Learn how to cook in Animal Crossing: New Horizons! Upgrade your Nook Miles+ to unlock the feature, gather ingredients from farming and Leif, find an oven, and collect new recipes.
Hey there! Ready to spice up your Animal Crossing life? Cooking is a super fun addition to the game, and it's not too tricky to get started. We'll walk through how to unlock the ability to cook, where to find ingredients, and how to get your hands on more recipes. Let's get cooking!
Walkthrough
- 1Upgrade to DIY+ Recipes: First things first, head over to the NookStop terminal in your Residential Services building. You'll want to select the 'Redeem Nook Miles' option. Scroll through the list until you find the 'Be a Chef! DIY+ Recipes' pack. It costs 2,000 Nook Miles, but purchasing this unlocks the ability to cook and gives you a few starter recipes.
- 2Gather Ingredients: Ingredients are key to any good dish! You can get them in a few ways:
- Farming: Some ingredients come from crops you grow yourself on your island.
- 3Fishing: Certain ingredients can be caught while fishing.
- 4Leif: Our favorite gardening enthusiast, Leif, sells some ingredients. He pops up randomly on your island between 5 am and 10 pm. He's guaranteed to visit during Nature Day.
- 5Harv's Island Plaza: This is a more reliable way to find Leif. Once you have five villagers, Harv will invite you to his island. After a 100,000 Bell investment to set up the plaza, Leif will have a permanent stall there in the top-left corner. This means you can buy ingredients from him anytime without waiting for his random island visits.
- 6Find an Oven: You'll need something to cook on!
- Brick Oven: If you're just starting out and don't have a fancy oven from Nook's Cranny, the Brick Oven is your best bet. You can get the DIY recipe for it in the cabinet at Nook's Cranny.
- 7Other Ovens: As you progress, you might get other ovens from Nook's Cranny or through gifts.
- 8Collect More Recipes: That initial purchase from the NookStop only gives you a few recipes. To find more, keep an eye out for messages in bottles that wash up on your shore daily. There are many recipes to discover!
Tips
- Pay attention to ingredient specifics! Sometimes recipes call for 'W' (whole-wheat flour) or 'B' (brown sugar).
- The table below lists all the known cooking recipes and their ingredient counts. Use it as a reference to see what you can make and what you need!
| DIY Recipe | Ingredients |
| Aji Fry | 11 |
| Anchoas al Alillo | 2 |
| Bread Gratin | 22W |
| Brown Sugar | 5 |
| Brown-Sugar Cupcakes | 1W1B |
| Carrot Cake | 111 |
| Carrot Potage | 12 |
| Flour | 5 |
| Gnocchi Di Patate | 23 |
| Grilled Sea Bass With Herbs | 15 |
| Karei No Nitsuke | 1 |
| Minestrone Soup | 211 |
| Orange Smoothie | 2 |
| Organic Bread | 3W |
| Pancakes | 22 |
| Pound Cake | 21 |
| Pumpkin Bagel Sandwich | 21 |
| Pumpkin Pound Cake | 212 |
| Sardines in Oil | 1 |
| Sea-Bass Pie | 31 |
| Seaweed Soup | 2 |
| Sugar | 5 |
| Tomato Curry | 33 |
| Tomato Puree | 3 |
| Veggie Sandwich | 211 |
| Whole-Wheat Flour | 5 |
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