Best Food to Cook in Genshin Impact (2.x)

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Reviewed by Ashley Johnson

Nothing is more satisfying than a good meal. In the world of Genshin Impact, it can literally be the difference between life and death on your journey. It provides powerful buffs and instant healing, and is one of the most useful resources you can obtain.

Each region of Teyvat has their own take on cuisine, with dozens of recipes to collect and master. In this guide, we’ll be covering all the best food in Genshin Impact. We’ll go over how the food system works, what the best food in Genshin Impact is for each category, where to get recipes, and which dishes are the most efficient to make.

Let’s get started!

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How Does Food Work in Genshin Impact?

In Genshin Impact, food can be used to either heal a character or grant them a temporary buff. The mechanics for each type of food work slightly differently, so we’ll cover them in detail here.

Healing Food

We’ll start with how healing food works. Each active party member has a fullness meter that fills up by consuming a healing dish.

Once a character is completely full, they won’t be able to consume any more healing food until the meter depletes a bit. It takes forty seconds of unpaused gameplay time before a full meter starts depleting again. The rate of depletion is 0.3% every second (in total, it takes about five and a half minutes to fully empty).  

The rarity of a dish affects how much of the fullness meter is filled up per bite.

• 3-star: 36.7% (3 dishes till full)
• 2-star: 33.3% (4 dishes till full)
• 1-star: 20% (5 dishes till full)
• 0-star: 5.55% (18 dishes till full)

Given the efficiency of 3-star dishes, you’ll probably be exclusively eating them once you have enough cooking materials saved. Since there’s no overflow on the fullness meter, you should always eat a 3-star dish if you’re on the verge of being full.  

If a character is knocked out, their fullness meter resets to 0. You can force feed KO’d teammates as much as you want outside of combat, but in combat, revival food can only be used once every 120 seconds. Revival food does not fill up the fullness meter.  

Buff Food

Buff food in Genshin Impact is separated into five different categories. You can have one effect from each category active at a time. Eating another dish (even a weaker one) will overwrite your active buff.

• Offensive: Boosts attack, physical damage, and CRIT rate/damage.
• Defensive: Boosts defense, shield strength, HP%, and healing bonuses.
• Stamina: Reduces stamina usage when sprinting, climbing, gliding, and swimming.
• Elemental: Boosts elemental damage or resistance (choose one). Potions are technically treated as food, and you can have only one active at a time.
• Temperature: Combats Sheer Cold effects. Only one dish currently exists in this category.

There are also foods that instantly restore a chunk of your stamina. These are on a 300-second cooldown, so you can only use them sparingly.  

Important Things to Know Before Cooking Food

Dish Quality

Dishes come in three quality variants: Normal, Suspicious, and Delicious. Your performance during the cooking mini-game determines what variant you obtain. You want to do it perfectly to get a Delicious variant, which has stronger effects. Our list of the best dishes in Genshin Impact are based on the Delicious variants.

Mastering a recipe (which you can do by perfectly cooking it manually enough times) lets you auto-cook multiple copies at once at Delicious quality.  

Assigning Chefs

Certain characters have a chance of making extra copies of a dish when you assign them as the chef in the top right of the cooking menu. You do not need to have them as the active playable character.

• Offensive: Xiangling
• Defensive: Noelle, Xinyan
• Healing/Revival: Barbara, Jean, Diona
• Stamina: Yun Jin

Since you can obtain Noelle, Xiangling, and Barbara for free effectively, you should almost always use them to cook for their respective categories. As for Elemental Food (aka. Potions), you craft them at the alchemy bench in any city. Make sure to assign Lisa as the crafter to reduce material costs!

Each character also has a dish they specialize in (except the Raiden Shogun, who straight-up can’t cook). When assigned as the chef to that specific dish, they have a low chance of making their unique variant, which provides more powerful effects. Due to how low the chance is of creating the special variant is, however, you’re usually better off making the dish with a character who specializes in the category to make multiple copies.

Archive Completion

As far as the Archive is concerned, for completion’s sake, you only need to cook a dish once to obtain it, regardless of quality. This means there’s no need to cook a dish three times in different ways. If you’re interested in obtaining a unique character variant of a dish for Archive completion, just wait for the character’s birthday to roll around. They’ll send you a message with a copy of their special dish.

NREs

As a heads up, you can not use food in the Abyss. A pity, we know, but you can eat food in most challenging events, at least!

Note that while the game pauses in single player when you go to the food screen, it does not pause in co-op mode. Obtaining the NRE (Menu 30) gadget can subvert this by letting you assign a healing and revival dish for easy instant use (also fantastic for those who don’t want to constantly go to the food menu).  Just reach Reputation Level 5 in Mondstadt and you’ll be able to learn and craft one at the blacksmith.

Best Dishes to Cook in Genshin  

Now that we have the important basics out of the way, let’s go over the best food in Genshin Impact. Here, we cover each type of effect and base our choices on how strong the effect is and how easily obtainable the ingredients are. Let’s jump in!

