Winter is weird. The snow makes the farm inactive, so there are no crops to cook with during this season of Stardew Valley cooking. And yet, look a little closer below the surface. Winter is a season that forces you to be more creative when it comes to gathering ingredients. Forage for roots, head into the mines, or embrace the best source of food in winter – fishing!
Winter is a fantastic season to grind through the mines or up your fishing skills. With the farm inactive, you suddenly have loads of time on your hands. But – I hear you ask, where do I find the right ingredients for winter if I can’t use the farm? What am I looking for when I’m fishing or foraging? And how do I make the dishes I need for the right buffs? And how do I make the last few recipes to get the penultimate reward, the Gourmet Chef achievement?
For all those questions, you came to the right place! This Stardew Valley cooking guide series contains four parts, one for every season. Every section also features the best ingredient to save up for use in other seasons. Since winter has no crop growth, it’s by far the most barren of Stardew Valley’s seasons for cooking. That’s why this guide is in reality two guides.
If you’re familiar with the guide structures, you know that at the end of every guide I include a little section with dishes you can also make in that season. Winter has a few of that too, but there’s also loads of dishes that you can make in every season. So as a gift to you, dear reader, this guide also includes a section on “Year-rounds,” dishes that you can make whatever the weather! So with that introduction, let’s get cooking in the season of nature’s slumber – winter!
In the meantime, why not check out some of our other guides on Stardew Valley? Cooking is great – but it’s not all there is to the valley!
Stardew Valley Cooking: Winter’s Best Ingredients to Save for Later
Squid
Winter’s greatest treasure.
Squids are one of the very few winter exclusives for cooking in Stardew Valley. And what an ingredient it is! Plenty of high-quality dishes feature squid. Furthermore, squids can produce squid ink, provided you put them in a pond. This is a pretty rare catch, though. They only appear in the ocean, during evenings and nights. So oceanside is the perfect place to finish up your winter day!
Sea Cucumber
Yes, you can get them in summer too. But in winter you have way more time.
Sea cucumbers are not exclusive to winter, but this season is a pretty good one to hunt for them. Since your farm is inactive, you’ll have some time on your hand. Why not try and get some? They’re featured in some great dishes, like the lucky lunch. Like the squid, they’re in the ocean – so you’re going to spend quite some time there!
Winter Roots
Let’s carry the roots platter out of winter!
The winter root is the only foragable crop from winter that features in any recipe. But what a recipe! The roots platter is a phenomenal dish for combat, that’s way too good to just let rot away in winter. Definitely spend some time stacking up on these little roots – they’re going to help you in the long run.
Cave Carrot
Again, winter is the right time to go looking for these.
Same story as with the sea cucumber – the cave carrot is not exclusive to winter. However, winter is the right season to actively start looking for them. It’s easy to run out of cave carrots, and they’re really quite useful. With farming gone, an ingredient that gives mining and combat buffs is a welcome one.
Tuna
Fishing? Winter! Match made in heaven!
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Tuna also shows up in summer, but you’ll have more time to catch it during winter. It’s a pretty simple catch too – just head for the ocean (as usual) between 6 AM and 7 PM, and fish away. You’ll be golden when tuna recipe season rolls along!
Winter Dishes
Fried Calamari
Almost all winter dishes rely on squid.
Difficulty of getting Easy |
Difficulty of making Medium |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Squid
- 1 Wheat flour
- 1 Oil
How to get the recipe:
- Reach 3 hearts friendship with Jodi
Get a squid, that’s all there’s to it! If you’ve read some of the other parts of this guide, you’ll know how easy it is to get oil and wheat flour. But in case you’ve control+f’d your way here (which makes sense), I’ll quickly repeat it. You can make wheat flour and oil through a mill and an oil press, from common crops like wheat and corn respectively. Alternatively, you can just buy them from Pierre.
That leaves the squid, which is probably winter’s secret treasure. Squids aren’t the easiest to catch, but fortunately, they’re quite common this season. Simply head out to the ocean and start fishing between 6 PM and 2 AM. The dish doesn’t restore that much health, but it’s a nice refresher that’s pretty simple to make. Especially in a season where supplies will likely run low pretty quickly.
