Keep your Viking belly full with this Valheim food guide

Looking for a Valheim food guide? Now that the Valheim public testing branch, some new magic foods have been added to the survival game. And if you haven't played since the Hearth and Home update, new cooking stations and extra recipes have also been introduced, too, so there's a lot to catch up on if you've been away from Viking purgatory for a while.

Though you won't starve to death from not eating in Valheim, food is monumentally important. You won't suffer any negative effects or debuffs, but you'll have very little health and stamina if you don't, and you won't recover hit points as quickly. The new magic system added in the Mistlands update also means you'll need special foods to keep your Eitr meter full. (Eitr is Valheim's version of mana.) In many cases, having your stomach full of good food is even more crucial than the armor you're wearing and the shield you're carrying.

Here's why food in Valheim is so important, how it works, and what meals you should be cooking.

Best food

Best Valheim recipes list

Before we get deeper into the best Valheim recipes, cooking, and equipment, here's a quick list of the best food to eat. We've included recipes from various progression points in the game, along with some notes explaining where to gather the ingredients. Since the Valheim Mistlands added some new magic foods, 

Carrot soup
Carrots can be grown from carrot seeds using the cultivator tool.

Minced Meat Sauce
Boar meat and neck tails are easily found in the Meadows, though you'll need to venture into the Black Forest to get the seeds to grow carrots.

Sausages
The entrails needed are dropped by Draugrs, found primarily in the Swamp, but also in abandoned villages in certain Meadow biomes.

Serpent stew
Serpents spawn in the Ocean biome, and serpent meat must be cooked on the cooking station before it can be used for stew.

Lox meat pie
Lox are creatures found in the Plains biome, and cloudberries also only grow in the Plains.

Blood pudding
Bloodbags are dropped by leeches, which you'll find in watery regions of the Swamp biome. Barley flour can be created using the windmill with barley, which can be found on the Plains near fuling villages. You can also plant barley with the cultivator, but only in the Plains biome.

Fish wraps
Fish can be caught with a fishing pole (or by hand, if you're fast). Raw fish will need to be cooked at the cooking station first.

Bread
You need a windmill to make flour from barley. You'll need to kill the Mountain boss to make the artisan table for the windmill, so don't expect to make bread until later in the game. 

Best food combos

Best Valheim food combos for max health, stamina, and healing

If you're looking for the best food combinations, here's a table showing the best combos if you're looking for the biggest boost to your maximum health, an increase to your stamina, or the fastest healing rate. 

Best magic (Eitr) food

Best magic (Eitr) food

If you want to wield a magic staff, you'll need to cook and eat foods that contain Eitr, Valheim's new resource found in the Mistlands. Here are the recipes for foods that will increase your Eitr meter. Note: A new cooking item, the mortar and pestle, has also been added in the Mistlands update, which you'll need to upgrade your cauldron to level 5 for certain foods.

How your stomach works

How your Viking stomach works

Your stomach has three slots for food, like a little inventory, but you can only fit a single item of food into each slot. You also can't fill those slots with more than one of the same type of food. For example, you can have one cooked boar meat, one mushroom, and one raspberry in your three stomach slots at the same time, but you can't have two or three raspberries (or any other duplicate food items) in there at once. When all three stomach slots are filled with different foods, you cannot consume a new food item until at least one of them has been digested (its icon will begin to blink and the words "You could eat another bite" will appear on the screen). 

If you're really unhappy with your food choices, and don't want to wait until you've digested the food to swap it out, you can consume Bukeperries. These drop from greydwarf shaman found in the Black Forest. Consuming one will empty your stomach's contents—and leave you incapacitated for a few seconds, so make sure you're somewhere safe before attempting this.

How food works

How Valheim food works

 Each item of food modifies three things:

• Your maximum health
• Your stamina
• Your rate of healing (hp/tick)

With no food in your stomach, your base health is a mere 25, your stamina is 50, and you heal at a rate of 1 hp/tick, or hit point per tick (a tick being 10 seconds). Each item of food has a score for health, stamina, rate of healing, and duration. Here's a comparison of three different foods you can get early on in Valheim, starting with cooked boar meat (raw meat from a boar cooked over a fire at a cooking station) when your stomach is empty. 

Eating cooked boar meat will instantly raise your maximum health to 55 (your base health of 25 + 30), though it won't immediately fill that extended health bar. You'll need to wait as your healing bar rises to fill it, though cooked meat's hp/tick of 2 means you will heal that amount twice as quickly as you would without food. So, your health will increase 2 hp every 10 seconds until it reaches max. Cooked boar meat will also raise your max stamina from 50 to 60 points. Finally, the benefits of cooked boar meat will last for 20 minutes.

Not bad, but compare that to a superior food consumed on an empty stomach, like sausages, which will increase your max hp by 55 (giving you 80 hp), give you 3hp regeneration per tick, and add 18 to your stamina, giving you 68.

One more example: honey. It only raises your max health by 8 points but it gives you 35 stamina, and the effects last for 15 minutes. 

So, what happens when you eat cooked meat, sausages, and honey at the same time? Now we're talking, because all those effects stack. Your maximum hp will rise to 118 (base 25+30+55+8), your stamina will raise to 113 (base 50+10+18+35), and your healing will be a juicy 6 hp/tick, healing 6 hit points every 10 seconds (2+3+1). Not only can you take much more damage, but you can run longer, fight harder, and heal much faster. And that's why food is so dang important in Valheim.

Basic foods

The best fuss-free food in Valheim

No need to cook them, just pick them up and eat them. 

Note: Honey requires a queen bee and a beehive, and carrots require carrot seeds and a cultivator to plant them. Cloudberries are found on the Plains biome, so you may not encounter them until late in the game.

Cooking Station foods

The best Valheim cooking station recipes

A cooking station can be crafted over a campfire or hearth using 2 wood. Multiple cooking stations (up to 6) can be placed over the same fire. To catch fish, it's best to have a fishing rod and bait which you can buy from Haldor, the Valheim trader.

*Cooked lox meat requires the stronger 'iron cooking station'. It works exactly the same way but requires iron and chain to craft, both of which can be found in the Swamp.

Cauldron recipes

The best Valheim cauldron recipes

To craft a cauldron, you'll need to mine 10 tin. A cauldron must be placed over a fire or hearth to cook. Cooking food in the cauldron is instant, but you must have an empty slot in your inventory for the finished dish to be placed in. 

Hearth and Home introduced new upgrades for the cauldron, such as the spice rack, unlocking more recipes. The upgrades are:

• Spice rack: Dandelion x3, carrot x2, mushroom x5, thistle x3, turnip x3
• Butcher's table: ancient bark x2, core wood x4, fine wood x4, silver x2
• Pots and pans: Iron x5, copper x5, black metal x5, fine wood x10
• Mortar and pestle: Black marble x8, fine wood x5, core wood x4

Note: Sausages require entrails, which are dropped by draugr. If you're not ready to visit the Swamp biome, draugr can sometimes be found in Meadows, too, though typically ones located on different continents than your starter island. The abandoned villages the draugr inhabit in the Meadows are a bit safer than the Swamp if you're looking to harvest entrails. Turnips, meanwhile, can be grown from seeds found in the Swamp biome. Turnips cannot be eaten raw by players (though they can be fed to boars).

*Check out the stone oven section below 

Stone oven foods

Stone oven food in Valheim

You can craft a stone oven once you've defeated Valheim's 4th boss, Moder, and have access to an artisan table. This allows you to make use of two specific cauldron recipes. 

A windmill will allow you to create barley flour using barley, a resource found in the Plains biome. Note that barley can only be grown in the Plains.