Food

Food is the real difficulty curve in Valheim. Eat nothing and your character sits at 25 health, while everything else in the game assumes you have food running. The tables below cover raw ingredients, cooked dishes and the finished meals that actually matter in a fight.

Cooking Stations

You cook at a short chain of stations, and each one picks up where the last leaves off.

Station	Image	What It Does	What It Needs
Cooking Station		Raw meat and fish into their simple cooked form.	A fire burning underneath it.
Iron Cooking Station		The same job for the meat a wooden rack refuses, asksvin tail and volture among them.	A fire underneath, and iron from the Swamp.
Cauldron		The main pot: stews, soups, sausages, jerky and most mid to late dishes.	A fire underneath, and its own upgrades for the later recipes.
Food Preparation Table		Assembles uncooked pies, bread dough, feasts and the advanced dishes.	Nothing cooks here; it only prepares.
Stone Oven		Bakes what the preparation table made into finished food: pies, bread, stuffed mushrooms.	An artisan table in range, and wood to keep it lit.

For the strongest food the usual flow is to gather the ingredients, prepare the uncooked version at the Food Preparation Table, then bake it in the Stone Oven.

Three Slots, Stacking Buffs

You can run three dishes at the same time, and the health, stamina and eitr from all three stack. A good combination pushes a single stat well over 200 and gives you a strong total across the board.

The buff starts decaying the moment you eat, rather than holding full strength until the timer ends. Eat the same dish again while it is still active and both its strength and its duration refresh, so one stack can cover a long trip.

Until one of the current three finishes digesting, the game refuses a fourth different dish. That stops you from treating a stack of pies like a healing potion.

Maximum health also sets your stagger threshold, so shield builds prioritise high-health food while dodge and stamina builds lean the other way. Eitr only comes from food, which means a mage is only a mage while the right greens or pies are running.

Best Food by Role

For	Name	Image	Effect
Most health	Meat In Bread		110 health
Most stamina	Oatmeal		115 stamina
Most eitr	Fish Soup		105 eitr
Biggest all-round	Oatmeal		239 across the three stats
Longest lasting	Whole Roasted Meadow Boar		3000 seconds

The strongest dishes are usually two steps deep: an advanced pie needs an uncooked version first, and that version in turn needs a working farm or a reliable hunting route.

Notes

• Three different foods can be active at once, and their bonuses stack.
• A food's bonuses start shrinking from the moment it is eaten.
• Eating an active dish again refreshes it to full strength and duration.
• A fourth different dish is refused until one of the current three runs out.
• Going without food never kills, but running on the base 25 health is extremely dangerous.
• Maximum health decides how much damage it takes to stagger a player.
• Food left too long on a Cooking Station or in the Stone Oven burns and becomes useless.

All Item Categories

All Food

Raw Meats

Eggs

Name	Image	Biome	Weight	Stack	Location	Crafting Materials	Spawn ID
Egg		Plains (chest)	1	20	Haldor Hen	-	spawn ChickenEgg
Asksvin Egg		Ashlands	1	20	Asksvin	-	spawn AsksvinEgg
Volture Egg		Ashlands	1	20	Volture	-	spawn VoltureEgg

Crops

Name	Image	Biome	Health	Stamina	Duration	Weight	Stack	Location	Crafting Materials	Spawn ID
Carrot		Black Forest	10	32	900 seconds	0.3	50	Farming Carrot seeds	-	spawn Carrot
Turnip		Swamp	-	-	-	0.3	50	Turnip seeds	-	spawn Turnip
Onion		Mountain	13	40	900 seconds	0.3	50	Farming Onion seeds	-	spawn Onion
Barley		Plains	-	-	-	0.2	100	Fuling Village in the Plains	-	spawn Barley
Flax		Plains	-	-	-	0.2	100	Fuling Village in the Plains	-	spawn Flax

Foraging

Uncooked Recipes

Cooked Food

All Categories