Guides/Crock Pot Dishes

by Givemepancakes and various wikia contributors

The following is a guide to all of the Crock Pot dishes. There are many crock pot dishes in this game that do not serve a very good purpose, as they give less hunger than all of the ingredients separately. So, this guide is a list of all the crock pot dishes, organized into what is most and least effective.

Calculation
Free Points

The hunger points gained from eating a crock pot dish, that aren't accounted for by the ingredients, can be regarded as the Free Points. To calculate the free points of a given recipe, tally up the total hunger points of the ingredients that you want to use, and subtract that value from the hunger value of the recipe.

Examples:
 * A meatballs recipe (62.5 hunger points) consisting of four morsels (50 hunger points) gives 12.5 free points.


 * A meatballs recipe consisting of three carrots and a large meat (62.5 hunger points) do not give any free points.


 * A meatballs recipe consisting of three red caps and a monster meat (0 hunger points without a birdcage) gives 62.5 free points.


 * A fist full of jam recipe (37.5 points) consisting of 4 berries (50 points when roasted) deducts 12.5 points from the ingredients. Not worth it unless the berries are spoiled.

This can also be applied to the health and sanity gain of recipes.

Efficiency

Your ability to make recipes, and thus, ability to make free points, depends on having enough of the right ingredients to continue doing so. If you have less of a certain ingredient than others, it becomes important to spend it wisely to obtain the most free points.

Efficiency is simply a measurement of the amount of free points you're getting per ingredient. Simply take the free points of the recipe, and divide that number by the number of a given ingredient involved in the recipe.

Examples:
 * Two large meats and two morsels involved in a meaty stew recipe give 75 free hunger points. For every meaty stew recipe of this type, you receive 37.5 free points per large meat.


 * A meaty stew recipe using three large meats and a berry would give 62.5 free points. Every meat invested this way pulls in about 20.8 free points per meat.


 * One large meat, two morsels, and a honey as a honey ham recipe give 15.625 free hunger points, which is how many you gain per large meat from this recipe.

Efficiency only really matters to ingredients with a limited supply. If a particular ingredient is in no danger of exhausting, the efficiency of all other ingredients becomes more important.

A note on inedible ingredients

Inedible ingredients don't (usually) have a usable hunger value. Things like red caps and monster meat have penalties that arguably make them inedible, while twigs simply cannot be consumed.

Creating a recipe with these ingredients will produce a dish that technically gives a high amount of free points, and that using these ingredients first should be a priority. This, however does not mean that gathering monster meat and red caps is any better than gathering rabbits and carrots, as the time and effort required are roughly the same.

Another thing to note: these ingredients don't necessarily have a zero points value. Red caps can be turned into ratatouille, if you have at least four, potentially giving them a value of at least 6.25. All stale and spoiled ingredients, as well as monster meat, red caps, or durians, have values that can be used if you're willing to accept the penalties. You can also potentially turn inedible meat into eggs (12.5 points cooked) or farmable plants into crop seeds. Even sticks can have an obscure value depending on how many you have and the demand your tool-making places on them.

The bottom line at the end of the day is how many hunger points you end up with.

Tips
Before starting on the recipes themselves, here's a few basic things to know about the Crock Pot, for new players:
 * Check the Crock Pot for a complete list of recipes. Pay special attention to the priorities, since a recipe might not turn out the way you expect even if it seems you put in the correct ingredients.
 * High point vegetables, such as Corn, Pumpkin or Eggplant should usually be eaten raw or cooked over a fire. You usually can't obtain a higher total value by including these high point items in a recipe. You might even want to consider cooking and eating Durians, since the penalty can be manageable.
 * Don't put more than 1 monster meat in a recipe, unless it contains at least 1 twig (excluding Kabobs). If you put 2 or more monster meats/durians in the crock pot, the recipe (almost) always comes out as Monster Lasagna, which drops health and sanity by 20 when consumed. However, monster lasagna cannot have twigs, which allows up to 2 to be included (3 makes Wet Goop). You can also feed a bird in a Birdcage monster meat to receive Eggs.
 * Wet Goop works as bait for Traps, so it isn't completely useless if you make a mistake with your recipe. It can be created with four twigs if you want to create it.
 * You must also consider time expenditure. If it takes less time to gather ingredients for a lower points recipe, it could easily result in a better rate of points gain. If you can't set a Bee Farm down relatively close to a good supply of monster meat and large meat/morsels, you won't be able to make Honey Ham consistently without running around a lot.

