Stardew Valley Cooking Guide: How to Make All Recipes (Spring)

Welcome, aspiring Gourmet Chef! This is part 1 of a series of guides with all the ins of cooking the many recipes of Stardew Valley. In this part, you'll find everything you need for the season of nature's awakening - spring!

Stardew Valley Cooking Guide How to make every recipe (Spring)There’s a ton you can spend your day on in Stardew Valley. From important farmwork to socializing, foraging, mining, or adventuring, there’s barely enough day in a day for Pelican Town farmers. It leaves little room for one of my favorite activities in Stardew Valley – cooking! This guide series will help you prepare all the recipes. Once you’ve prepared every dish, you’ll ultimately get the Gourmet Chef achievement.

Cooking is not just an achievement vanity! Dishes can give you strength, energy, and all kinds of temporary boosts. Furthermore, the meals can make great gifts to your fellow townsfolk, or you use some of them for tailoring. You can even base your economy on them, selling recipes for profit!

This guide series contains four parts, one for every season. Every section also features the best ingredients to save up for use in other seasons. However, some dishes don’t fit in just any single season. As such, every part of this guide will also feature a section for seasonal dishes that you can also make in (in this case) spring. Without further ado, let’s get cooking!

In the meantime, check out some of our other guides on Stardew Valley:

Stardew Valley Spring’s Best Ingredients to Save for Later

Rice

Rice is always useful to have - saves you a trip to Pierre's, too!

Rice is always useful to have – saves you a trip to Pierre’s, too!

Rice is a great crop. Not only is rice production profitable in Stardew Valley, but cooking dishes throughout the year becomes much easier with a steady supply! Although it’s valuable, it will take a while for you to produce loads of rice on your farm. You first need to grow Shoots into Unmilled Rice, which you can only purchase starting in year 2. Moreover, rice Shoots only grow in spring – but if you plant them near some water, they grow a lot faster (6 instead of 8 days.)

Unmilled Rice is a step up, but it’s not rice. To get our beloved seed usable, you need to have a Mill. Mills don’t come cheap – with 25.000 gold, 50 stone, 150 wood, and 4 cloth, it’s an investment. However, it’s an investment well worth your money. Mills speed up your production considerably and turn numerous ingredients into better versions of themselves. Such as rice!

Potato

Classic potato - store it for some good boosts when life gets busy!

Classic potato – store it for some good boosts when life gets busy!

Potatoes are an easy crop. They’re one of the first to become available when you first start in Stardew Valley, they’re cheap, and they take little time to grow. But the real, culinary reason you want to store up on potatoes, is hashbrowns. Hashbrowns happen to be the only dish that needs potato, but they themselves are a key component of some amazing dishes. So save a few potatoes for when it gets rough – you can use them any time!

Kale

Only gets better with time. And with time, I mean especially fall.

Only gets better with time. And with time, I mean especially fall.

Like potatoes, kale is a pretty easy crop. It’s available right off the bet, grows fast, and it’s in some pretty good recipes. You won’t need a lot of kale, but it is useful for fall when you can use it to make some beautiful courses.

Garlic

Delicious on any dish - but especially great for fishing!

Delicious on any dish – but especially great for fishing!

Who doesn’t love garlic? Although it sucks for Vampires – garlic is a great ingredient for cooking and crafting. Although it’s easy to harvest and the seeds are cheap, you’ll have to wait until year 2 to get them. However, especially for fishing, garlic is the ingredient to keep your eyes open for. It’s always good to have a couple saved up!

Blue Jazz

Nice to look at, but also great to eat!

Nice to look at, but also great to eat!

Who would’ve thought that this flower was worth saving? Although they’re nice enough, they are a central ingredient in one of the best luck-boosting dishes in the game. Blue Jazz grows in 7 days and is easy to purchase during spring.

Spring Dishes

There you have it – the best ingredients to save for year-round cooking in Stardew Valley! So now on to the main course of this guide: here are the best dishes you can make during Pelican Town’s beautiful spring!

Bean Hotpot

It's healthy, easy, and surprisingly magnetic.

It’s healthy, easy, and surprisingly magnetic.

