Cooking in Where Winds Meet is one of the most important systems for survival, exploration, and combat. With dozens of ingredients to gather and recipes spread across different quests, and specialty vendors, mastering cooking makes your journey smoother and far more efficient.
This guide breaks down every cooking recipe in the game, including all Recovery Foods and Buff Foods, complete with their ingredients, effects, unlock methods, and cooking level requirements.
1. Cooking Guide Overview: Healing, Buffs & Progression
Cooking in Where Winds Meet is one of the core survival and progression systems in the game. Every cooked dish either restores your Health over a short period or gives you a temporary combat buff such as increased Physical Attack or Max HP, letting you survive longer and hit harder in tough encounters and boss fights.
Unlike basic healing items, meals scale with your progress through the world: low-level dishes restore 4,500 Health, mid-tier meals restore 9,000 or 22,500 Health, and the strongest recipes heal up to 39,000 Health in just three seconds. Higher-tier Buff Foods also offer big, timed boosts such as +50–100 Physical Attack or +5,600 Max HP for 30 minutes, giving you a major edge before tackling dungeons, world bosses, or PvE challenges.
Because every meal costs Stamina to craft, cooking is also tied into the game’s broader crafting and exploration loop. You naturally gather ingredients while you’re questing, hunting, and fishing, then turn those resources into food whenever you stop at a camp or settlement. Planning your cooking around long sessions, Trials, and boss attempts is a big part of efficient play.
Cooking Loading Screen
2. How Cooking Works In Where Winds Meet
Before you can start mass-producing powerful meals, you need to understand how recipes, ingredients, and stamina work together at the cooking pot.
2.1 Unlocking Cooking Recipes
All 19 recipes exist in your cooking menu from the start, but most of them are locked behind simple progression tasks. You unlock them by:
- Completing Exploration – Culinary chains such as The Flavor of Sunset Glow.
- Taking part in a Fishing Contest by talking to Chu Shuiyang by the water in Verdant Wilds.
- Reaching the Thirteenth Chambers and unlocking associated recipes.
- Buying recipes from Meow Meow Temple Shop – Kaifeng.
- Finishing special encounters such as Encounter – Culinary Successor.
Only a handful of dishes, like Veggie Mix, are usable immediately. Most higher-tier meals are tied to these side activities, so if you want the best buffs you should prioritize fishing, exploration objectives, and specialty shops as you progress.
2.2 Finding Ingredients & Using Cooking Stations
Ingredients for recipes are scattered everywhere in the open world. You’ll gather them by:
- Hunting animals for meats such as Fatty Meat Chunks, Small Meat Chunks, Big Elk Meat, and various fish species.
- Foraging for plants like Herb, Wild Fruits, Beauty’s Garment, and Vicious Flower.
- Fishing rivers and lakes for River Fish, Golden Carp, Chinese Perch, Snakehead, Luokou Yellow Croaker, and more.
- Visiting merchants and specialty vendors to buy rarer items such as Atractylodes, Wild Ginseng, or Jade Tower Peony when you don’t want to farm them manually.
To cook, find any fire with a pot hanging over it — typically near settlements, rest points, and wilderness camps. Interact with the pot to open the cooking interface, choose your recipe, confirm that you have all required materials, then start cooking. After a short animation the meal is added straight to your inventory, ready to consume for healing or buffs.
Cooking Station
2.3 Stamina & Crafting Limits
Cooking consumes your stamina, and each recipe has its own Stamina Cost, so you can’t cook endlessly in one go. Bulk-cooking high-tier meals will drain your Stamina quickly, and you’ll need to plan around that when preparing food in advance.
When planning a long grind or a tough boss, it’s smart to batch-cook your best dishes when your stamina bar is full, then let it recover naturally while you’re out questing, fighting, or logging off for a bit.
2.4 Recovery Meals vs Buff Meals
Recovery Meals
Recipes focus entirely on healing, restoring your Health over three seconds. There are 13 Recovery dishes in total, unlocked across different cooking levels. Higher-level dishes heal significantly more, which makes them the best choice for late-game content and high-damage encounters. Use lower-tier meals early on to top off after smaller skirmishes, and save your endgame recipes for situations where you expect to take heavy damage.
Buff Meals
Recipes don’t heal you directly. Instead, they grant a strong, timed stat boost that lasts for 30 minutes. All six Buff dishes cost 8 Stamina to cook and only one food effect can be active at a time. Eating the same meal again refreshes its timer, but different buffs don’t stack, and none of them work during Trials, so choose the one that fits your current activity.
