January 3, 2023 - stardew valley, stardew-valley, guides

Profitable Cooking Recipes

First off all, purchase a Mill from the Carpenter's Shop. It costs 2,500 gold, 50 Stone, 150 Wood, and 4 Cloth. Use this to convert Wheat into Flour, Beets into Sugar, and Unmilled Rice into Rice.

Ingredient Max Quality
Unmilled Rice Any
Wheat Any
Beet Silver

The ingredients listed on this page include ingredients/recipes that only break even since you may want to convert to Cooked food for gift giving or certain quests.

Ingredients to keep (base quality only unless noted):

Crab Pot Fish to Keep (always sell Lobster and Crab instead of cooking):

Fish to keep:

Crops, Flowers, and Fruit (base quality only unless noted):

Bread takes 50 -> 60 (20% increase)

As for profitable recipes, here's a list (including the priority that you'll want to cook in):

Notes: The profit margin on Lucky Lunch is rather high and may justify losing money on turning Corn into Tortilla, even with the Tiller profession. There are also certain cases where fish worth up to 100g are profitable when making Maki Rolls (but never with Sashimi). Never turn Carp into Carp Surprise, make Sashimi instead.

How do I get most of these recipes?

The big three recipes to get are Pale Broth, Algae Soup, and Sashimi. Give gifts to Linus (any forage goods), Marnie (Quartz), and Clint (Topaz, Amethyst, Aquamarine, and Jade) as soon as possible.

An (*) denotes there are multiple sources for the recipe.

Reach a certain level in a profession:

You'll want to reach the following friendship levels with particular villagers:

You'll get the following recipes from watching The Queen of Sauce:

Purchase the following recipes from Gus:

Why should I cook instead of processing the ingredients in a Preserves Jar, Keg, Mayonnaise Jar, or Cheese Press?

It's pretty simple: time and space.

Cooking doesn't have processing time and it doesn't take up extra space on your farm or in your shed (or house).

Processing is also somewhat inconvenient. For example, turning an Egg into mayonnaise takes 3 hours in game... that means you'll need to come back every three hours to process multiple eggs or have a Mayonnaise Machine for each Chicken or Duck on your farm. I'd rather spend those Copper Bars on Crab Pots or Tappers.

That said, as a general rule, it is better to process your ingredients using a machine than it is to cook. We're just assuming you're using more effective ingredients in those machines.

Bonus Tip: Save Your Coffee for Qi's Cuisine

Later in the game, you might stumble across a Hot Java Ring. When slaying monsters, they'll have a chance to drop Coffee. Save this Coffee whenever you can. You'll eventually stumble across Qi's Cuisine as a weekly challenge. Once you have this, make 223 Triple Shot Espresso from 669 Coffee. You can also buy Coffee from Gus at the Stardrop Saloon for 200g/each but gathering Coffee from the Hot Java Ring will give you a nice profit. Other than that, converting Coffee into Triple Shot Espresso doesn't turn a profit (3x 150g for Coffee vs 1x 450g for Triple Shot Espresso).

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