Roots Platter
This dish is way too good to be limited to winter.
| Difficulty of gettingEasy |
Difficulty of making Very Easy |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Cave carrot
- 1 Winter root
How to get the recipe:
- Reach Combat level 3
Hah, winter’s greatest dish! I’m not kidding. The roots platter, in terms of buffs at least, feels out of place in this season. With its +3 attack, it’s a crucial dish to take with you when you go engage powerful foes deep in one of Stardew Valley’s many mines. Cooking it is pretty simple too. It only requires two ingredients, and it’s quite simple to unlock.
Combat level 3 is just a matter of slaying loads of foes. Once you’ve done so, scour the land for cave carrots and winter roots. Cave carrots are an easy find during every season, by simply searching wood crates in the mine or by digging patches of dirt there. Winter roots aren’t tricky to get, either. When you use your hoe on an artifact spot during winter, there’s a 17 to 24% chance you’ll get one. Better stack up on them, because winter is the only time you can get them! Once you’ve got them both, mash them together for one of the best dishes in the game.
Seafoam Pudding
It’s opposite day!
Difficulty of getting Very Hard |
Difficulty of makingVery Hard |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Flounder
- 1 Midnight carp
- 1 Squid ink
How to get the recipe:
- Reach Fishing level 9
Wait…what? No, but seriously, what’s with this dish? It’s such a strange one, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s very tough to get the recipe. To get it, you need fishing level 9. That’s going to take time, to say the least. What’s stranger though, is that absolutely everyone hates it. Everyone, except Willy and Krobus for some reason. Two of the most difficult people in Stardew Valley when it comes to cooking.
The dish itself does offer some very powerful buffs. With its +4 fishing buff, it makes the dish o’ the sea look like a cheap ripoff. However, it’s a little trickier to make. The flounder is the simplest. Fish in the ocean (or Ginger Island) between 6 AM and 8 PM during spring or fall. Midnight carp is one level trickier. You have to fish between 10 PM and 2 AM in either the mountain lake, the forest pond, or the freshwater sections of Ginger Island. That leaves the squid ink, which you can get in two main ways. You can put squids in a fish pond, after which they’ll start to produce it, or you can hunt for it. Squid Kids in the mines and Blue Squids both drop it. All and all, lots of work for one of the weirdest cooking recipes in Stardew Valley.
Squid Ink Ravioli
For those of you who are scared of debuffs!
| Difficulty of gettingVery Hard |
Difficulty of makingMedium |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Squid ink
- 1 Wheat flour
- 1 Tomato
How to get the recipe:
- Reach Combat level 9
Another pretty difficult squid dish. At least some people like this one. This dish is particularly notable for having its unique buff – the Squid Ink Ravioli Buff. This prevents you from suffering any stat drops while it’s active. So if you ever have to take on a segment where loads of enemies drop your stats, make sure to take a squid ink ravioli with you! It will take a while before you can make it, though.
Locked behind combat level 9, this recipe takes loads of slaying before it’s unlocked. Once you have it though, the meal is quite simple to prepare. Grab a tomato that you may have saved from summer, buy some wheat flour (or use some that you’ve got stored) and add squid ink. You can get squid ink by having squids produce it in a pond, or by slaying either Squid Kids in the mines or Blue Squids in the dangerous mines. It’s not the easiest recipe, but it has one of the most clear-cut use cases for almost any dish in the entire game.
Stardew Valley Cooking: Dishes You Can Also Make in Winter
Wow, you can make more dishes in winter? You bet. Not all dishes in Stardew Valley are clear-cut for cooking categorization per season! Some of them require ingredients that you have to grow or catch in other seasons. Some dishes are perfect year-round evergreens, available in every season. Others require ingredients that are easier to get in different seasons. Here’s a list of recipes that aren’t made for winter, but that you can still prepare during the season of nature’s slumber!
Baked Fish | Banana Pudding | Crispy Bass | Lucky Lunch | Maple Bar | Rice Pudding
Of course, that’s not all. There are some dishes that you can always make. Whatever the weather, these dishes are the evergreens of Stardew Valley cooking! So let’s dive into them!
