The best food in Minecraft is the golden carrot. It has the highest saturation in the game (14.4), which means it keeps you full longer than any other food. The best easy-to-farm foods are steak and cooked porkchop. This guide ranks every food in the game and shows you how to cook them, current as of Minecraft 26.2 (Chaos Cubed).
When playing Minecraft, your hunger bar slowly goes down and needs to be replenished with food. Certain activities like sprinting around your survival Minecraft home will deplete your hunger even more quickly. If you don’t eat anything, you will start taking health damage over time.
- Best food overall: Golden Carrot (highest saturation, stays full the longest)
- Best easy-to-farm food: Steak or Cooked Porkchop
- Most hunger in one bite: Rabbit Stew (10 hunger points)
- Best for fights: Golden Apple (extra hearts and regeneration)
- Best beginner food: Bread and Baked Potatoes
There are so many different types of food in the game and some are easier than others to find. Some types of food include animal meats, farmed crops, and fish. Typically, cooked meat products from animals are some of the best and most accessible foods for restoring hunger. This guide will go over the best foods in Minecraft and how to cook them.
Hunger Mechanics
Before we get into the best foods, first it is important to understand how hunger works in Minecraft. Every food restores two important values: hunger and saturation (satiety/fullness).
Hunger is the food icon visible above the player’s main inventory bar and appears as a row of small meat icons. Every player can have a maximum of 20 hunger points (with each full meat icon being worth 2 hunger points). So for example, if you ate an apple which restores 4 hunger points, you would instantly add 2 meat icons to your hunger bar.
Saturation is more complicated and is an invisible value that determines how long a food keeps you full before the hunger bar starts going down again. Have you ever noticed that eating a cookie does not keep you full very long, but eating a steak does? This is because steak has a much higher saturation level than a cookie.
Saturation matters for one more big reason: healing. When your hunger bar is nearly full, your health regenerates automatically, and that regeneration burns through your saturation. High-saturation foods like golden carrots and steak keep you healing longer during fights and mining trips. This is why experienced players stop carrying bread and start carrying steak!
Minecraft Food Tier List
When comparing all the different foods in Minecraft, some are definitely better than others. However, better foods are usually harder or more complicated to obtain. It can be difficult to get the best food into your Minecraft kitchen early on.
To rank each food, it is important to consider these factors: hunger restoration, saturation restoration, and overall utility. Some other lists look only at the numbers and rank vegetables quite highly, however I don’t think eating 5 beetroots is “better” or the same as eating one bread!
S Tier (Best)
| Food | Hunger Restoration | Saturation Restoration |
|---|---|---|
| Golden Carrot | 6 | 14.4 |
| Golden Apple | 4 | 9.6 |
| Enchanted Golden Apple | 4 | 9.6 |
The golden apples earn S tier for their effects, not just their numbers. A golden apple gives you Regeneration and 2 extra absorption hearts, making it the best food to eat mid-fight. The enchanted golden apple is even stronger (Regeneration II, Absorption IV, Resistance, and Fire Resistance) but it cannot be crafted. You can only find it as rare treasure in places like ancient cities, bastions, and dungeons, so save yours for boss fights!
A Tier (Good) Minecraft Food
| Food | Hunger Restoration | Saturation Restoration |
|---|---|---|
| Steak | 8 | 12.8 |
| Cooked Porkchop | 8 | 12.8 |
| Cooked Mutton | 6 | 9.6 |
| Cooked Salmon | 6 | 9.6 |
| Rabbit Stew | 10 | 12 |
B Tier (Average) Minecraft Food
| Food | Hunger Restoration | Saturation Restoration |
|---|---|---|
| Bread | 5 | 6 |
| Beetroot Soup | 6 | 7.2 |
| Baked Potato | 5 | 6 |
| Mushroom Stew | 6 | 7.2 |
| Cooked Chicken | 6 | 7.2 |
| Cooked Cod | 5 | 6 |
| Cooked Rabbit | 5 | 6 |
| Suspicious Stew | 6 | 7.2 |
| Pumpkin Pie | 8 | 4.8 |
Suspicious stew deserves a special mention. If you craft it with an oxeye daisy, eating it gives you the Saturation status effect, which instantly refills hunger. Just be careful, because stews made with other flowers can give you negative effects instead!
C Tier (Poor) Minecraft Food
| Food | Hunger Restoration | Saturation Restoration |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | 4 | 2.4 |
| Chorus Fruit | 4 | 2.4 |
| Rotten Flesh | 4 | 0.8 |
| Honey Bottle | 6 | 1.2 |
| Raw Beef | 3 | 1.8 |
| Raw Porkchop | 3 | 1.8 |
| Raw Rabbit | 3 | 1.8 |
| Carrot | 3 | 3.6 |
Honey bottles have low saturation but a very useful trick: drinking one removes the Poison effect. Keep a bottle handy when exploring caves or fighting spiders! Rotten flesh restores a surprising amount of hunger, but it has an 80% chance to give you the Hunger effect, so only eat it in emergencies. Chorus fruit teleports you randomly when eaten, which can save you from a fall.