 
Difficulty of getting
Hard

Difficulty of makingEasy

Effects

  • +125 Energy
  • +56 Health
    Temporary Effects
  • +32 Max Energy
  • +32 Magnetism
    Duration: 7 Minutes

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Krobus, Leo, and Willy
  • Perfect gift to Demetrius

Ingredients:

  • 2 Green Beans

How to get the recipe:

  • Reach 7 hearts friendship with Clint

A bean hotpot is easy to make but tricky to get the recipe for. For the recipe, you only need 2 green beans. To get the recipe, you must have at least 7 hearts with Clint, so that may take some time. Once you do, he’ll send the recipe right to your mailbox. If you don’t end up giving it away to improve relations with your neighbors, bean hotpot is particularly good for a temporary magnetism boost. With this, further away objects automatically join your inventory. So it’s good to take before you go mining, for example. Lastly, you can also use this dish to make a profit – provided you use low-quality beans since those sell for less.

Cheese Cauliflower

Simple and easy to get - the perfect Cheese Cauli!

Simple and easy to get – the perfect Cheese Cauli!

Difficulty of gettingEasy Difficulty of making
Medium

Effects

  • +138 Energy
  • +62 Health
    No additional effects

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Krobus, Leo, and Willy
  • Perfect gift to Maru

Ingredients:

  • 1 Cauliflower
  • 1 Cheese

How to get the recipe:

  • Reach 3 hearts friendship with Pam

A cheese cauliflower is one of those Stardew Valley cooking recipes that’s easy once you’re up and going, but tricky to make when you’re just starting. Cauliflower is simple enough. Just buy the seeds from Pierre (or from the JoJa Mart if you have no soul) and water them each day. Within 12 days, you’ll have cauliflower! Cheese is a little trickier. You need a barn, cows, and a cheese press to start. However, once you have all that, you can expect a steady supply of cheese. Cheese caulis have little that sets them apart from the competition – but they’re generally a good gift. And if you’re going for that Gourmet Chef achievement, you’ll have to make at least one anyway.

Complete Breakfast

It takes a while to make it, but the payoff is huge!

It takes a while to make it, but the payoff is huge!

Difficulty of getting
Medium
Difficulty of making
Hard

Effects

  • +200 Energy
  • +90 Health
    Temporary Effects
  • +50 Max Energy
  • +2 Farming
    Duration 7 minutes

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Krobus, Leo, and Willy
  • Hated by Sebastian
  • Perfect gift to Alex

Ingredients:

  • 1 Fried Egg
  • 1 Milk
  • 1 Hashbrowns
  • 1 Pancakes

How to get the recipe:

  • Queen of the Sauce, Spring 21, Year 2

Ah, the complete breakfast – clearly the perfect way to start the day! But you have to put some work in to get it! This recipe uses a lot of other cooking recipes. You need the fried egg, hashbrowns, and pancakes recipe before you can start, and you need a barn and cows for milk. The recipe only pops up in year 2, so you have plenty of time to assemble what you need. With the wheat flour that you can buy from Pierre (or make yourself in summer and fall), eggs from your coop, and milk from your barn, you’re all set to turning your potato harvest into the perfect breakfast. Definitely eat it before farming – the +2 boost will work miracles for your crop quality.

Dish O’ The Sea

If you're looking for a fish day, this is the dish to use.

If you’re looking for a fish day, this is the dish to use.

Difficulty of getting
Easy
Difficulty of making
Hard

Effects

  • +125 Energy
  • +56 Health
    Temporary Effects
  • +3 Fishing
    Duration: 5 minutes,
    35 seconds

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Neutral to Willy
  • Disliked by Krobus and Leo
  • Perfect gift to Linus

Ingredients:

  • 2 Sardines
  • 1 Hashbrowns

How to get the recipe:

  • Fishing level 3

No surprises here, the dish o’ the sea is perfect to snack on before you go fishing. It’s not that tricky to get either. Sardines are a pretty common catch when you fish in the ocean between 6 AM and 6 PM, and Hashbrowns are just potatoes and oil. You’ll get this dish pretty soon too – at level 3 fishing, which doesn’t take very long to reach. Annoyingly, you’ll have to wait for the hashbrowns recipe which only pops up in the second year. But good news – you can get five dishes o’ the sea as a reward for completing the Specialty Fish Bundle in the Community Center. Let’s reel in those fish!