Year-Round Dishes
Algae Soup
At least it’s simple to whip together!
| Difficulty of gettingEasy |
Difficulty of makingVery Easy |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 4 Green Algae
How to get the recipe:
- Reach 3 hearts friendship with Clint
4 green algae. Seems pretty simple right? If you’ve played Stardew Valley, chances are you have plenty of these without even looking for them! They come from everywhere – fishing, garbage cans, even green slimes drop them. Thankfully, these slimy items make for a pretty good soup, that you can easily make once you decide to finally give some love to Clint.
As with many dishes in Stardew Valley, the simpler dishes often don’t yield the highest returns. That’s true for this dish as well. With only 75 energy and 33 health, don’t expect to work any miracles with this dish. However, for the low price it costs to make this dish, it’s a very nice refresher should you need one.
Carp Surprise
Difficulty of getting Hard |
Difficulty of makingMedium |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 4 Green Algae
How to get the recipe:
- Queen of the Sauce, Summer 7, Year 2
I always knew that this categorization was going to make some awkward fits. The carp surprise is probably the most awkward one since winter is the only season in which you can’t easily make it. Like the algae soup, carp surprise consists of four identical ingredients: carp. Carp is a pretty common fish. It shows up in the mountain lake during spring, summer, and fall, and consists of about 50% of all fish caught in the secret woods.
You’ll have plenty of time to catch the carp. The recipe only shows up at the start of summer in year 2, so you’ll have to play the waiting game for a while. The dish really isn’t notable. It restores a little health and energy, but whoever just has 4 carp lying around? Well, at least it’s a nice way to dispose of excessive carp, should you ever have to.
Chowder
Always a solution if you’re feeling hungry. Or fishy!
| Difficulty of gettingEasy |
Difficulty of makingEasy |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Clam
- 1 Milk
How to get the recipe:
- Reach 3 hearts friendship with Willy
Finally, the first all-season dish that’s truly worth preparing! Aside from its lengthy (albeit small) fishing buff, this dish restores a ton of health, especially given how easy it is to make. 225 energy and 101 health are over triple the boost an algae soup gives you! And all you have to do is be nice to Willy. Pro-tip, don’t try to sway him with food, it generally won’t work.
Once you have the recipe, you can easily make loads of this dish. If you have a functional barn, your milk supply should be pretty steady. All you need to do then is go to the beach and look for clams. You can use crab pots to get more of them, but foraging will get you plenty already. Enjoy this great dish that you can make whenever you please!
Crab Cakes
If you have a crab, I want you to think about making crab cakes!
| Difficulty of gettingHard |
Difficulty of makingMedium |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Crab
- 1 Wheat flour
- 1 Egg
- 1 Oil
How to get the recipe:
- Queen of the Sauce, Fall 21, Year 2
Oohoo, another great dish! This one might seem daunting at first – 4 different ingredients?! But look closer, and it’s really only 1. Eggs are in steady supply once you have a coop, so they shouldn’t give you much trouble. Wheat and oil are a little more challenging to make yourself, but you can always buy them from Pierre if you ran out. That leaves crab, the only real ingredient of this dish.
Crabs are a common catch in crab pots (in salt water, at least), but they’re even more common as drops from rock crabs or lava crabs in the mines. However you may obtain one, definitely save them for crab cakes. With its large health and energy replenishment and nice speed and defense buff, this dish is certainly a keeper. Good things are worth waiting for, and you’re going to have to do plenty of waiting. This dish only shows up at the end of fall in year 2.
Fried Egg
They really don’t come much simpler than this.
| Difficulty of gettingHard |
Difficulty of makingVery Easy |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Egg
How to get the recipe:
- Upgraded farmhouse
Okay, dishes don’t really come more straightforward than this one. In real life, a fried egg is one of the simplest recipes for cooking, and in Stardew Valley that isn’t any different. All you need is a single egg, which you can easily get when you have a coop and at least one chicken. To get the recipe, you need to upgrade your farmhouse. That costs 10000 gold, quite a pricey amount when you first start, but you can do it in one or two seasons. I’m not going to spend too many words on this one – just make sure you check out the complete breakfast before you eat the fried egg.