| Recipe | Required Cooking Level | Stamina Cost | Ingredients | Effect | How To Unlock |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Veggie Mix | Level 1 | 2 | Herb ×2, Mushrooms ×2 | Restores 4,500 Health over 3 seconds. | Available from the start of the game as your basic cooking recipe. |
| Ultimate Stuffed Fish | Level 1 | 2 | River Fish ×1, Herb ×2, Wild Fruits ×1 | Restores 4,500 Health over 3 seconds. | Unlocked by joining a Fishing Contest after starting to fish with Chu Shuiyang in Verdant Wilds. |
| Hotpot | Level 1 | 2 | Herb ×2, Small Meat Chunks ×2 | Restores 4,500 Health over 3 seconds. | Complete Exploration – Culinary: The Flavor of Sunset Glow to obtain the recipe. |
| Aromatic Roasted Meat | Level 20 | 3 | Herb ×2, Fatty Meat Chunks ×3 | Restores 9,000 Health over 3 seconds. | Reward from Exploration – Culinary: The Flavor of Sunset Glow. |
| Water Lily Clams | Level 20 | 3 | Eggs ×2, Small Meat Chunks ×2, Carapaces ×1 | Restores 9,000 Health over 3 seconds. | Also unlocked through Exploration – Culinary: The Flavor of Sunset Glow. |
| Fish-Stuffed Lotus Pods | Level 20 | 3 | River Perch ×1, Mushrooms ×2, Wild Fruits ×2 | Restores 9,000 Health over 3 seconds. | Obtained by taking part in a Fishing Contest with Chu Shuiyang in Verdant Wilds. |
| Sliced Fish Fillet | Level 20 | 3 | Snakehead ×2, Herb ×3 | Restores 9,000 Health over 3 seconds. | Unlocked via the Fishing Contest recipe reward from Chu Shuiyang. |
| Steamed Pork With Salt | Level 41 | 4 | Herb ×3, Fatty Meat Chunks ×1 | Restores 22,500 Health over 3 seconds. | Buy the recipe from the Meow Meow Temple Shop – Kaifeng, then cook it at any pot. |
| Meat-Stuffed Mushrooms | Level 41 | 4 | Mushrooms ×3, Small Meat Chunks ×3 | Restores 22,500 Health over 3 seconds. | Also purchased via the Meow Meow Temple Shop – Kaifeng recipe. |
| Mushroom-Steamed Fish | Level 41 | 4 | Luokou Yellow Croaker ×2, Mushrooms ×3 | Restores 22,500 Health over 3 seconds. | Gained as a recipe reward from the Fishing Contest with Chu Shuiyang. |
| Egg Custard Soup | Level 61 | 5 | Wild Fruits ×3, Eggs ×2 | Restores 39,000 Health over 3 seconds. | Unlocked by obtaining The Thirteenth Chambers recipe and cooking it at a pot. |
| Perch With Wild Fruits | Level 61 | 5 | Chinese Perch ×2, Wild Fruits ×2 | Restores 39,000 Health over 3 seconds. | Unlocked from the Fishing Contest recipe rewards. (This dish also appears as “Mock Clam Fish” in some translations.) |
| Braised Fish Head | Level 61 | 5 | Bighead Carp ×2, Herb ×3 | Restores 39,000 Health over 3 seconds. | Earn the recipe through the Fishing Contest, then cook it using the listed ingredients. |
| Recipe | Required Cooking Level | Stamina Cost | Ingredients | Buff Effect (30 Minutes) | How To Unlock |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carp With Fried Noodles | Level 20 | 8 | Golden Carp ×1, Beauty’s Garment ×2, Mushrooms ×2 | Increases Max HP by 1,100. Reusing the dish refreshes the duration; effect is inactive during Trials and does not increase Martial Mastery. | Unlocked by obtaining the recipe from a Fishing Contest (“Carp with Fried Noodles”/“Crisp Carp Noodles”) via Chu Shuiyang. |
| Rotisserie Venison | Level 20 | 8 | Atractylodes ×2, Big Elk Meat ×1, Eggs ×2 | Increases Physical Attack by 10–20. Reusing refreshes the duration; doesn’t stack with other food effects and is inactive in Trials. | Unlocked via The Thirteenth Chambers as the Rotisserie Venison recipe. |
| Crispy Pheasant | Level 41 | 8 | Lethal Marsh Frog Meat ×2, Mushrooms ×2, Vicious Flower ×1 | Increases Physical Attack by 20–40. Only one Food effect can be active; eating another Buff Food replaces it. | Complete Encounter – Culinary Successor to receive the recipe, then cook at any pot. |
| Venison Ginseng Soup | Level 41 | 8 | Wild Ginseng ×2, Barking Deer Meat ×1, Herb ×3 | Increases Max HP by 2,300. The buff refreshes if you eat the meal again; it doesn’t stack with other food buffs and is inactive in Trials. | Unlocked through The Thirteenth Chambers as the Venison Ginseng Soup recipe. |
| Braised Double Shreds | Level 61 | 8 | Great Bustard Meat ×2, Wei’s Purple Peony ×1, River Fish ×1 | Increases Physical Attack by 50–100, making it the strongest offensive food buff in the game. Effect refreshes on reuse but doesn’t stack with any other food effect and is inactive in Trials. | Unlocked by obtaining the Double Shreds recipe from the Fishing Contest. |
| Pufferfish Soup | Level 61 | 8 | Jade Tower Peony ×2, Pufferfish ×1, Wild Fruits ×2 | Increases Max HP by 5,600, the highest defensive HP boost from food. Like other Buff Meals, it can be refreshed but not stacked, and has no effect in Trials. | Earn the recipe through the Fishing Contest by competing via Chu Shuiyang in Verdant Wilds. |
