegetables (including radishes and asparagus). No filler ingredients can be used.
9. Meaty Stew
Who could say no to a comforting bowl of stew?
+12 Health
+150 Hunger
+5 Sanity
Spoil time: 10 days.
Up next is the meaty stew, a hearty dish that requires minimal effort to prepare and fills your belly with enough warmth to temporarily help you survive in the cold. As its name might suggest, the required ingredients are predominantly meat-based and obtaining them does not require much energy or time.
For your trouble, the meaty stew will increase your hunger metre by a whopping one hundred and fifty points. This means it can make a great meal to save you from starving when your hunger is running low. However, it has to also be considered that one hundred and fifty is the maximum hunger level for most characters, so unless your hunger is at zero you will be missing out on some of its benefits.
Recipe: Any amount of any meats with a value of 3 or higher. Can include monster meat (but only one). Filler can be anything, apart from twigs, honey, mandrakes or tallbird eggs.
8. Mandrake Soup
Believe it or not; mandrakes make for a nutritious broth.
+100 Health
+150 Hunger
+5 Sanity
Spoil time: 6 days.
Mandrake soup is an unappetising looking dish, but it undeniably packs a punch. By hugely increasing your health and your hunger, this meal is the Don't Starve equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card. Keeping one upon your person is strongly advised to any players thinking about taking on one of the games many boss battles.
The major downside here is that mandrakes themselves are a rare ingredient to come across - and are unfortunately also finite. Once one has been picked, it is then gone for good and will never, ever grow back. This means that you'll have to tread a little frugally, as mandrakes can also be used to create some other quite nifty items.
Recipe: 1 uncooked mandrake and then any other ingredients as filler. There is a small chance that using turkey legs will result in a turkey dinner instead, however.
7. Kabobs
What's tastier than a skewer of grilled meats and veggies?
+3 Health
+37 Hunger
+5 Sanity
Spoil time: 15 days.
Who doesn't enjoy a nice tasty kabob after a long day spent gathering? This humble dish is a jack-of-all-trades, giving you a pretty small but over time noticeable boost in all three of your survival metres.
Why have kabobs been included on this list then? Mainly due to the sheer abundance of twigs.
Due to the fact that twigs (as well as grass) constitute the bread and butter of the games building mechanics, there's a fairly safe bet that you will always be carrying at least a few upon your person. This makes kabobs extremely simple and convenient to prepare on a whim, meaning that you can carry on exploring for that little bit longer.
Recipe: Any meat(s), with the addition of 1 twig. If using monster meat, then use a maximum of only 1.
6. Bacon and Eggs
This pigman quakes in fear as he realises that he will be used as an ingredient in Wilson's next meal!
+20 Health
+75 Hunger
+5 Sanity
Spoil time: 20 days.
What better way to start your day than with a classic breakfast staple - the simple yet satisfying bacon and eggs. By consuming a plate of these as the dawn begins to break, you can ensure that your character will go into the new day with a helpful boost. And better still, both of the two ingredients required are fairly easy to come by - especially after you set yourself up with a birdcage that can produce an almost infinite amount of eggs.
Without that birdcage however, obtaining eggs can prove to be a little trickier. While tallbird eggs will also suffice in lieu of the more traditional variety, pinching them from out of their nests requires some degree of skill and nuance. And besides, even if you do manage to nab one, there are arguably much better uses for them - such as the tall scotch egg.
Recipe: 2 eggs (or just one tallbird egg), and then meats of a minimum value of 1.5. You can use twigs as filler if you like, but no vegetables.
5. Trail Mix
The perfect snack to keep you going for a long day of adventuring.
+30 Health
+12 Hunger
+5 Sanity
Spoil time: 15 days.
A bag of trail mix may not sound like the most efficient way to keep yourself fed, but what it may lack in terms of its stats, it more than makes up for in its convenience. In fact, you can make this entire dish by using just two ingredients, birchnuts and berries; both of which are commonly found in the game world. And as if there wasn’t already enough of an incentive; birchnuts are obtained by chopping down fully grown birchnut trees, meaning that you will also gather more wood as you do so.
