Food and Food Ingredients

Apple

Apples sometimes drop when you drop Leaves, either by breaking them manually or when you destroy the Wood that the Leaves are associated with. After the Leaves break or decay naturally, an Apple is sometimes left behind. This happens only when working with Oak Leaves; other trees don’t leave Apples.

Apples are an adequate food for the early game, when you’re looking for something—anything—to eat. Their rarity makes them a poor choice for long-term hunger management. Breed animals or farm to provide for your feeding needs.

You can also craft Apples into Golden Apples or Enchanted Golden Apples when you want to get powerful effects for your character, but both of these items are costly.

Baked Potato

Throw a Potato into a Furnace and cook it. The result is a Baked Potato. Potatoes are extremely renewable because they’re easy to grow.

Bowl

Bowls are used to carry Mushroom Stew. It takes only a few Planks to make your Bowl, so they’re fairly easy to craft even out in the wilderness, though you need a Crafting Table as well.

If you’re playing the Pocket Edition, Beetroots are also used with Bowls to make Beetroot Soup, a healing food.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Wooden Planks (3)		Bowl (4)

Bread

Combine three Wheat in order to craft a loaf of Bread. It’s not an ideal food item, because it doesn’t fill your hunger bar as much as cooked meat. However, Bread is extremely easy to make, and Wheat is renewable on a large scale. Make large Wheat farms to ensure you have food at your fingertips, regardless of the occasion.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Wheat (3)		Bread

Brown Mushroom

Brown and Red Mushrooms combine to make Mushroom Stew. Carry a wooden Bowl around to make Mushroom Stew while exploring Swamps and various underground areas, including the Nether.

Cake

Cake isn’t a very powerful food item, but it’s fun to eat because you can share it with friends. Once crafted, Cake becomes a block that you must place somewhere before it can be eaten. Stack the Cake on top of a higher block so it’s easy to see, and to keep it off the ground. Then up to six people can take a bite out of it. Each bite restores only a tiny amount of hunger.

Baking your first Cake earns an achievement!

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Milk (3), Sugar (2), Egg, Wheat (3)		Cake

Carrot

Zombies drop Carrots on rare occasions. You sometimes find them in villages as well. They’re a useful crop to farm, and don’t require any new locations or methods compared to Potatoes or Wheat. Develop farmland, irrigate it, and start growing Carrots as soon as you find one of them.

When holding Carrots, you can lure Pigs and Rabbits. Carrots are also used to breed Pigs once you have a few of them.

In crafting, Carrots make Carrots on a Stick and Golden Carrots.

Clownfish

Clownfish isn’t very tasty. There isn’t any way to cook it properly, and it doesn’t restore much health. Save these until you find Ocelots, and then use them to tame kitties. Ocelots like them as well as any other raw variety of fish.

Cooked Chicken

Kill Chickens with fire or cook Raw Chicken in a Furnace to produce Cooked Chicken. This eliminates the chance of food poisoning that Raw Chicken poses.

Cooked Porkchop

Cook Raw Porkchops in a Furnace, or use fire to kill Pigs. Either of these methods produces Cooked Porkchops. They restore a fair amount of hunger.

Cooked Salmon

Take Raw Salmon and cook it in a Furnace. That’s it; you now have some yummy food to eat.

Cookie

Cookies are made from Wheat and Cocoa Beans. They’re made in large batches, and it takes quite a few to fill you up. They don’t leave you satisfied for long, but having large stacks of them makes it easy to eat only as much as you need so nothing gets wasted.

All in all, Cookies are useful if you have Cocoa Beans and Wheat. They’re a reliable food source, despite several minor drawbacks, such as long eating time for the amount of hunger restored.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Cocoa Bean, Wheat (2)		Cookie (8)

Egg

Chickens lay eggs once or twice every 10 minutes. They pop out, making a sound when it happens, and you can grab the Egg any time after that. Eggs are ingredients for Cakes and Pumpkin Pie.

It’s also possible to throw Eggs. Equip them on your hotbar and use the Eggs as projectile weapons. They don’t inflict any substantial damage, but they sometimes spawn a baby Chicken when they hit something.

