Cooking is the process of turning raw Food into cooked, or otherwise improved, food which, in general, adds a Health bonus and sometimes improves their Hunger or Sanity benefits as well. There are three types of cooking: Fire, Drying Rack, and Crock Pot.
Cooking food also reduces the spoilage of food. Fire and Crock Pot reduces spoilage by half (e.g. turning 20% fresh food back to 60% fresh), while Drying Rack completely removes spoilage.
Cooking Stations[]
A Fire Pit.
Cooking with a Dwarf Star.
Cooking food on a Campfire, a Fire Pit or a Dwarf Star is the most basic cooking method. To cook food, simply click on it, bring it to a burning Campfire, Fire Pit, or Dwarf Star and click again when the prompt shows up. Once a food has been cooked, it will be replaced in the inventory with its cooked counterpart. For example, a Morsel becomes a Cooked Morsel, and a Carrot becomes a Roasted Carrot. Cooked Meats generally spoil slower, while cooked Fruits and Vegetables generally spoil faster. There is no difference between cooking on any of the fires.
In the Shipwrecked DLC, it is also possible to cook food on a Chiminea, a Buoyant Chiminea, an Obsidian Fire Pit, a Lava Pool or an erupting Krissure.
In the Hamlet DLC, it is also possible to cook food on Crumbling Brazier and Wall Brazier.
In Don't Starve Together, it's also possible to cook on the Scaled Furnace, Willow's Lighter, Extra-Adorable Lavae, and Magma Pools. Willow, Warly and Walter only take half as long (0.5 seconds) as other Characters (1 second) to cook food.
Some Fruits and Vegetables are generally better consumed cooked than used as ingredients in Crock Pot. Notable examples:
Braised Eggplant [+20 
+25 ] – provides 17 more health and 3.125 more hunger- Sliced Pomegranate [+20 +12.5 ] – provides 12 more health
- Hot Pumpkin [+8 +37.5 ] – provides 5 more health
On the other hand, some Vegetables are best consumed raw:
- Corn [+3 +25 ] becomes Popcorn [+3 +12.5 ] when cooked.
Drying Rack[]
Some of the raw food items on the left of their cooked counterpart. Three types of jerky can be seen as well.
A Morsel attached to a Drying Rack.
Main article: Drying Rack
While not exactly cooking in the full sense of the word, using the Drying Rack to prepare Meats provides a longer-term food storage option to those without an Ice Box. When dried, Meats become Jerky and spoil at a much slower rate. Additionally, Jerky tends to give more of a Health and Sanity bonus than its raw or cooked counterparts.
In the Shipwrecked DLC, it is also possible to dry Seaweed, Jellyfish and Rainbow Jellyfish.
In the Hamlet DLC, it is also possible to dry Poison Dartfrog Legs and Flytrap Stalk.
The Foods which can be dried are listed below:
| Meat | Dried | Time required |
|---|---|---|
|
|
2 days |
   |
1 day | |
 |
 |
1 day |
|
 |
2 days |
        |
1 day | |
  |
 |
1 day |
 |
 |
0.25 days |
 |
 |
1 day |
 |
 |
0.25 days |
Crock Pot[]
Main article: Crock Pot
Cooking foods using the Crock Pot can combine them into a more ample dish. The Crock Pot requires 4 accepted (some foods such as Seeds cannot be added) items to be combined to produce a dish. Some recipes require or allow for non-foods to be added (most recipes accept twigs as filler). Recipes sometimes produce a dish with a greater Hunger/Health/Sanity bonus than all the ingredients combined. Keep in mind Crock Pots don't always improve the nutritional value of what's put into them, look at Wet Goop or the Powdercake as examples. Some recipes are designed to specifically provide a large Sanity or Health boost but do not fill as much Hunger.
The cooking times for Crock Pot recipes vary. A few foods like Waffles are cooked in as little as 10 seconds, while recipes like Mandrake Soup take a full minute. Most recipes require a certain amount of food (such as Meats or Vegetables) as opposed to specific food items. In the Shipwrecked DLC, Warly brings an exclusive Portable Crock Pot, that can be used to cook four additional recipes.