Ginger Ale
It’s a year-round dish because it’s difficult to get regardless of the season.
| Difficulty of gettingVery Hard |
Difficulty of makingVery Hard |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 3 Ginger
- 1 Sugar
How to get the recipe:
- Purchase it from the Dwarf Shop in the Volcano Dungeon for 1000 gold
Sadly, not all dishes come as easy as fried eggs. Ginger ale is an excellent recipe, maybe one of the best in the entire game, but it’s going to cost you some work. The reason it’s so good is due to how drinks work in Stardew Valley. Drink buffs stack with food buffs. If you eat one dish and then another, you’ll lose the buffs of the first dish. If you eat a dish and then drink something, the drink buff stacks with the food buff. So combine it with a lucky lunch, for instance, and you’re looking at a +4 luck buff. That’s going to be a great day for you, I’m sure of it.
Of course, great dishes take work. You can only get the recipe from the Dwarf shop in the Volcano Dungeon on Ginger Island. Getting there takes a lot of time and work, so check out our Ginger Island guide on how to do so! Once you have the recipe, you need 3 ginger and a single sugar. Sugar is easy to get – just mill beet, or buy it from Pierre. Ginger is common on Ginger Island, but yet again – you have to make it there first. That said, it’s an adventure worth embarking on!
Ice Cream
Ice cream a summer dish? Nope! It’s always time for ice cream.
| Difficulty of gettingHard |
Difficulty of makingEasy |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Milk
- 1 Sugar
How to get the recipe:
- Reach 7 hearts friendship with Jodi
It’s always time for ice cream! Since it consists only of milk and sugar, this dish is always around the corner. Milk should be common for you once you have a barn and at least one cow, and sugar is easily milled from beets. If you run out of beets, you can always buy more from Pierre. That makes ice cream a simple dish to make, for a simple reward.
Ice cream doesn’t replenish that much health and energy, but it also doesn’t cost you a massive effort. It will take some time before you get the recipe since you need to reach 7 hearts of friendship with Jodi. This dish is great for giving though since most of the valley like it. The dish is pretty divisive, so look closely before you give it to someone!
Lobster Bisque
That’s a surprisingly good dish for fish!
| Difficulty of gettingHard |
Difficulty of makingHard |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Lobster
- 1 Milk
How to get the recipe:
- Reach 9 hearts friendship with Willy
Look at that dish. After writing a little about almost every dish in the game, stats like this draw my attention. 225 energy, 101 health, and a 16 minutes +3 fishing buff? Don’t mind if I do! That’s a pretty good deal, especially since the dish is far from impossible to make. It’s just a little specific.
As seen with previous recipes, milk really isn’t a problem. You should have plenty of it as long as you have a barn and at least one cow. The problem is lobster, which is a little trickier to find. To get lobster, you need a crab pot in salt water. It has only a 4% chance of showing up unless you’re a Mariner, then it’s 14%. Once you have a lobster though, definitely save it for this dish. You’ll have plenty of time to try and catch one since you need to reach 9 hearts friendship with Willy to even get the recipe.
Miner’s Treat
No surprises here. It’s a treat for sure!
| Difficulty of gettingEasy |
Difficulty of makingEasy |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 2 Cave Carrot
- 1 Sugar
- 1 Milk
How to get the recipe:
- Reach Mining level 3
With a name like miner’s treat, did you think I’d gloss over this dish? Certainly not! This recipe lives up to its name (unlike you, super meal) by not only providing decent health and energy restoration but giving a serious +3 mining and +32 magnetism buff. That means that not only will your mining be better, you’ll have to spend less time walking toward dropped items. They’ll just come back to you!
It’s pretty simple to both get and make, too. To get the recipe, all you have to do is reach mining level 3, which you should be able to get to pretty quickly. After that, simply gather 2 cave carrots from the mines, combine them with milk from your barn and sugar from your mill (or Pierre) and you’ll be golden! Since you need milk, it might take some time before you can make this dish regularly. Once you can though, definitely make it often!
Omelet
Keep it for farmer’s lunches.
| Difficulty of gettingVery Easy |
Difficulty of makingVery Easy |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Egg
- 1 Milk
How to get the recipe:
- Queen of the Sauce Spring 28, Year 1 or
- Purchase from Gus for 100 gold
It’s always great when I get to share a simple recipe with you, dear reader. Easy to get, easy to make, and even pretty decent in terms of health and energy replenishment! To get an omelet, all you need to do is throw eggs and milk together, and presto! Of course, you need a functioning barn and coop, but once you have that, you’ll be able to make omelets all you like!