Escargot

It may not look like it, but it's a delicious pickup!

It may not look like it, but it’s a delicious pickup!

Difficulty of getting
Medium
Difficulty of makingChallenging

Effects

  • +225 Energy
  • +101 Health
    Temporary Effects
  • +2 Fishing
    Duration: 16 minutes
    47 seconds

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Krobus, Leo, and Willy
  • Perfect gift to Gus

Ingredients:

  • 1 Garlic
  • 1 Snail

How to get the recipe:

  • Reach 5 hearts friendship with Willy

Although a dish o’ the sea is more effective for fishing, escargot gives you a slightly smaller fishing buff but applies it for three times as long. Still, it’s a little trickier to prepare. The recipe is simple enough to get – although getting 5 hearts with Willy takes some time, it’s the furthest from impossible. Snails aren’t that easy to get – you need to trap them in a Crab Pot in a freshwater body – and without the Mariner trait, that’s only a 20% chance. Garlic is a fast and cheap spring crop, but it’s only available starting in year 2. So don’t expect to be serving escargot any time before the second year.

Farmer’s Lunch

For those long days on the farm, a Farmer's Lunch is perfect.

For those long days on the farm, a Farmer’s Lunch is perfect.

Difficulty of getting
Easy
Difficulty of making
Medium

Effects

  • +200 Energy
  • +90 Health
    Temporary Effects
  • +3 Farming
    Duration: 5 minutes,
    35 seconds

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Krobus, Leo, and Willy
  • Hated by Sebastian
  • Perfect gift to Marnie

Ingredients:

  • 1 Parsnip
  • 1 Omelet

How to get the recipe:

  • Farming level 3

If you thought the complete breakfast was good – get ready for the much easier farmer’s lunch. It behaves similarly to escargot and the dish o’ the sea – it gives a bigger farming buff, but its duration is slightly shorter. The recipe is easy to get, with the game giving it to you when you reach farming level 3. The parsnip is one of the easiest ingredients to get in the game since it’s available immediately and takes only 4 days to grow. The omelet is a little harder. It requires egg and milk, which in turn take a coop and a chicken, and a barn and a cow. Although it may take some time to get that going, once you have animal production all set up, this recipe is a reliable go-to for all your farming needs.

Fried Mushroom

For glory and honor! Or for George.

For glory and honor! Or for George.

Difficulty of getting
Easy
Difficulty of makingHard

Effects

  • +135 Energy
  • +60 Health
    Temporary Effects
  • +2 Attack
    Duration: 7 minutes

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Harvey, Krobus, Leo, and Willy
  • Perfect gift to George

Ingredients:

  • 1 Common Mushroom
  • 1 Morel
  • 1 Oil

How to get the recipe:

  • Reach 3 hearts friendship with Demetrius

Who says it’s all about farming? Foraging plays a big role in Stardew Valley too. And for cooking this recipe, you’ll need to do a lot of it. The recipe is easy to get, just build up a friendship with Demetrius. Maybe with some nice bean hotpots? Although I associate mushrooms more with fall, this recipe is a spring dish because of the morel. This fungus grows in the Secret Woods and the Forest Farm – exclusively in spring. In these same Secret Woods, you can also find the common mushroom during spring. To access these woods, you first need to clear the entrance with a steel axe, so that may take some time.

You can also grow both mushrooms in the farm cave after you’ve accumulated at least 25,000 gold. The last ingredient is oil, which you can get from Pierre or from your Oil Maker. The recipe is great to eat before you go monster slaying – or to make grumpy old George finally happy.

Hashbrowns

Hashbrowns really are the linchpin of some dish greater.

Hashbrowns really are the linchpin of some dish greater.