The only real downside of trail mix is that its hunger and sanity benefits are somewhat lacking. But as long as you are primarily using it as something to heal with - and not something to keep you fed - then this shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Recipe: 1 roasted birchnut (the roasting of which can be done easily over a fire) and then berries. Fruit, twigs and honey can also be used as a filler - but no meats or vegetables.
4. Dragonpie
This not-so-classic dessert is intriguing to say the least...
+40 Health
+75 Hunger
+5 Sanity
Spoil time: 15 days.
The slightly unorthodox sounding dragonpie has made it to fourth spot on this list due to its extreme versatility. Provided you have a dragon fruit, you can pretty much throw in whatever else you want and the resulting outcome will be the same. And, oh, what an outcome it is!
A serving of dragonpie will increase your health metre by forty, making it an extremely valuable source of healing. As well as this, it will also raise your hunger metre by a respectable seventy-five, which more than constitutes a decent sized meal.
The only downside, however, is that it does require a dragon fruit upfront, which in itself can be difficult to initially obtain. Granted, once you build yourself a birdcage then dragon fruit seeds do become easier to ensure, but getting your hands on one can still prove to be a little inconvenient.
Recipe: 1 dragonfruit and then 3 non-meat filler foods, including twigs.
3. Taffy
Who said that candy wasn't good for you?
-3 Heath
+25 Hunger
+15 Sanity.
Spoil time: 15 days
When faced up against the seemingly endless and unrelenting terrors that the Constant throws at you, it can be difficult to maintain morale. Taffy is proof, however, that it really is the little things that make all the difference.
This indulgent confectionary helps improve characters' ever draining sanity, making all of those hardships that little bit more bearable. While the boost received isn’t exactly drastic, it is still certainly a helpful prod in the right direction. Just make sure that you don’t let it’s very minor health penalty catch you out!
Fortunately, taffy is also very convenient to produce, requiring only a steady supply of honey as its main ingredient. And once you have a bee box ready and built, you’ll soon have more honey than you know what to do with. Honey in its raw form spoils at an incredibly slow rate too, meaning you can stockpile in abundance and then quickly whip up some taffy whenever you need.
Recipe: At least 3 honey, and 1 non-meat filler - which can be twigs or even more honey!
2. Pierogi
Who'd have thought that a humble dumpling could spell the different between life and death?
+40 Health
+37.5 Hunger
+5 Sanity
Spoil time: 20 days.
Pierogies are considered by many as something of a delicacy in the real world - and so it goes without saying that this also rings true in the world of Don’t Starve. This delectable dish is a great all-rounder, useful for health and hunger alike.
While it may not have stats quite as high as the dragonpie, it takes the penultimate position due to its required ingredients, all of which are far easier to obtain. Once you have your base set up with a birdcage and a few farms, you can essentially make perogies on demand, with little to no time or effort. This makes them a valuable mid-game comfort food.
As well as this, the pierogi also takes a fairly long time to spoil, meaning you can cook up a batch in bulk and save them from later uses. Due to their healing benefits, a player armed with a sackful of perogies might never have to worry about battling mobs again - in theory.
Recipe: 1 egg, 1 meat, 1 vegetable and one filler. Filler can be an additional any from the aforementioned food groups, as long as it isn’t a twig.
1. Meatballs
Meatballs remain the unsung hero of Don't Starve's cuisine.
+3 Health
+62 Hunger
+5 Sanity
Spoil time: 10 days.
Let’s face it; there was never any competition for the top spot on this list, as the mighty meatball is and always will be the best of the best. While they aren’t particularly glamorous, this substantial dish is guaranteed to form the basis of almost every players diet, due to the minimal effort that goes into making them.
To cut a long story short, you can make meatballs out of almost anything. Provided that you throw at least one morsel of meat into the mix, then the rest of it basically makes itself and it won't be long before you are presented with a steaming hot pile of meaty little stomach fillers. A serving of meatballs twice a day is all that you will ever need to prevent yourself from starving, which in many respects is the entire focus of the game.
While they won't be winning any awards for their contributions towards health or sanity, the meatball doesn’t have to; winning us over instead with its sheer convenience. And when it comes to a game like Don’t Starve, time really is key.
Recipe: Any amount of meat with a value below three, and / or any other filler (except for twigs).