D Tier (Terrible) Minecraft Food
| Food | Hunger Restoration | Saturation Restoration |
|---|---|---|
| Cake Slice | 2 | 0.4 |
| Cookie | 2 | 0.4 |
| Raw Mutton | 2 | 1.2 |
| Raw Chicken | 2 | 1.2 |
| Raw Cod | 2 | 0.4 |
| Raw Salmon | 2 | 0.4 |
| Glow Berries | 2 | 0.4 |
| Dried Kelp | 1 | 0.6 |
| Tropical Fish | 1 | 0.2 |
| Pufferfish | 1 | 0.2 |
| Sweet Berries | 2 | 0.4 |
| Beetroot | 1 | 1.2 |
| Potato | 1 | 0.6 |
| Melon Slice | 2 | 1.2 |
| Poisonous Potato | 2 | 1.2 |
| Spider Eye | 2 | 3.2 |
A few warnings for this tier: never eat pufferfish! It poisons you, gives you nausea, and makes you hungrier. Spider eyes and poisonous potatoes can also poison you, so save them for brewing and composting instead. Dried kelp is weak but it eats faster than any other food, which makes it a decent emergency snack.
Best Minecraft Food for Beginners
When first starting out, you may be wondering what is the best beginner food in Minecraft? Typically, the easiest foods to get early on are apples (from tree leaves) and bread (grown from wheat). Both are very easily accessible as you’ll find apples from simply cutting trees and wheat seeds can be found just by clearing grass.
Note that wheat seeds will need to be planted on tilled soil (right clicking dirt with a hoe), near water, and with sufficient light to grow. Some Minecraft biomes don’t have many trees (like deserts or plains), so for your first survival base it can be a good idea to build near a forest or similar biome.
Later on, farming animals like cows for beef/steak is an excellent food source all-around. Cows can be easily bred for meat by right clicking two nearby cows while holding wheat in your hand. For more information on breeding animals, check out this article. You can even build automatic farms to keep your food supply stocked without any effort.
Here is the food progression most players follow: start with bread and baked potatoes, switch to steak or cooked porkchop once you have an animal pen, then move to golden carrots in the late game when you have plenty of gold.
How to Cook Meat in Minecraft
All “raw” meats can be cooked in a furnace, similar to how ores are smelted into ingots. The cooked version of the meat is significantly better for relieving hunger and providing fullness (saturation). Potatoes can also be cooked this way to craft baked potatoes.
There are two more ways to cook food that many players miss:
- Smoker. Crafted from 1 furnace and 4 logs, the smoker cooks food twice as fast as a regular furnace. If you cook a lot of meat, build one! It only works on food, not ores.
- Campfire. Place up to 4 raw foods on a campfire and they cook automatically in about 30 seconds. No fuel is needed, which makes campfires great for early game cooking before you have coal.
Cooking food in a furnace or smoker also gives you a little experience when you collect it, so a big cooking session is a nice bonus if you are gathering XP levels.
How to Make Bread in Minecraft
Bread can be made by combining 3 wheat horizontally in a crafting table. Bread does not need to be “baked” in a furnace or combined with other ingredients like eggs or milk.
More Minecraft Cooking Recipes
Pumpkin Pie Recipe
Pumpkin Pie is crafted by combining 1 sugar, 1 pumpkin, and 1 egg in a crafting table.
Cookie Recipe
Cookies are crafted by combining 2 wheat and 1 cocoa beans in a crafting table.
Cake Recipe
Cakes are crafted by combining 3 wheat, 3 milk, 1 egg, and 2 sugar in a crafting table. Remember that cake is special: you can’t eat it from your hand! Place it down first, then right click it to eat one slice at a time (7 slices per cake).
Beetroot Soup Recipe
Beetroot soup is crafted by combining 6 beetroot and 1 bowl in a crafting table.
Mushroom Stew Recipe
Mushroom Stew is crafted by combining 1 red mushroom, 1 brown mushroom, and 1 bowl in a crafting table.
Rabbit Stew Recipe
Rabbit Stew is crafted by combining 1 cooked rabbit, 1 carrot, 1 baked potato, 1 red mushroom, and 1 bowl in a crafting table.
How to Get Golden Apples and Golden Carrots in Minecraft
Golden Carrots and Golden Apples can be either crafted or found as treasure in the world.
Golden Apple Recipe
A golden apples is crafted by combining 8 gold ingots and 1 apple in a crafting table.
Golden Carrot Recipe
Golden carrots are crafted by combining 8 gold nuggets and 1 carrot in a crafting table. Golden carrots are also a key brewing ingredient for Night Vision potions, so it’s worth keeping extras around for your potion brewing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best food in Minecraft?
The golden carrot is the best food in Minecraft. It restores 6 hunger and 14.4 saturation, the highest saturation value in the game, so you stay full longer and eat less often.
What food restores the most hunger?
Rabbit stew restores the most hunger in a single serving (10 hunger points). Steak and cooked porkchop are close behind at 8 points each and are much easier to farm in large amounts.
What is the best food to take to the Nether?
Golden carrots are the best travel food because they stack to 64 and their high saturation means you rarely need to stop and eat. Steak is a great backup if you are short on gold.
What happens if you eat pufferfish in Minecraft?
Eating pufferfish gives you Poison, Nausea, and Hunger effects. It restores almost nothing, so never eat one. Pufferfish are only useful for brewing Water Breathing potions.
Does cooked food give more hunger than raw food?
Yes. Cooking meat in a furnace, smoker, or campfire roughly doubles its hunger and saturation values. Steak restores 8 hunger while raw beef only restores 3, so always cook your meat first.
That concludes our guide to the best food and cooking recipes in Minecraft! Do you have a favorite food we didn’t rank highly enough? Leave a comment below!
RYAN
Monday 22nd of November 2021
You Forgot Baked Potatoes.
Heather
Sunday 2nd of July 2023
@RYAN, it’s on the B-list, unless you’re talking about the recipe portion which baked potatoes are just cooked in a furnace.