The best food items in Minecraft are magical. In one case literally! Here we’ve put together a list of the top 15 foods in the game that you can eat to survive. They’re all very useful, and some of them don’t even need to be cooked.
1. Enchanted Golden Apple
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 9.6
- Absorption: 💛💛💛💛💛
It used to be possible to pick these bad boys up by merely crafting them. Now, however, you’re restricted to grabbing them from chests as loot. If you’re lucky, they occasionally turn up in Mineshafts, Woodland Mansions, Dungeons, and Desert Temples.
By eating this amazing apple, the best you’ll ever digitally taste, you’ll get 8 hearts of absorption health and instantly heal 2 hearts. Absorption health is a level of hearts above your normal health. These will be depleted before your standard hearts, but there’s no way to replenish them once they’re gone unless you eat another item that grants them. You’ll also have an additional 20% resistance to anything for a full 5 minutes. This is the best food item you can eat in Minecraft. If you’re going up against a tough boss or raid, you need at least one with you.
2. Golden Apple
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 9.6
- Absorption: 💛💛
The Golden Apple is a close second to its Enchanted counterpart, though it’s not quite as powerful. By eating one, you’ll restore 2 food levels, which is pretty abysmal when you think about it.
The real benefit of the Golden Apple is in the 2 absorption health levels it provides, and the 2 full hearts it’ll heal. Like I said, not as good as the Enchanted version, but still the best craftable food item you can get.
How to Craft a Golden Apple
To craft a Golden Apple, you need to surround an apple with 8 Gold Ingots. If that sounds like a price that’s too high for you to pay, you can find it in the world. Sometimes you’ll come across Golden Apples in chests in Igloos, Strongholds, dungeons, Underwater Ruins, Mineshafts, Desert Temples, and Woodland Temples.
3. Rabbit Stew
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 12
This is one of the best food items in Minecraft in terms of food saturation. In fact, it has the highest food saturation combination of any food in Minecraft. However, it does have quite a hefty list of ingredients.
This tends to be more of an endgame food. It’s one that you need multiple farms set up for. Preferably with Farmer Villagers running them for you. It’s also less hassle to have a Villager breed your Rabbits than it is to manage it all yourself.
By the time you’re looking at taking on the Ender Dragon, you should be using this as your main food source.
How to Craft Rabbit Stew
To make a Rabbit Stew, you need a Baked Potato, Cooked Rabbit, Mushroom, and Carrot. You’ll also need a Bowl. Combine them and bask in the glory of this warming, healthy stew.
4. Cooked Porkchop
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 12.8
Cooked Porkchops are just a good food item. You’ll need access to a lot of Pigs to slaughter, which means more farming. You’ll also need Carrots to feed them in order to breed them. Again, more farming. However, once you’ve got a good number of Pigs, you can harvest Pork like there’s no tomorrow, cook it up, and have stacks upon stacks of this cooked variant for 4 food levels whenever you need them.
How to Craft Cooked Porkchop
All you need to do is put a fuel source in your Furnace and cook up basic Porkchops. This tasty treat will be the end result.
5. Steak
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 12.8
If there’s one thing you’re bound to come across in Minecraft, it’s Cows. Often they’ll appear in herds, but you can make your own by breeding them in an impossibly small pen too.
Harvesting Cows will provide Beef, which is what you need to make Steak. It fills up 4 food levels, which is pretty nice in a pinch. Taking a stack with you on your next adventure will keep you alive whilst you’re hiding from mobs.
How to Craft Steak
Steak is crafted in the same way as a Cooked Porkchop. Just add fuel to the Furnace, and cook up some Beef. Alternatively, you can set a Cow on fire and wait for it to burn to death. This awards 3 Steaks.
6. Golden Carrot
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 14.4
The Golden Carrot provides double the food saturation of a standard Carrot. They actually provide more saturation than any other food in the game, making them well worth investing the time in to get.
These are a good source of food that uses up your spare Gold Ingots towards the endgame. Providing you have a farm full of Carrots to harvest.
How to Craft Golden Carrots
You craft a Golden Carrot like you do a Golden Apple, with actual Gold! You need to surround a Carrot with Gold Ingots, and it’ll create this magnificent beauty.
7. Pumpkin Pie
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 4.8
Pumpkin Pie is easily the tastiest piece of food on this list. Even though you can’t actually taste it, it will refill 8 whole points of hunger for you, and has a solid saturation rate, even if it isn’t that high. It’s not that easy to craft, but if you find that you have just the right ingredients, it’s well worth taking with you out into the world.
Pumpkins are very easy to grow. They’ll practically do it themselves without any input. If you assign a Villager to a Pumpkin farm, then you can just collect the Pumpkins regularly without putting any effort in at all.