Mandrake Soup
Mandrake Soup doesn't increase the value from the cooked mandrake (150 hunger, 100 HP), but allows you to avoid the knock-out effect.

Dragon Pie
Dragon Pie gives 62.5 bonus hunger points and 20 'bonus' HP (for a total of 40 HP). You should probably always use twigs, but can use other fillers if your twigs are being exhausted by successful breeding of dragonfruit.

Meaty Stew
Meaty Stew gives either 62.5 or 75 bonus hunger points, and can give more with inedible ingredients. The best of the "large meat" dishes, and what you should be saving them for. The most large meat efficient (up to 37.5 points per meat), morsel efficient (37.5 in 'two-morsel' recipes), and even monster meat efficient recipe, due to the sheer amount of free points generated. The only real catch, aside from needing large meat, is that the hunger points given total so high that some characters can't even hold that many.

Honey Ham
Honey Ham gives 18.75 to 28.125 'bonus' hunger points and 24 to 27 'bonus' HP, if you use monster meat based recipes (boost free hunger points by 12.5 if you don't have a birdcage). Has great healing, making this item beneficial to keep in crock pots at your base for use after fights or death.

Large meat is better spent on meaty stew, so make that instead if you can (and don't need healing). Still, this is one of the better places to spend it.

Bacon and Eggs
Bacon and Eggs gives 25 'bonus' hunger and 20 'bonus' HP with a good recipe. Gives good health, and has a very large keeping time at 20 days, and is generally easier to get than other long lasting foods. You need a birdcage to be able to make this (which makes monster meats used here worth 12.5 hunger by default).

A single large meat drops the free points to 12.5 (it's ok if there isn't an alternative).

The secondary recipe requires a Tallbird Egg, but doesn't require any small meats or a birdcage. If you can't get a birdcage, the monster meats are technically zero hunger, making the recipe give 37.5 free points.

Turkey Dinner
Turkey Dinner gives 25 free hunger and 20 free HP with edible ingredients. Turkey Dinner requires that you kill a Gobbler (without fire, since it cooks the drumsticks, which are unusable), but if you can, Turkey Dinner is a great bacon and eggs alternative that requires no monster meats, and doesn't need a bird cage.

Meatballs
Meatballs gives 12.5 'bonus' hunger points with edible ingredients. This recipe will be your default recipe most of the time. Meatballs are adaptable, and can be made with most ingredients, including one monster meat (or four by converting to eggs). This makes it easy to adjust the recipe to make any ingredient involved more efficient. The only real drawback of this dish is that it isn't the absolute best.

Froggle Bunwich
Froggle Bunwich gives 12.5 'bonus'hunger points and 20 'bonus' HP. The ingredient efficiency of this recipe is excellent, allowing you to make enough of these to surpass most recipes on this list. The catch is that you need frog legs to make this. In camps based around Frog Ponds (See here for more info on that), this will be a large staple of your diet. Unfortunately, the large volume of frog legs will require a lot of crock pots and drying racks to preserve them for the winter. Once winter hits, you cannot gather any more.

Butter Muffin
Butter Muffin gives 12.5 hunger and 20 HP. Just like the Froggle Bunwich, this is a high efficiency recipe. You'll need to plant substantial amounts of flowers to obtain butterflies regularly, and you'll need silk to make butterfly nets. This can work out since you probably want monster meat from spiders to go with honey, and honey production needs flowers to work. Like the Froggle Bunwich, production must cease in the winter.