The recipe is pretty simple too. You can wait for day 28 of spring in the first year to get it, or the impatient among you can buy it immediately from Gus for 100 gold. When you have the omelet, don’t eat it just yet! But first, check if you can use it for the phenomenal farmers lunch.
Pale Broth
It’s unconventional, but know where to look and it’s an easy find!
| Difficulty of gettingEasy |
Difficulty of makingMedium |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 2 White Algae
How to get the recipe:
- Reach 3 hearts friendship with Marnie
Here’s another one of those filler dishes. Pale broth doesn’t really offer much – average health replenishment without any buffs. The ingredients are pretty situational too. White algae are what you get when you fish ground, or when you slay particular types of monsters. It’s pretty common, so by the time you get this recipe you’ll probably have some lying around.
In that sense, pale broth is quite useful. What else are you going to do with all that white algae? At least now you can feed yourself and befriend most other people in the game. And after all, isn’t that what cooking is all about in Stardew Valley?
Pancakes
Unmissable for a complete breakfast.
| Difficulty of gettingVery Easy |
Difficulty of makingEasy |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Wheat flour
- 1 Egg
How to get the recipe:
- Queen of the Sauce, Summer 14, Year 1 or
- Purchase from Gus for 100 gold
Who knew that such a simple recipe could be so useful? Usually, when you want to get good buffs, you need to go out of your way to get the right ingredients. And yet, for pancakes, that isn’t the case. With a single wheat flour and a single egg, this dish is almost always extremely easy to make. Just mill wheat (or buy it from Pierre) and pick one of the many eggs you should get once you have a coop and a chicken.
The recipe is pretty simple too. Just wait until Summer 14 of the first year, or buy it from Gus for 100 gold if you like wasting money. Although pancakes offer a pretty good buff already compared to the effort it takes to make them, don’t eat them right away. Do you remember the complete breakfast? No? Well if you can, go make that. It’s good. Unless you desperately need to forage for some reason, then pancakes might be better.
Sashimi
It’s probably the easiest dish to make.
| Difficulty of gettingEasy |
Difficulty of makingVery Easy |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Any fish
How to get the recipe:
- Reach 3 hearts friendship with Linus
My standard go-to. Literally. This dish is ridiculously good for the amount of effort it takes to make it. Yes, 75 energy and 33 health may not sound like much, but this dish takes no effort. None! It’s up there with the fried egg, except even easier. You don’t even need chickens, a coop, or a building for sashimi. All you need is a single fish. Any fish. Even pufferfish, it doesn’t matter. So turn all your terrible low-quality fish into sashimi once you reached 3 hearts friendship with Linus (sell your good ones) and never worry about food shortages ever again.
Strange Bun
Why you should make this? I don’t know. Everyone hates it.
| Difficulty of gettingHard |
Difficulty of makingVery Hard |
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Worth to you
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Worth to others
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Ingredients:
- 1 Wheat flour
- 1 Periwinkle
- 1 Void mayonnaise
How to get the recipe:
- Reach 7 hearts friendship with Shane
Why would you make this? No seriously, why would you make it? I take back whatever I said about the seafoam pudding, this is the weirdest cooking recipe in Stardew Valley. It gives you a little health and energy, but most significantly, literally, every single person in Stardew Valley hates it. Everyone! What’s in this thing, anyway?
There’s wheat flour, nothing too problematic there. Turn on your mill or hop over to Pierre’s and fixed. Periwinkle is a little more challenging, you have to catch it in a body of fresh water using a crab pot. That leaves possibly the strangest ingredient in the entire cookbook – void mayonnaise. It comes from the egg of a void chicken, but the most direct way is buying one from Krobus for 5000 gold or randomly getting one from Shane if you’re married to him.
So why make it? There are a few reasons. One is to get the Gourmet Chef achievement because you’re going to have to make all the dishes for that. You can also bring one to the Dark Shrine of Night Terrors, way in the late game, to either enable or disable monster spawning on the farm. Lastly, if you place it in the toy chest in Vincent’s room (?) you’ll get a very strange statue. Collector’s item, I suppose.
There you have it, that’s all there is to cooking in Stardew Valley! I really hope you enjoyed this guide and the entire series as a whole. Let me know whether you found it helpful or lacking in the comments!
