Zelda: BOTW – Best Monster Dishes (& How To Cook Them)

Monster dishes are unique among the many recipes Link can cook in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. These freaky foods are a vibrant purple and can be made by cooking with Monster Extract. There are five different Monster meals in BOTW that Link can whip up by cooking in a pot, but their effects can be mystifying and vary from meal to meal.

Monster Extract has a variety of random effects on the BOTW dish’s heart recovery, strength, and effect duration, either as a benefit or detriment. Monster Extract can boost the amount of hearts recovered by three, but it can also create a dish that only recovers 1/4 of a heart. It also has a chance to increase or decrease the dish’s stat boost by one, and the duration of its effect will always last either one minute, 10 minutes, or 30 minutes.

The chance of making a dish with an effect lasting 30 minutes makes Monster Extract a valuable cooking ingredient, especially for players late in the game who are able to stock up on it rather quickly. While cooking with Monster Extract may leave Link’s inventory full of small, 1/4-heart-recovering snacks, it can also produce some of the longest-lasting dish effects in BOTW without requiring high-quality ingredients.

How To Make Monster Dishes In Breath Of The Wild

Monster Extract can be purchased in BOTW from Kilton at his traveling shop, Fang & Bone, which only appears at night. By exchanging Monster Parts from enemies for Kilton’s currency, Mon, players can buy Monster Extract for nine Mon each. Monster dish recipes are great for long-lasting, stat-boosting meals, the best of which are Monster Cakes, Monster Stew, and Monster Rice Balls.

The recipe for Monster Cakes can be found in one of the cookbooks inside Hyrule Castle as part of the “A Royal Recipe” side quest. Monster Cake is made with Monster Extract, Tabantha Wheat, Cane Sugar, and Goat Butter, and it can be made with any stat-boosting fruit or flower. The Monster Cake is also necessary to complete the side quest, “A Parent’s Love.”

Monster Stew is the easiest Monster food to cook since it’s made with Monster Extract, any meat, and any seafood. Players can use whichever meat, fish, and crabs they already have in their inventory in any combination. Since there are only three ingredients required to make this dish, Link can also throw in two more stat-boosting ingredients, though the Monster Extract may randomly decrease the strength of its effect.

Like Monster Stew, the recipe for Monster Rice Balls only has three ingredients, so players can add more stat-boosting ingredients for a chance to make some potent meals. The ingredients are also very easy to access. Monster Rice Balls are made by combining Monster Extract, Hylian Rice, and the versatile BOTW Rock Salt, so players can make many of them at a time.

Monster Extract in BOTW can also be used to make Monster Soup and Monster Curry, and players can throw it into any regular dish for its randomizing effects. Cooking with Monster Extract, however, will never grant a critical success, and cooking during the Blood Moon has no effect on Monster dishes.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available on Nintendo Switch.

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