Enchanted Golden Apple

Enchanted Golden Apples require nine times more Gold to create than a Golden Apple. They’re brutal to craft. However, they add 30 seconds of Regeneration V, the same amount of Absorption as a Golden Apple, and five minutes of Resistance and Fire Resistance. You become almost an un-killable god after eating one. Save Enchanted Golden Apples for boss fights against the Wither or Ender Dragon. Otherwise, you’re spending too much Gold to be worthwhile.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Apple, Gold Block (8)		Enchanted Golden Apple

Gold Block

Put together a full set of nine Gold Ingots to craft a Gold Block. It looks nice, but it’s very expensive. You won’t use them to decorate your house unless you’ve been playing for a long time or are working in Creative Mode.

Gold Blocks are ingredients for Enchanted Golden Apples, the most expensive and most useful food in the game.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Gold Ingot (9)		Gold Block

Golden Apple

Golden Apples are sometimes found in Chests, but you often have to craft them yourself. Golden Apples act as food items that also provide beneficial effects to your character. Golden Apples give you Regeneration II for several seconds, and add Absorption for a couple minutes. For major battles, Golden Apples are worthwhile items to use.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Apple, Gold Ingot (8)		Golden Apple

Golden Carrot

Golden Carrots are expensive. Get a Carrot from a Zombie and start a Carrot garden. Then craft one of your Carrots with eight Gold Nuggets to make one Golden Carrot. Golden Carrots are used in Potions of Night Vision, or they’re eaten to restore a large amount of hunger.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Carrot, Gold Nugget (8)		Golden Carrot

Melon

Melons are naturally found in jungles, though they’re also available for trade in some villages. Once you find Melons or Melon Seeds, create a garden at your base. A steady supply of Melons is extremely handy because of their use in brewing.

Combine Gold Nuggets and Melon to make Glistering Melon. This is a major brewing ingredient thanks to its use in Potions of Healing!

Milk

Cows and Mooshrooms provide Milk if you use a Bucket on either of them. This liquid doesn’t fill up your hunger bar, but it’s useful for removing a variety of effects. Use Milk after eating poisonous foods to negate their negative effects.

When fighting against creatures that cause poison, it’s smart to keep a Bucket of Milk on hand. Use it after battle to reduce the damage you’ve taken.

Mushroom Stew

Mushroom Stew requires harvesting a Red Mushroom and a Brown Mushroom. Combine these in your inventory with a Bowl to create this stew. Eating the stew frees up your Bowl to be reused as many times as needed. Carry a Bowl when traveling through swamps or the Nether to get free food on the fly without wasting much time.

Use Bowls to “milk” Mooshrooms to receive this stew. Mooshrooms are insanely useful animals to keep around.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Red Mushroom, Brown Mushroom, Bowl		Mushroom Stew

Poisonous Potato

When harvesting Potatoes, you sometimes (rarely) end up with Poisonous Potatoes as well. Don’t eat these; they’ve gone bad. Throw them away, give them to friends you don’t like, or leave them in a Chest in case someone ever comes up with a fun use for them.

Potato

If you want to get a Carrot or Potato, kill Zombies often. These rare drops provide an entirely new type of crop to plant in your garden. Potatoes are planted directly into farmland and grow in a way that’s similar to Wheat. When they fully pop out of the soil, harvest them and cook them in a Furnace to create Baked Potatoes.

Pufferfish

Fishing Rods occasionally grab Pufferfish from the water. These are not edible in any safe way; they make your character very sick. However, they’re the main ingredient for Potions of Water Breathing. Save your Pufferfish in a Chest with brewing ingredients in case you ever wan to perform involved underwater exploration or construction.

Pumpkin

Pumpkins are hard to find. They grow naturally in a number of biomes, but they’re rare enough that you don’t always find them within a minute or two of your home. Getting these plants requires a fair amount of exploration unless you’re really lucky!

Once you find Pumpkins, chop them down with an Axe and bring them home. Break your Pumpkins into Pumpkin Seeds, and plant those. Let your Pumpkin garden grow on its own for a while, and then use your excess Pumpkins for pies, Pumpkin Helmets (which don’t enrage Endermen), or Jack o’ Lanterns (good mood lighting).

Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin Pie is made when an Egg, Sugar, and a Pumpkin are crafted together. If you have a Chicken pen and gardens for Sugar Cane and Pumpkins, this is a very easy item to make. Cooked meats are better at filling up your character, but Pumpkin Pie still fills a satisfying number of bars on your hunger meter. You just end up hungry sooner than if you eat cooked meats.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Pumpkin, Sugar, Egg		Pumpkin Pie

Raw Beef

Each Cow can drop up to several pieces of Raw Beef. Cook these in a Furnace to produce Steak, a very nice food item. If you use fire to kill a Cow, they drop Steak instead of Raw Beef.

Raw Chicken

Hunting Chickens earns Raw Chicken. Kill them with a Sword to get raw meat, or use Flint and Steel to get your Chickens cooked immediately. Always cook Raw Chicken in a Furnace; raw meat from these birds has a chance to make your character sick from food poisoning.

Raw Fish

Use a Fishing Rod to harvest Fish and other useful items from Water blocks. Pull the Rod out of the Water when you see bubbling, and hope for something good. Raw Fish are cooked in Furnaces to produce Cooked Fish.

If you want a house cat, feed Raw Fish to Ocelots to try to tame them. Bring several pieces of Raw Fish, because you won’t always impress them with your first gift!

In the Pocket Edition of Minecraft, Red Mushrooms are cooked in Furnaces to produce Rose Red dye.

Raw Porkchop

Pigs are found in small groups throughout the Overworld. Kill them with your Sword to grab a few pieces of Raw Porkchops. Cook them in your Furnace to turn them into yummy Porkchops.

If you kill Pigs with fire, they’ll drop Cooked Porkchops instead.

Raw Salmon

Gather Raw Salmon by using your Fishing Rod on Water blocks. This takes time and patience, so it isn’t as efficient as farming. Once you get Raw Salmon or other edible fish, take it to a Furnace and cook it. Eat the Cooked Salmon whenever you get hungry.

Red Mushroom

Red Mushrooms and Brown Mushrooms are combined with Bowls to make Mushroom Stew. This is a good food source for people working with shade gardens. It’s also nice in the Nether, because there aren’t many ways to feed your character in that dimension. Mushrooms grow in the Nether’s dim light, so they’re a renewable food source. Just bring a Bowl and you’re good to go.

Rotten Flesh

Rotten Flesh is often bad for your health. Eating it often gives your character food poisoning, which drains points from your hunger bar. Eat Rotten Flesh only if you’re desperate. Even then, save several Rotten Flesh and eat them all at once. Food poisoning doesn’t stack, so you won’t be any worse off eating five Rotten Flesh than you would be eating just one or two pieces.

It’s better to save Rotten Flesh for Wolves. Feed them to earn their trust, and use Rotten Flesh to heal them or get them breeding once they’re already tamed.

Spider Eye

Spider Eyes are fermented with Brown Mushrooms and Sugar to make Fermented Spider Eyes. These are very useful in high-end brewing. Regular Spider Eyes only help to make Potions of Poison and Weakness, so they’re nice but slightly limited.

It is possible to eat Spider Eyes in an act of complete desperation if you’re starving. However, they’re poisonous. Drink Milk immediately after, or avoid eating them unless you’re already at such low health that the poison won’t do any additional damage.

Steak

Slay Cows to collect Raw Beef. Put this inside a Furnace and use any type of fuel to cook the beef into Steak. Alternatively, kill Cows with fire to cook their meat instantly and get Steak straight from the source.

Steak is very filling, so it’s a great food item to carry around when going far away from home.

Sugar

Make Sugar by crafting a single piece of Sugar Cane into raw Sugar. Sugar is then used to bake Cakes or Pumpkin Pie. It’s also an ingredient on Potions of Swiftness.

Feed Sugar to Horses to help tame them. It also helps heal injured Horses and helps them grow from foals into adult Horses.

Recipe

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe	Result
Sugar Cane		Sugar

Wheat

Wheat is grown on farmland. Use Hoes to till Dirt or Grass blocks, plant Seeds on them, and ensure a block of Water is within four blocks so the Wheat grows as quickly as possible. Keep light on the area at all times, with sun, Torches, or Redstone Lamps, and harvest your Wheat when it gets tall and turns slightly brownish.