In the latest update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players can unlock the ability to cook and create delicious recipes. These food dishes, desserts and drinks can be used for many purposes. You can use them to create the perfect dinner for your villagers, show off to your friends, or just enjoy eating delicious meals. So how do you unlock the ability to cook and learn recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
When you load into your game, head to the resident services building. Next, go to the Nook stop and select Redeem Nook Miles. Look for the Be a Chef! DIY recipes and buy it for 2,000 Nook miles. Then the app will load on your Nook phone. Now you can cook on any stove or kitchen island. When you learn to cook, you also get a new DIY recipe for a stone stove, in case you don’t have a stove yet.
Next, head to Nook’s Cranny because they sell an important item. Once inside, go to the cabinets and open it. You’ll want to find the Basic Cooking Recipes item and buy it for 4,980 bells. This will send more prescriptions to your phone.
Nook’s Cranny will also occasionally sell food and drinks at its store. Buying or eating these doesn’t teach you their recipes, but they still look tasty if you want to eat something or use them for garnish.
Now, how can you learn more recipes? One way is fishing because catching certain fish will hit your character with inspiration. This will unlock many unique fish dishes to enjoy. If you’re thinking about just picking up some fish you have in recipe tanks, think again because this doesn’t work. You need to catch the fish in the wild to learn new recipes.
You can also find cooking recipes similarly to DIY recipes. You can find them in gifts you knock down, inside bottles on the beach and villagers making in their homes.
Eating food is not just for show, as dishes give you a lot of energy. The amount of energy you get depends on what you eat or drink. Drinks give only two energies, while food dishes give you five energies. Getting energy from these foods is great because you no longer have to eat ten fruits every time you want to do some landscaping.
Many of the cooking recipes use new crops added in Update 2.0. To gain access to these crops, you will need to buy your seeds from Leif and grow the crops for three days. If you are worried that Leif will not visit your city, there is a solution. You can get a permanent shop for Leif on Harv’s Island. I will have a detailed guide on how to do this soon.
It is also possible to find mature crops on the islands to which Kapp’n takes you. If you’re lucky enough to find an island with a new crop, you can dig it up and bring it back to plant on your island. You can also pick up mature plants for ingredients right away for cooking.
Here’s how you can unlock the kitchen in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Stay tuned for more guides on the new content introduced in Update 2.0!