Difficulty of gettingVery Easy Difficulty of making
Easy

Effects

  • +90 Energy
  • +40 Health
    Temporary Effects
  • +1 Farming
    Duration: 5 minutes,
    35 seconds

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Harvey, Krobus, Leo, and Willy
  • Hated by Leah
  • No perfect gift

Ingredients:

  • 1 Potato
  • 1 Oil

How to get the recipe:

  • Queen of the Sauce, Spring 14, Year 2 or;
  • Purchase from Gus for 50g

Hashbrowns are weird. They’re decent on their own and pretty simple to make. Just potato and oil. They even give a minor temporary boost to your farming. However, they’re better as part of another dish. Whether it’s for a dish o’ the sea or a complete breakfast, both these dishes completely eclipse hashbrowns in terms of effects. You also get this recipe quite late since you have to wait the entire first year until the right Queen of the Sauce run finally comes up. Fortunately, if you’ve got some leftover money to spend, you can also get this recipe much earlier from Gus, for a meager 50 gold. Once it’s there, go and turn those potatoes into hashbrowns! It will be the gateway to higher-quality cooking.

Maki Roll

Easy to make and a crowd pleaser! Even Willy doesn't dislike it.

Easy to make and a crowd pleaser! Even Willy doesn’t dislike it.

Difficulty of gettingVery Easy Difficulty of making
Easy

Effects

  • +180 Energy
  • +81 Health
    No additional effects

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Neutral to Willy
  • Disliked by Krobus and Leo
  • Hated by Emily and Evelyn
  • No perfect gift

Ingredients:

  • 1 Any Fish
  • 1 Seaweed
  • 1 Rice

How to get the recipe:

  • Queen of the Sauce, Summer 21, Year 1 or;
  • Purchase from Gus for 300g

The maki roll is a perfect dish for leftovers. As long as you have rice around, you can go out and get some seaweed, slap any fish in it, and boom – maki roll. It’s easy to get the recipe too since it pops up in a Queen of the Sauce during the very first summer. The maki roll has little that sets it apart – aside from the fact that it’s used in the Community Center’s Chef’s Bundle. Almost everyone in Pelican Town ikes this simple recipe. And if you need some quick energy, you can always turn to the good old maki roll.

Parsnip Soup

A great spring soup with everyone's favorite spring crop!

A great spring soup with everyone’s favorite spring crop!

Difficulty of getting
Easy
Difficulty of making
Easy

Effects

  • +85 Energy
  • +38 Health
    No additional effects

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Krobus, Leo, and Willy
  • Hated by Pierre
  • Perfect gift to Pam

Ingredients:

  • 1 Parsnip
  • 1 Milk
  • 1 Vinegar

How to get the recipe:

  • Reach 3 hearts friendship with Caroline

Parsnip soup is another nice and simple recipe. The recipe is easy to get by building up a relationship with Caroline, and milk is the only ingredient that’s a bit of a challenge. Parsnips are one of the easiest crops to grow in the game, and vinegar is available at Pierre’s for 200 gold. Once you make the dish, it mostly just makes for an easy way to befriend Pam, since it’s not particularly useful to yourself in terms of effects. Just a simple dish that forms one of the many steps toward Gourmet Chef – and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Rhubarb Pie

A pretty simple dish, that can yield you a nice profit.

A pretty simple dish, that can yield you a nice profit.

Difficulty of getting
Hard
Difficulty of making
Easy

Effects

  • +215 Energy
  • +96 Health
    No additional effects

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Harvey, Krobus, Leo and Willy
  • Perfect gift to Jodi and Maru

Ingredients:

  • 1 Rhubarb
  • 1 Wheat Flour
  • 1 Sugar

How to get the recipe:

  • Reach 7 hearts friendship with Marnie

About nice dishes – rhubarb pie is a serious crowd pleaser since it’s a perfect gift for both Jodi and Maru. The recipe is easy enough to prepare. Rhubarb takes 13 days to grow in spring, and you can buy wheat flour and sugar from Pierre’s. Alternatively, you can wait till summer (wheat flour) and fall (sugar) to produce the remaining ingredients, using wheat and beats. The recipe is a little harder. You have to build a 7 hearts friendship with Marnie, which can take some time. However, the effort is certainly worth it. With rhubarb pie, you can conquer almost anyone’s heart.

Rice Pudding

A nice sweet dish to prepare on a slow spring day.

A nice sweet dish to prepare on a slow spring day.

