Project Zomboid Cooking: The Essential Guide

As you play Project Zomboid, you’ll realize that running and fighting zombies isn’t all there is to the game. You must survive and live a new life during the apocalypse. This asks of you to learn skills to gather the resources needed to continue living each day. One of these is cooking, which plays a crucial role in how long you last in the game.

Cooking not only teaches you how to make meals in Project Zomboid but also sub-skills such as scavenging for food, hunting, distinguishing rotten from fresh ingredients, and more. Moreover, if you know how to cook, you’ll be able to have nutritious meals that will give you the health and stamina you need to fight off the undead.

But cooking can’t be as easy as throwing ingredients in a pot and calling it a day. It’s crucial to learn and understand how Project Zomboid’s cooking system works as it’s almost as complex as real-life cooking. While cooking might seem daunting to beginners, we’ve prepared this essential guide that covers what you need to know about cooking, cooking recipes, and leveling up with Project Zomboid’s cooking system.

What is Cooking in Project Zomboid?

Mainly, cooking in Project Zomboid is simply a crafting skill. It allows your characters to produce meals from various food items and recipes. You automatically get this skill from occupations such as being a Chef or Burger Flipper.

You cook by simply having a cooking vessel such as a cooking pot, griddle pan, oven, or having a base ingredient such as any meat, fruits, vegetables, or a combination of those things. Moreover, you can add multiple ingredients to produce a variety of cooking recipes. So, you can go from simple meals to advanced ones, depending on your skill and available ingredients.

What’s great about cooking is that besides satiating your nutrition, it can also reduce your boredom and unhappiness. It’s a skill that you can turn into an activity within Project Zomboid.

Different Types of Food You can Cook

There are different types of recipes you can make and find within Project Zomboid.

We’ve categorized them and cited some major examples of the options you can try cooking in-game:

Evolved Recipes

One of the unique ways to create food is from Evolved Recipes. You’ll be able to combine ingredients and create unique recipes. Though, keep in mind that starter food items are needed as a foundation to this recipe type’s meals. Plus, the process of creating food from Evolved Recipes can become quite complex.

An ideal example is creating a pie, which requires a Pie Preparation, made from a Baking Pan, Pie Dough, and using a Rolling Pin. Making cakes also follows a similar process, needing you to make a Cake Preparation from a Baking Pan and Cake Batter before baking it in an oven. For other meals, there’s also Soup and Stew which requires Cooking Pots that are filled with Water. Then you can add other ingredients to it, such as Meat and Vegetables.

Aside from that, you can make complex meals such as Stir Fry, Sandwiches, Roasted Vegetables, Pizza, Burger, Pancakes, Burritos, and Pasta. There are a lot of options you have. But due to these recipes being “Evolved Recipes,” they’re much more challenging to craft.

Prepared Food Recipes

Another type of cooking recipe you can try is Prepared Food Recipes. These are some of the simplest types of food you can create. Mostly, they’re made from an ingredient and a tool to prepare them. An example of this is a Bowl of Oatmeal made from water and a Can of Oats and Gravy made from a Gravy Mix, Water, a Bowl, and a Mixing Utensil.

Prepared Food Recipes are much simpler but still need some form of a process or specific tools to be produced. This includes food items such as Scrambled Eggs, Omelettes, Fried Shrimp, Maki, Muffins, Bowl food items, and even a Pot of Soup.

Single-Ingredient Meals

Next is one of the most commonly used ways to cook food in Project Zomboid, which is making Single-Ingredient meals. Usually you’d simply need the ingredient and a heat source to cook this type of meal. This improves the nutritional value and reduces the risk of getting food illnesses from eating raw food.

Some Single-Ingredient Meals include making cooked meat from raw meat such as Ham, Bacon, Mutton Chops, Ground Beef, Sausage, Steak, Cooked Egg, and more. This is also applied to Game Meat when you hunt like using Frog Meat, Rabbit Meat, and Small Bird Meat.

Furthermore, you can cook Seafood and Vegetables in this way too. If you catch Bass, Catfish, Trout, or find Potatoes, Carrots, and Broccoli, you can fry or boil them to enhance their benefits. There are various recipes of Single-Ingredient Meals you can try by cooking with a source of heat.

Preserved Food

Besides single-ingredient food, you can also create preserved food such as jarred and canned food. This ensures that once perishable food can last longer, especially without refrigeration.

Typical Preserved Food you’ll probably encounter include Opened Canned Vegetable Soup, Opened Canned Tuna, Opened Corned Beef, Jar of Potatoes, Jar of Tomatoes, and even a Jar of Broccoli. Canned goods also require you to have a Can Opener to open them. You can also eat dried food such as Dry Ramen Noodles just to reduce your hunger.

When it comes to preserving food, you’d need a Jar, a Jar Lid, Water, Vinegar, and Sugar for food preservation. While it’s typical to eat this type of food straight out of its container, you can still opt to cook them over a heat source.

Beverages

Last are Beverages. While this isn’t solid food, you can still prepare drinks to nourish yourself. You can make beverages such as hot drinks like Coffee, and Cocoa. There are also typical drinks such as Orange Soda, Cola, Chocolate Milk, and more. You can even have alcoholic drinks, such as Vodka, Red Wine, Rum, and other similar beverages.

Usually, making drinks in Project Zomboid requires you to have a Mug or Tumbler filled with water, then you’ll be able to create your ideal beverage. You can combine ingredients with condiments and spices such as Coffee Grounds or Tea with some Sugar, Honey, and/or Milk for mugs of water.

For more types of food and ingredients you can encounter in Project Zomboid, you can also refer to the Project Zomboid Recipe and Ingredient Wiki.