How to Craft Pumpkin Pie
To craft a Pumpkin Pie, you need Sugar, an Egg, and a Pumpkin. Eggs are pretty easy to come by as long as you have some Chickens in a pen somewhere. Sugar might be a bit tricky, but Pumpkins are very easily grown.
8. Cake
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 2.8
Cake is definitely one of the most expensive foods in terms of effort and the ingredients required to craft it. However, it’s definitely worth that added effort if you’ve got the resources.
Eating a Cake refills 7 hunger levels by itself, but make sure you eat something with higher saturation levels afterward if you’re trying to push that up.
How to Craft Cake
As in real life, Cake takes time and energy. You need no less than 3 Buckets of Milk, 2 Sugar, 1 Egg, and 3 Wheat. You’ll need farms for Wheat, Cows for Milk, Chickens for the Eggs, and a whole lot of Sugar at your disposal.
9. Beetroot Soup
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 7.2
Beetroot by itself is utterly useless for restoring health and hunger. Beetroot Soup, on the other hand, is marvelous. It’ll give you back 6 points of hunger, something that you’ll desperately need if you’re out exploring day after day.
How to Craft Beetroot Soup
For Beetroot Soup you’ll need a Bowl and 6 Beetroots. It’s a very simple recipe, perfect for anyone who has a Beetroot farm on the go and needs to use up all those extra vegetables.
10. Cooked Mutton
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 9.6
You’ll be picking up Mutton from all the Sheep you come across. If you’re just mercilessly murdering them as you meet them, you’re not being smart. You could be drowning in Cooked Mutton if you’re clever and breed those Sheep in a pen.
It might only provide 6 hunger levels, but it’s a staple meal that you’ll thank yourself for having stocks of when you’re running back to your base in the dead of night.
How to Craft Cooked Mutton
It’s just as easy as crafting Cooked Porkchop. Fill the furnace with fuel, and cook up that Mutton. Before you know it, you’ll transform that pen of Sheep into stacks of this useful food item.
11. Cooked Salmon
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 9.6
If you’ve been spending a lot of time fishing in Minecraft, the chances are that you’ve got Salmon to spare. There’s actually a 25% chance of you catching Salmon while fishing in the game, so it’s a very easy food source to stock up on.
They provide 6 or so hunger levels, and the saturation rate is quite high. It’s a great food to eat a few in one sitting if you’re in a good spot to fill up that hunger before you move onto more adventuring.
How to Craft Cooked Salmon
You’ve probably already guessed how to craft this one. Just add fuel to that Furnace once more, stack up the Salmon, and watch these tasty morsels fall out in stacks.
12. Mushroom Stew
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 7.2
Mushroom Stew is a fantastic source of food, and it doesn’t have any nasty side effects like some other stews. It’s a simple food, and only provides that hit of 6 hunger levels, but it’s better than nothing. Plus, it’s vegan!
How to Craft Mushroom Stew
This is a super easy food item to craft. You need one of every kind of Mushroom and a Bowl. Combine them, and you’ll have a fantastic stew to take with you wherever you go.
13. Dandelion or Blue Orchid Suspicious Stew
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 7.2 + bonus saturation from Dandelion or Blue Orchid
This is like Mushroom Stew on a whole new level. If you add in some flowers, Dandelions, or Blue Orchids, then you’ll enhance your Mushroom Stew to Suspicious Stew. Adding either will enhance the stew’s saturation, though it can have some adverse side effects.
How to Craft Suspicious Stew
Once again, this is super simple. Craft a Mushroom Stew, one of each Mushroom, and a Bowl. Then add either Dandelion or Blue Orchid into the mix, and you’ll end up with this.
14. Baked Potato
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 6
A staple among most humans, I think you’ll agree. The Baked Potato is when you know you’ve hit rock bottom. It’ll recover just a few hunger points, but it’s basically just enough to keep you from starving to death.
What I will say is that you can farm Potatoes very easily. So in a pinch, if you need to make a lot of food very quickly, this is a great option.
How to Craft a Baked Potato
You know what I’m about to say. Add fuel to the Furnace, then cook up a Potato.
15. Bread
- Food: 🍖🍖🍖🍖🍖
- Saturation: 6
I think this might be the most basic food on this list, but it takes quite a lot of effort for the hunger levels it heals. Still, if you’re farming a lot of Wheat, this is the best use for it.
How to Craft Bread
Bread takes three Wheat. That’s it! Put those Wheat together, and you’ll end up with this boring but reliable form of food. If you’re Farming a lot, maybe you could even start selling it for Emeralds.
Conclusion
Those are the 15 best Food Items in Minecraft. This is far from a complete list of every food item, but they’re the best ones to aim for in your next playthrough. From start to finish, you’ll never stop relying on these foods in one way or another.
If there’s a food item you think deserves to be on the list, please let us know what it is in the comments.
