Breath of the Wild may not be a cooking simulator, but it certainly packs a walloping amount of in-game recipes - seventy-eight, to be exact. BOTW’s Hyrule is plentiful with fresh ingredients, including vegetables, fruit, dairy products, fish, animals, and various meats. Cooking pots are also easily found throughout Hyrule, with pots at horse stables, towns, and enemy camps for easy access. While quite a few of the digital recipes Link can whip up appear mouthwatering in reality, there are some The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild recipes that require pretty weird ingredient combinations.
Unfortunately, Breath of the Wild doesn’t have any features that let Link save all of the different meal and elixir recipes in the Hyrule Compendium. This means that unless players have a few solid recipes memorized or are willing to look some up, Link is most likely going to be winging it in the kitchen depending on what ingredients are available, which begs the question - is it better to memorize recipes in games with cooking like BOTW or Stardew Valley, or just throw ingredients together through trial and error? At the end of the day, as long a meal isn’t pixelated dubious food, even the stranger Hyrule recipes are still going to provide a benefit to Link.
Some of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's ingredients give clues as to what purpose they would serve in a dish. Ingredients that have hearty in the name will provide extra hearts. Energizing ingredients help restore stamina faster, and Enduring ingredients provide additional stamina. Other ingredients have temperature-based boosts or fighting and defense boosts. Paying attention to ingredient names, such as mighty bananas, is critical for meal-prepping with purpose in BOTW.
BOTW Monster Parts Make Monster Meals
Depending on the ingredients Breath of the Wild players cook with, meals can provide health boosts or health boosts and stat boosts combined. Elixirs, on the other hand, will only provide either the health or stat boost respectively, not both. Elixirs, similar in appearance to bottled potions, are made up of some questionable ingredients depending on player choice. Every elixir recipe is broken down into two basic parts: a monster part + an animal. The monster part can be any piece that is collected from defeated monsters. Lucky for Link, BOTW’s Bokoblin AI is more likely to hurt themselves than pose a major threat.
The specific animal used in an elixir will change the intended effect based on the type of animal. For example, brewing up a hinox toenail and a fireproof lizard in BOTW will create a fireproof elixir that protects Link from fire. A toenail and lizard beverage most certainly is an odd combination for anyone to think of stomaching. Since all of the elixir recipes follow this formula, Link can be brewing up some fairly nasty concoctions in Breath of the Wild depending on what monster bits and animals are chosen, such as lynel guts and sneaky river snails for a stealth boost.
Monster meal recipes is another strange category of food in BOTW, which is distinguished by their purple coloring. To make any of the monster meals Link will need a special ingredient called monster extract from Kilton’s shop Fang and Bone. Swapping in monster extract to a select few normal recipes can yield up to five different monster meals. These recipes certainly beg the following questions: what exactly is monster extract, why is it purple, and what does it taste like? Strange but charming details like these are just one of many smart BOTW development decisions that make the game great.
Besides cooking up questionable monster bits, there are a few other examples of some odd meals Link can chow down on in Breath of the Wild. Cook together gemstones and wood and players have rock-hard food, which appears to be a literal pile of rocks. Regular fairy tonic can be made by cooking a fairy with any gem, monster, or animal part. Link can hold up to four fairies at a time, and cooking them all together results in a bonus fairy tonic that provides full heart recovery - a very useful in-game item if BOTW players don’t think too much about boiling together magical creatures.
Whether the ability to cook meals will carry over to BOTW 2 may not be a top lingering question for the Breath of the Wild sequel, but having more opportunities to test Link’s culinary abilities would likely be appreciated in the follow-up to Breath of the Wild.