Cooking meals and grilling meat in Monster Hunter Wilds is how you’ll keep your health and stamina maxed out along with buffs to other stats and skills. Cooking doesn’t work quite like it did in other Monster Hunter games (we miss you, meowscular chef).
Our Monster Hunter Wilds guide will tell you all about cooking, including when you can start cooking, and how to get the most benefit out of cooking. Once you’ve got your head around how to cook, our best buffs and meals can help you what to cook.
When can you start cooking meals in Monster Hunter Wilds?
You can’t cook in Monster Hunter Wilds until after you attempt to visit Y’sai’s village and get turned away. On your way back to the base camp in Windward Plains, you’ll meet your first Doshaguma and gather some honey.
Image: Capcom via Polygon
When you drop off the honey at the provisions shop, he’ll give you your Essential Items — a portable BBQ grill, fishing rod, binoculars, capture net, throwing knife, paint pod, and ghillie mantle.
The portable BBQ grill is what you need in order to start cooking meals.
How to cook meals in Monster Hunter Wilds
There are two ways to cook a meal in Monster Hunter Wilds. You can pull out your portable BBQ grill from you Essential Items radial menu, or you can cook a meal inside your tent. For the grill, hold down L1/LB, hit down on the D-pad, and then move the right thumbstick to the lower left to highlight the portable grill. In your tent, all you have to do is tab over to the fourth menu, “Grill a Meal.”
Image: Capcom viaPolygon
Meals are made of (up to) three ingredients: a ration, additional ingredients, and finishing touches.
Rations are the same as the ration consumable item, but when you cook with them, they become either meat, fish, or veggies. Additional ingredients are things like Kunafa cheese or mud shrimp that you usually get as hunt rewards or from trading with locals. Finishing touches are other special ingredients like eastern honey or wild herbs that are also hunt rewards or come from trading with locals.
A meal can be just a ration, a ration and an additional ingredient, or all three. Pay attention to the buffs and skills that each meal gets you so you can match the meal to your upcoming hunts.
- Cooking and eating a meal that just consists of a ration (like meat) will get you a boost to your health and stamina for 30 minutes. You’ll also get a third buff depending on what you cook. Meat gets you a +2 to attack and fish adds a +4 to defense, for example.
- Adding in an additional ingredient gets you an extra 20 minutes of effect along with a skill. That skill depends on the ingredient. These are things like Kunafa cheese adding the Defender Meal (Lo) skill and Sild garlic adding Moxie Meal (Lo).
- Finishing touches add a +5 to elemental resistance and a second skill. Wild herbs give the Immunizer Meal skill and hastern honey adds the Medic Meal skill, for example.
Meal effects don’t stack and you can only get the benefits from one meal at a time. If you’re not sure what to put into the mix, our best buffs and meals is something to investigate.
How to grill meat in Monster Hunter Wilds
A meal that you cook with a meat ration isn’t the same as what happens when you grill meat. Grilling the raw meat hunting item gets you a new consumable item — rare steak, well-done steak, or burnt meat depending on how well you do it. You can read more about well-done steak here.
To also help you understand Monster Hunter Wilds, we explain how to change weapons, provide some Seikret tips, and teach you how fishing and layered armor works.