Difficulty of getting
Hard
Difficulty of making
Easy

Effects

  • +115 Energy
  • +51 Health
    No additional effects

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Emily, Harvey, Krobus, Leah, Leo and Willy
  • Perfect gift to Demetrius

Ingredients:

  • 1 Milk
  • 1 Sugar
  • 1 Rice

How to get the recipe:

  • Reach 7 hearts friendship with Evelyn

Rice pudding is a similar story to rhubarb pie. Easy to cook, but getting the recipe is a lot harder. You have to reach 7 hearts friendship with Evelyn, which although not necessarily hard, takes time. Once you have the recipe, it’s simple enough. Just throw rice, sugar, and milk together. Of course, for those ingredients, you need a lot of equipment. You need a mill for the rice and sugar and a barn to house cows for milk. However, by the time you have those 7 hearts with Evelyn, you’re probably well on your way to building those. Enjoy some delicious rice pudding sweetness – but don’t forget to give some to Demetrius now and then.

Salad

You don't even have to grow anything for this one!

You don’t even have to grow anything for this one!

Difficulty of getting
Easy
Difficulty of making
Very easy

Effects

  • +113 Energy
  • +50 Health
    No additional effects

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Krobus, Leo, and Willy
  • Perfect gift to Leah

Ingredients:

  • 1 Leek
  • 1 Dandelion
  • 1 Vinegar

How to get the recipe:

  • Reach 3 hearts friendship with Emily

Remember how I mentioned you didn’t need the farm for the Fried Mushroom dish? That’s even more true for Salad. Leek and Dandelion are very easy to find throughout spring, and vinegar is always available for purchase at Pierre’s for 200 gold. The recipe itself is easy enough too – three hearts with Emily shouldn’t take very long to reach. Thus, salad is one of the easiest dishes in this entire Stardew Valley cooking guide. And although it’s not particularly good effects-wise, it’s a great way to make friends with Leah. 

Triple Shot Espresso

Great when you had a late night last night.

Great when you had a late night last night.

Difficulty of getting
Easy
Difficulty of making
Hard

Effects

  • +8 Energy
  • +3 Health
    Temporary Effects
  • +1 Speed
    Duration: 4 minutes,
    12 seconds

Worth to others

  • Universally liked
  • Disliked by Krobus, Willy
  • Hated by Jas, Leo and Vincent
  • No perfect gift

Ingredients:

  • 3 Coffee

How to get the recipe:

  • Purchase from Gus for 5000g

Ever in the mood for a boost? Then the triple shot espresso is the recipe for you! Like the real thing, the triple shot espresso gives you a temporary speed boost. So if you have loads to do, or long distances to travel, a few of these don’t hurt. You can purchase the recipe from Gus for 5000 gold, that although expensive at the start of the game, is not exactly difficult.

It’s a lot harder to prepare the recipe. You need three coffee. You can get coffee by placing coffee beans, which only grow in spring and summer. These beans are pretty rare. They have a 1% drop chance from Dust Sprites, or there’s a 25% chance they appear with the Travelling Merchant. Those are all your options to get coffee beans. You also need a keg to turn coffee beans into coffee, which is locked behind farming level 8. So plenty of steps, but the result is pretty great. And – you can stack it with other food buffs. So take that farmer’s lunch and a triple shot espresso for a great day of harvesting!

Stardew Valley Cooking: Dishes You Can Also Make in Spring

Of course, not all dishes in Stardew Valley are easy to categorize for cooking 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 spring, but that you can still prepare during the season of nature’s awakening!

Algae Soup | Baked Fish | Banana Pudding | Carp Surprise | Chowder | Crab Cakes | Crispy Bass | Fiddlehead Risotto | Fried Egg | Ginger Ale | Ice Cream | Lobster Bisque | Lucky Lunch | Mango Sticky Rice | Maple Bar | Miner’s Treat | Omelet | Pale Broth | Pancakes | Sashimi | Strange Bun | Tom Kha Soup

I hope you enjoyed this first part of the complete Stardew Valley Cooking Guide. I will see you again soon in the next installment when we tackle the season of nature’s crescendo – summer!

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