Best Healing Food

• Mondstadt Hash Brown (3*): Restore 34% of max HP and an additional 1900 HP.
  • Recipe: Complete Temple of the Wolf domain (requires Adventure Rank 15)
  • Ingredients: 2x Pinecone, 1x Potato, 1x Jam

• Universal Peace (3*): Restore 34% of max HP and an additional 1900 HP.
  • Recipe: Buy from Wanmin Restaurant (Liyue) for 5000 Mora (requires Adventure Rank 30)
  • Ingredients: 4x Rice, 2x Lotus Head, 2x Carrot, 2x Berry

• Sweet Madame (2*): Restore 24% of max HP and an additional 1500 HP.
  • Recipe: Available from the start
  • Ingredients: 2x Fowl, 2x Sweet Flower  

Best Revival Food

• Golden Shrimp Balls: Revive a character with 1500 HP.
  • Recipe: Reach reputation level 1 in Liyue.
  • Ingredients: 5x Shrimp Meat, 4x Potato, 3x Flour

• Fullmoon Egg: Revive a character with 1500 HP.
  • Recipe: Bought from Xinyue Kiosk (Liyue) for 5000 Mora.
  • Ingredients: 4x Fish, 2x Shrimp Meat, 2x Bird Egg, 1x Flour

Best Offensive Food

• Adeptus’ Temptation: Increase ATK by 372 and CRIT rate by 12% for 300 seconds.
  • Recipe: Loot the treasure chest on the floating island above Qingyun Peak (Liyue)
  • Ingredients: 4x Ham, 3x Crab, 3x Shrimp Meat, 3x Matsutake

• Jade Parcels: Increase ATK by 320 and CRIT rate by 10% for 300 seconds.
  • Recipe: Complete Xiangling’s story quest (requires Adventure Rank 13)
  • Ingredients: 3x Lotus Head, 2x Jueyun Chili, 2x Cabbage, 1x Ham

• Tianshu Meat: Increase Physical DMG by 45% and CRIT rate by 10% for 300 seconds.
  • Recipe: Reach reputation level 7 in Liyue
  • Ingredients: 4x Raw Meat, 2x Sugar, 1x Qingxin, 1x Matsutake  

Best Defensive Food

• Chili-Minced Cornbread Buns: Increase shield strength by 35% and DEF by 235 for 300 seconds.
  • Recipe: Obtained from finishing Moonlight Merriment (2021) event.
  • Ingredients: 4x Raw Meat, 2x Jueyun Chili, 3x Flour, 2x Cabbage

• Moon Pie: Increase shield strength by 35% and DEF by 235 for 300 seconds.
  • Recipe: Reach reputation level 7 in Mondstadt
  • Ingredients: 4x Raw Meat, 4x Bird Egg, 3x Butter, 2x Flour

• Golden Crab: Increase DEF by 308 and healing effects by 10% for 300 seconds.
  • Recipe: Complete Mona’s story quest (requires Adventure Rank 38)
  • Ingredients: 5x Bird Egg, 5x Flour, 4x Crab, 2x Salt

• Stir-Fried Shrimp: Increase shield strength by 25% for 300 seconds.
  • Recipe: Bought from Wangshu Inn (Liyue) for 5000 Mora
  • Ingredients: 4x Shrimp Meat, 3x Flour, 3x Snapdragon    

Best Stamina Food

• Barbatos Ratatouille: Decrease stamina consumption for sprinting and gliding by 25% for 900 seconds.
  • Recipe: Speak to Vind at the edge of Stormbearer Point’s cliff (Mondstadt). It’s at the far top right of the map.
  • Ingredients: 4x Carrot, 4x Potato, 4x Onion

• Sticky Honey Roast: Decrease stamina consumption for climbing and sprinting by 25% for 900 seconds.
  • Recipe: Complete the Dawn Winery variant of the daily commission Food Delivery OR complete Jean’s story quest (requires Adventure Rank 34)
  • Ingredients: 3x Raw Meat, 2x Carrot, 2x Sugar  

Best Stamina Restoration Food

• Five Pickled Treasures: Restore 100 stamina instantly.
  • Recipe: Buy from Shimura’s (Inazuma) for 4500 Mora.
  • Ingredients: 2x Radish, 2x Carrot, 2x Lavender Melon, 2x Seagrass  

Best Temperature Food

• Goulash: Decrease the rate of Sheer Cold accumulation for 900 seconds.
  • Recipe: Complete the Ah, Fresh Meat quest (Dragonspine).
  • Ingredients: 2x Chilled Meat, 2x Carrot, 1x Tomato    
  • Side note: This dish also works in the fight against Signora.

Join the High Ground

That’s it for our guide on the best dishes in Genshin Impact — thanks for reading! If there’s anything else you’d like to see added, please subscribe and leave a comment below.

Happy gaming!