Waffles
Waffles gives 20 extra HP for a total of 60. This dish is one of the best items in the game in terms of health restoration, restoring 60 health. However, due to the rarity of butter, they are difficult to get a hold of.

Fishsticks
Fishsticks give 40 'bonus' HP, minus 3 for every honey. They are an amazing healing item, and can be made with Honey or Monster Meats for a half-decent amount of free points as well (though with low efficiency).

Pierogi
Pierogis give 40 'bonus' HP, minus 3 for every honey. These are basically an alternative to Fishsticks that don't require a fish, but can't use twigs. Not as good due to needing to commit more quality ingredients, but still boosts 40 HP.

Honey Nuggets
Honey Nuggets give 11 to 17 'bonus'HP, depending on how much honey you use, for a total of 20. These are worse than the above two restoration recipes, but can use honey for most of the recipe, which should be in pretty good supply if you have an operation running. The point at the end of the day is to boost your HP, and no matter how you make this recipe, you get 20 HP from eating it.

Fish Tacos
Fish Tacos give 20 'bonus 'HP. This recipe uses less food than Honey Nuggets, but require two specific ingredients.

Unagi
Unagi gives 9 extra HP for a total of 20. While this is a weak surplus, the recipe still gives 20 HP total, which is what matters.

Fruit Medley
Fruit Medley gives 20 'bonus' HP. This is the most wasteful healing item, in terms of hunger points spent to obtain HP, but it can be worth it if you have Durians or Cave Bananas and no other HP restoration methods are available. Note that a Pomegranate can be cooked to give the same healing as this recipe.

Taffy
Taffy restores 15 sanity. Taffy gives the same amount of sanity restoration as the pumpkin cookie, but also has a -3 health penalty. Make this instead of a pumpkin cookie: if you have a pumpkin, you can cook it over the fire and eat it for 37.5 hunger and 8 health, then eat taffy and have a net health gain of 5, making pumpkin cookies basically pointless.

Low Worth Dishes
Most of these are only worthwhile to upgrade freshness of stale or spoiled ingredients, or for the 5 sanity almost every dish can get.

Fist Full of Jam
Fist Full of Jam gives less hunger than the four cooked berries or one cooked berry and three honey used to make it. Never mind the fact that the ingredients can go towards higher dishes.

Kabobs
Kabobs don't give free points unless you use honey or inedibles, and you can get more out of them by spending them on other dishes. They can appear to be a good use of inedibles if you only measure one Kabob to one instance of another recipe (i.e. Meatballs), but in the long term they are always worse.

Stuffed Eggplant
Stuffed Eggplant is generally a waste of twigs. It only sort of works if a red cap is included, otherwise the ingredients give the same hunger and HP when cooked. There are much better places to use red caps. Not a bad way to resurrect a stale or spoiled eggplant though.

Pumpkin Cookie
Pumpkin Cookie is outperformed by taffy if you have another honey and twig to spend. The Pumpkin itself is best eaten cooked, and will offset the health penalty of the taffy.

Ratatouille
Ratatouille most recipes give less stat restoration than its individual components. That being said, in an emergency this is an ok way to spend multiple red caps (but far from the best use of them).

Monster Lasagna
Monster Lasagna is only worth it in an extremely desperate and obscure situation: your cooked monster meats or monster jerky are spoiled and this is the only option to restore enough hunger. Most of the time you get better results with two cooked monster meats or monster jerky, since they are less damaging.

Powdercake
Powdercake is a joke item, with the hunger and sanity benefits of Wet Goop with -3 health penalty. There is no reason or possible benefit to ever make this dish.

Wet Goop
Wet Goop is worthless eating wise, but can be used for spoiling into rot, or luring Pigs into meat farms.

And that's about it, people. I hope you learned a lot from this. Remember to leave a comment so I can improve this guide.