Cooking Station

Cooking Station is a basic crafting station that allows you to cook the meat dropped by lesser monsters into attribute-boosting meals.

How to Craft

• A Cooking Station is created with the Hammer tool from 2 Wood
• For a Cooking Station to work, it needs to be placed over an open fire, like the Campfire

The Cooking Station is likely to be the earliest food-crafting station you’ll make. It allows you to process the meat you get by hunting lesser monsters, like Necks, Boars and Deer into hearty meals. It’s created by using the crafting menu of the Hammer tool.

To create your first Hammer, simply pick some wood and stones off the ground around your initial spawn. Then, open your inventory screen and on the right,  you’ll see a simple crafting menu. Create a Hammer by combining 3 Wood and 2 Stone. Then, assign this Hammer to your hotbar and press the associated button. With the Hammer out, click the right mouse button to open the Hammer crafting menu. Navigate to the Crafting tab there and select the Cooking Station. You’ll need 2 Wood to craft it. Then, choose where you want it to go and left-click on the ground.

For the Cooking Station to work, you want to set it up over an open fire. Early on, this will likely be a simple Campfire. To create one, go to the Hammer crafting menu, navigate to the Misc. tab and choose the Campfire. You’ll need 5 Stone and 2 Wood to craft it.

This means before you can start cooking meat, you’ll need a total of 7 Stone and 7 Wood to make a Hammer, a Campfire, and a Cooking Station.

How to Use

• Make sure you have a fire under your Cooking Station
• Interact with the station with raw meat in your inventory
• Wait until your meat is cooked (it sizzles and changes texture)
• Interact with the station again to collect your meal before it turns into Coal

Using a Cooking Station is simple. With cookable meat in your inventory approach a Cooking Station and interact with it. The meat will be automatically placed on a Cooking Station. A single Cooking Station can cook up to two pieces of meat at once.

For a Cooking Station to work, it needs to be set up over a fire that’s burning. If your Campfire has gone out, before adding meat to your Cooking Station, interact with the Campfire and you’ll add some Wood to it to start it again. If your Cooking Stations are set up outside, rain will disable your fires. To prevent that, make sure to have a rudimentary roof over your Cooking Stations.

When you add meat to a Cooking Station, it takes 25 seconds for it to cook. The one exception is Hare Meat that takes 60 seconds to cook. When the meat is ready, you’ll hear a sizzling sound and see it change color. Interact with the Cooking Station then to pick up your cooked meat. If you leave the meat on a Cooking Station for too long, it will keep cooking and eventually will become Coal.

Helpful Tips

• If you only care about efficiency and not aesthetics, you can stack multiple Cooking Stations over a single Campfire
• For your Cooking Stations to work, you can use a Campfire, a Hearth, or even a Hanging Brazier
• Overcooking meat on a Cooking Station can be used as an early source of Coal