How to Cook Food in Valheim

Cooking food in Valheim is as simple as first finding some meat, building a fire, putting a cooking station over the fire and then throwing food on top.

Food will be absolutely necessary to your survival in this harsh world where enemies are lurking around every corner to defeat you. If you want to become Odin’s greatest warrior you are going to have to learn how to cook. The tl;dr is written above as the first paragraph but we will go into more detail with images in this guide if you are still having trouble cooking up a feast. (Or if you keep cooking coal.)


Items Required to Cook

To get started on your great feast in Valheim you are going to have to start from very humble beginnings. The first thing you are going to have to track down is a source of food. There are a few different edible types of meat at the beginning of your experience in Valheim. The easiest creature to hunt would have to be the Neck. These small lizard-like creatures live near the water and generally only take 1 or 2 hits from a club to take them down. They are guaranteed to drop at least 1 Neck Tail every time you take one down.

A boar from the game Valheim
A Boar from Valheim

Alternatively you could hunt down another animal such as a Boar or Deer. They will also drop some Raw Meat.


Building Up Your Cooking Area

Once you’ve defeated your tasty prey it’s time to get building. Craft yourself a Hammer using your crafting screen in your inventory. You can read all about building in Valheim here. Get yourself a Hammer and Right-click once you have it on your person. You should see a nice little building menu which shows some of the many items and structures you are able to build. We are looking for 2 items in this menu.

The first item we are looking for is the Campfire. You can find this labelled under Misc. If you try to build the Campfire but can’t, check the necessary requirements underneath, (it’s just wood and stone), and go and grab what you’re missing from natures bounty.

A campfire/fireplace in Valheim at night

Once you’ve got your Campfire down it should already be burning. You can always add more wood to the fire by simply having wood in your inventory and pressing the ‘E’ key by default.

Now it’s time to get that Hammer back out and head back to the build menu. Under the ‘Crafting’ tab you will find a cooking station. This simple stick design only takes 2 wood to build and doesn’t even require a Workbench to be nearby, which makes setting up a temporary camp a lot easier!

Select the cooking station and make sure you put the station right over the campfire, otherwise you won’t be able to cook. Once you have found the right spot put down the Cooking station. You now have everything you needed to start cooking in Valheim. So let’s get to it!

A cooking station over a campfire in Valheim
Greylings are scared of fire and will run away from Campfires and lit Torches

Now we have a cooking station ready to go! If you have meat anywhere in your inventory you can throw it on the cooking station by pressing the ‘E’ key whilst looking at it. The game will automatically prioritize the best quality meat from your inventory. To cook a specific item of your choosing you can drag it up to one of the quick bar slots at the top of your inventory. Once it is in one of these numbered inventory slots you can press the corresponding number to ‘use’ that item on the campfire which will cause it to start cooking.

Once you have started cooking the meat that is not the end however. Food can burn in Valheim and thus become inedible. You will have to keep a close eye on your food to make sure it does not burn. Once you first put your meat on the fire if you wait roughly 20 seconds you will hear a sizzle and some particle effect come off your meat. This means that the food is ready to be eaten.

Meat can be cooked at the cooking station
Cooked meat will be a slightly darker color than raw meat

You can press E again on the cooked meat to retrieve it from the fire. Be careful when collecting your meat from the fire as you can accidently walk onto the fire and take damage from burning.

If you have left the food on for too long it will become coal. That doesn’t mean it has gone to waste though! You will eventually need coal when using the Smelter so hang onto every resource you can in Valheim. It will all come in handy eventually!


That brings us to the end of this guide on how to cook in Valheim. Do you still have questions about cooking at the start of the game? Let me know in a comment below and I’ll help you through it. Keep fighting Viking warriors!

Related: Guide to Eikthyr – Valheim | Valheim Review

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