Cooking is one of the main components of Disney Dreamlight Valley. You’ll want to know how to cook in order to complete quests, earn Dreamlight, boost Energy, help out in Chez Remy, sell meals, and gift meals to Villagers. There are a lot of tasks that will benefit from knowing how to cook, so you want to make sure you’re doing it right with our Disney Dreamlight Valley cooking explained guide.
Whilst you can spend time in-game searching for different ingredients and experimenting over the stove, you can also find recipes via different quests or at random whilst you search the Valley. But first things first, you’ll want to know how to unlock cooking and get a stove.
Once you’ve established that, you’ve got a place to cook. Now, you just need to know how to cook, how to find recipes, and what ingredients are available across the Valley. For this, we’ve put together a handy guide jumping into every which way cooking can be done in Disney Dreamlight Valley. Let’s get cooking!
Disney Dreamlight Valley cooking explained
Cooking is one of the first mechanics introduced in the game and there’s good reason for it. As mentioned, there are a lot of different ways that cooking is important to progressing in the Valley. And whilst we’ll jump into the concept of recipes further down, first, you need to know how to cook.
Cooking essentially requires you to interact with a stove, drop in ingredients from your inventory, make sure you’ve also got coal ore (which can be found everywhere) and cook up your chosen ingredients to make a meal.
These ingredients can be foraged, grown, bought, or fished from around the Valley in specific biomes. You’ll want to head to your Collection > Ingredients tab to find out where each ingredient can be found and Collection > Fish if you’re looking to cook something fishy.
Top tip: Make sure you’re hanging out with a Villager assigned a certain hangout bonus when searching for ingredients. E.g. if you’re foraging for ingredients, your companion can find more items when harvesting wild crops and fruits. We’ve more on the power of levelling up friendships fast in Disney Dreamlight Valley in our handy guide.
Each meal you make comes with a Star Rating that directly translates to the number of ingredients needed to make it. For example, a Lobster Roll is made up of five ingredients giving it a five-star rating. A Fruit Salad is made up of one type of fruit giving it a one-star rating. An important note though – you can’t just add in different types of fruit to level up the rating, it will always remain the same. So, no matter how much fruit you throw into your fruit salad, it’ll always be one.
There are also options at your stove for time-saving. History, for example, lets you look back on the meals you’ve cooked in order to replicate them. Recipes can be brought up to scroll through and find the recipe you want and then autofill can be chosen to fill your cooking pot with everything you need. This part gets a bit easier once you’ve uncovered more recipes – which we’ll get into now.
Meals are split into three different categories – Appetizers, Entrées, and Desserts – of which there are 164 to uncover. So, you’ll want to get busy in the kitchen.
Disney Dreamlight Valley how to find recipes
There are two ways to find recipes in Disney Dreamlight Valley. One requires guesswork and the other requires time, effort, and some hunting around the Valley.
Some recipes will require you to find specific ingredients to cook the right meal, whereas others will suggest food categories. For example, wheat and any fish for a Fish Sandwich rather than specifically Rainbow Trout. So, whilst some make it easier to guess, others are more specific.
Discover recipes in Disney Dreamlight Valley
One way to find recipes is to discover them hidden around the Valley. You’ll find recipe books randomly during your travels around the game, but it’s quite a rare occurrence meaning it’s not really the best way to get them.
Whilst Remy’s realm will teach you a few things and is a great place to experiment with ingredients, even if you can’t take your ingredients or cooked meals home with you, it’s really the main place you’ll learn a few recipes and that’s it. Our next option offers a little more chance.
Experimenting with recipes in Disney Dreamlight Valley
The alternative way to uncover recipes in Disney Dreamlight Valley is through a bit of experimentation in the kitchen. You can take some inspiration from the recipes, but unlike crafting, you won’t be given any specifics on what you’re after.
Each category comes with an icon that can guide you somewhat, but you’ll really just have to throw it in a pan and hope for the best. The further into the game, the more likely you are to have an understanding of what sort of ingredients will make up a meal simply because you’ve finally unlocked them.
As you work your way through Disney Dreamlight Valley, more and more ingredients will be found, foraged, grown, and bought at the various stalls run by Goofy in each biome. Listed below are the ingredients you’ll be looking to find that will make up the recipes you’ll be cooking.
- Vegetables – Asparagus, Bell Pepper, Carrot, Chili Pepper, Cucumber, Eggplant, Leek, Lettuce, Okra, Onion, Potato, Pumpkin, Spinach, Tomato, Zucchini
- Fruit – Apple, Banana, Blueberry, Cherry, Cocoa Bean, Coconut, Gooseberry, Lemon, Raspberry
- Grains – Canola, Corn, Rice, Soya, Sugarcane, Wheat
- Chez Remy’s Pantry – Butter, Cheese, Egg, Milk, Peanut, Slush Ice
- Spices & Herbs – Basil, Garlic, Ginger, Mint, Mushroom, Oregano, Vanilla
- Seafood – Clam, Oyster, Scallop
Our Disney Dreamlight Valley Ingredients guide goes into detail about how to get all of these. We’ve also got a guide on how to get and where to find all the fish in Disney Dreamlight Valley, which are all very useful ingredients and form the basis for a lot of recipes.
That’s everything there is to know about cooking in Disney Dreamlight Valley. Of course, there are always the best recipes in Disney Dreamlight Valley to fall back on and for that, we’ve put in the hard work for you.