How do you cook in Project Zomboid?

Now that you have a better idea of the things you can cook in Project Zomboid, we can move on to actually cooking in the game. You can try out your cooking recipes on pretty much any type of heat source, such as Old Stoves, Campfires, and other similar places.

Preparing cooking pots, frying pans, and other cooking tools

First off, you need to prepare your cooking equipment and tools. These include knives like a meat cleaver, spoons, forks, bowls, rolling pins, can openers, bowls, cooking pots, frying pans, baking pans, and mugs.

There are quite a lot of tools and equipment in Project Zomboid and surely you’ll find what you need while playing.

Finding ingredients to cook

Besides your tools and equipment, of course you’ll need ingredients. These are what make up your cooking recipes in Project Zomboid. You’ll be adding ingredients and/or probably mixing them.

Whether scavenged, farmed, fished, or looted, food ingredients can play a huge role in crafting nutritious meals. You can even gather condiments and spices to enhance the flavor and create variety for your meal.

Combining ingredients to cook

When it comes to actually cooking, usually, you have to “right-click” on your heat source to turn it on or ignite it. Moreover, you’ll have to control the heat of this heat source.

Then, you can add your base ingredient or ingredients (if you have a lot) onto your cooking vessel and place that on your heat source.

Be sure to monitor your cooking progress to avoid burning and wasting your food. You’ll find a cooking progress bar to determine if your food is cooked yet or not.

Some simple ways to cook ingredients like raw meat or fish are adding them to a cooking vessel, then turning on your heat source and waiting until they’re cooked.

For cooking more complex recipes that require multiple ingredients, you’ll have to assemble them in equipment such as pans, pots, or bowls and even add boiling water into them.

Cooking in Project Zomboid pretty much mimics real-life cooking. You have to think that cooking a burger, for example, requires multiple ingredients such as Bread Slices, meat, Vegetables, and other ingredients.

Common Cooking Recipes to Try

If you’re still lost on what to cook in Project Zomboid, don’t worry because we have some recommended cooking recipes that are easy to follow and execute in-game.

• Grilled Meat or Fish – The easiest thing you can cook in Project Zomboid is Grilled Meat or Fish, which requires any raw meat or fish, then cooking it over a heat source. It’s simple and an effective recipe, garnering you decent nutrition.
• Canned Meal – A Canned Meal can come in many forms such as Canned Soup, Canned Beans, and any other canned food. You don’t need a heat source for this as you can directly eat the food. Finding canned food is easy and you can store this for long playthroughs.
• Salad – Next is a Salad which just mainly requires you to gather raw vegetables such as Lettuce, Tomatoes, and Carrots. You’ll just need to combine these in a bowl and there’s no heat source requirement for it. It’s efficient too if you want to consume your fresh food before it rots.
• Soup – If you want something soul-soothing, soup is the way to go. You’ll mainly need a Cooking Pot and a heat source. Simply combine Water and one or more ingredients such as Vegetables, Meat, or Canned Goods. It’s perfect if you have an array of random ingredients.
• Stir Fry – Similar to Soup, you can combine ingredients and fry them over a heat source on a Frying Pan. This makes a quick meal you can make almost anywhere.

Advance Cooking Recipes to Try

If you want to take your cooking skills up a notch, you can ty making some advanced cooking recipes.

These often require more specific ingredients and processes to make them.

• Pizza – Pizza requires you to have Baking Tray, Bread Dough, Tomato Sauce, Cheese, and optional toppings. You’ll have to prepare the dough, spread the tomato sauce, add your toppings, and bake it on a heat source. What makes this recipe complex is that you have to make the dough preparation and use multiple ingredients.
• Pie – We’ve mentioned pies earlier and while it’s a popular recipe to cook, it’s also quite advanced. You’ll need a Pie Preparation made from Pie Dough and add some fruits, meat, or vegetables to it for its filling. It’s a complex recipe that requires the proper tools and baking knowledge in Project Zomboid.
• Stew – Similar to Soup, a Stew usually requires water and different ingredients. However, it takes longer to cook due to its liquid thickness. You usually have to add spices on top of your base ingredients to cook this recipe.
• Cake – Cakes work similarly to pies. You’ll need a Cake Preparation before making it. This requires you to make a Cake Batter from Milk, Butter, Flour, Sugar, Eggs, and Yeast, and then combine all of that. You’ll have to bake this in an oven or a similar heat source.

How do I level up my Cooking skill in Project Zomboid?

When it comes to leveling up your Cooking skill in Project Zomboid, it comes pretty naturally when you cook more and more different types of food in the game. As you level up, the meals you’ll cook will increase in nutrition level. You’ll even be able to use tiny amounts of rotten food in your cooking recipes when you’re at a high level.

You can also maximize your Cooking Skill level by reading skill books.

There are currently five different skill books you can read that can also boost your XP level. The books are titled as follows:

1. Cooking I: Better Burger Flipping
2. Cooking II: Essential Home Cooking Guide
3. Cooking III: Flavorful Cuisine – 1993 Edition
4. Cooking IV: Professional Tips from a Master Chef
5. Cooking V: Ruban Vert Gourmet – Complete Cooking Techniques

Cooking efficiently in Project Zomboid isn’t just combining ingredients and heating them. You must be able to maximize nutrition and be safe with what you cook. Prioritize cooking perishable ingredients to avoid waste and avoid eating rotten food.

Additionally, use extra ingredients for Evolved Recipes to boost hunger reduction and nutrition. You can create food that boosts your mood to reduce fatigue and even combat depression with particular treats. Simply experiment with your food and start cooking as much as you can as it is a way of survival in Project Zomboid.