Hunters in Monster Hunter Wilds, gear up your grills and sharpen your culinary skills-cooking meals and grilling meat are no longer just side activities but essential survival tactics. With the absence of the iconic Meowscular Chef, mastering the portable BBQ grill and camp cooking is your key to unlocking powerful buffs that boost health, stamina, and combat prowess. Whether you’re firing up a quick meal at base camp or grilling on the go, this guide will teach you how to craft the perfect dishes to dominate your hunts across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
Our Monster Hunter Wilds guide will tell you all about cooking, including when you can start cooking, and how to get the most benefit out of cooking. Once you’ve got your head around how to cook, our best buffs and meals can help you what to cook.
When can you start cooking meals in Monster Hunter Wilds?
In Monster Hunter Wilds, you can start cooking meals after you return to the base camp in Windward Plains and deliver honey to the provisions shop. This action grants you the Essential Items, including the Portable BBQ Grill, which is necessary to begin cooking. Cooking can be done either using the portable grill from the radial menu or inside your tent at the base camp. This unlock typically happens early in the game, shortly after your attempt to enter Y’s’s village is denied and you encounter your first Doshaguma. Once unlocked, you can prepare meals that provide important buffs to health, stamina, and other stats essential for hunting.
You can’t cook in Monster Hunter Wilds until after you attempt to visit Y’sai’s village and get turned away. On your way back to the base camp in Windward Plains, you’ll meet your first Doshaguma and gather some honey.
When you drop off the honey at the provisions shop, he’ll give you your Essential Items – a portable BBQ grill, fishing rod, binoculars, capture net, throwing knife, paint pod, and ghillie mantle.
The portable BBQ grill is what you need in order to start cooking meals.
How to cook meals in Monster Hunter Wilds
In Monster Hunter Wilds, cooking meals is a vital mechanic that boosts your health, stamina, and grants special buffs to enhance your hunting performance. You can start cooking after receiving the Portable BBQ Grill by delivering honey to the Provisions Shop at the Windward Plains Base Camp. Meals are prepared either inside your tent at camp or using the portable grill in the field. You can choose from Recommended Meals, which are tailored to your current gear and ingredients, Custom Meals where you select specific ingredients for desired buffs, or Favorite Meals saved from previous cooking sessions. Cooking involves combining a base ingredient (meat, fish, or vegetables), a special ingredient, and optional toppings to create meals that provide various temporary abilities. Grilling meat requires timing to avoid burning and yields stamina-boosting benefits. This system replaces the traditional Felyne Chef, making meal preparation a hands-on and strategic part of your hunting experience.
There are two ways to cook a meal in Monster Hunter Wilds. You can pull out your portable BBQ grill from you Essential Items radial menu, or you can cook a meal inside your tent. For the grill, hold down L1/LB, hit down on the D-pad, and then move the right thumbstick to the lower left to highlight the portable grill. In your tent, all you have to do is tab over to the fourth menu, “Grill a Meal.”
Meals are made of (up to) three ingredients: a ration, additional ingredients, and finishing touches.
Rations are the same as the ration consumable item, but when you cook with them, they become either meat, fish, or veggies. Additional ingredients are things like Kunafa cheese or mud shrimp that you usually get as hunt rewards or from trading with locals. Finishing touches are other special ingredients like eastern honey or wild herbs that are also hunt rewards or come from trading with locals.
A meal can be just a ration, a ration and an additional ingredient, or all three. Pay attention to the buffs and skills that each meal gets you so you can match the meal to your upcoming hunts.
- Cooking and eating a meal that just consists of a ration (like meat) will get you a boost to your health and stamina for 30 minutes. You’ll also get a third buff depending on what you cook. Meat gets you a 2 to attack and fish adds a 4 to defense, for example.
- Adding in an additional ingredient gets you an extra 20 minutes of effect along with a skill. That skill depends on the ingredient. These are things like Kunafa cheese adding the Defender Meal (Lo) skill and Sild garlic adding Moxie Meal (Lo).
- Finishing touches add a 5 to elemental resistance and a second skill. Wild herbs give the Immunizer Meal skill and hastern honey adds the Medic Meal skill, for example.
Meal effects don’t stack and you can only get the benefits from one meal at a time. If you’re not sure what to put into the mix, our best buffs and meals is something to investigate.
How to grill meat in Monster Hunter Wilds
To grill meat in Monster Hunter Wilds, first ensure you have raw meat in your item pouch and access to the portable BBQ grill, which you receive early in the game after delivering honey to the provisions shop. Grilling must be done outdoors, even just stepping outside your tent is enough. Selecting the grill meat option starts a mini-game where you watch your character wave the meat over the grill and press the X/A button at the right moment. Pressing the button just after the meat flips and its texture changes will yield six well-done steaks per raw meat, which fully restore health and stamina and provide a temporary boost to maximum health. There is also a second phase where you cut the steaks to potentially double the amount if timed perfectly with the music. Mistiming can result in rare steaks or burnt meat, which offer lesser benefits.
A meal that you cook with a meat ration isn’t the same as what happens when you grill meat. Grilling the raw meat hunting item gets you a new consumable item – rare steak, well-done steak, or burnt meat depending on how well you do it. You can read more about well-done steak here.
How can I maximize buffs when grilling multiple meats in Wilds
To maximize buffs when grilling multiple meats in Monster Hunter Wilds, focus on perfect timing during the grilling mini-game to consistently produce well-done steaks, which provide the best health and stamina boosts along with increased maximum gauges. Press the button just after the meat flips and changes texture for perfect results, yielding six well-done steaks per raw meat; then, in the slicing phase, synchronize button presses with the music to potentially double the output to twelve steaks.
For extended and stronger buffs, combine grilling with cooking full meals using rations and additional ingredients. Meals cooked with rations provide a 30-minute buff, while adding extra ingredients extends this to 50 minutes and adds valuable food skills like attack boosts or stamina reduction. Choose meat rations for offensive buffs (+2 Attack) and select additional ingredients and finishing touches that complement your playstyle to stack multiple beneficial food skills.
Also, remember that grilling must be done outdoors, and the buff duration only ticks down outside base camps, so plan your cooking accordingly to maximize uptime. This approach ensures you get the best possible health, stamina, and combat buffs from your grilled meats and meals during hunts.
How can I improve my timing for perfect grilling results in Wilds
To improve your timing for perfect grilling results in Monster Hunter Wilds, treat the grilling process as a rhythm-based mini-game focused on precise button presses. When grilling meat on the portable BBQ Grill, watch closely for your character to flip the meat; just after the flip, the meat’s texture and color will change-this is your cue to press the interact button immediately to stop cooking and achieve well-done steaks consistently.
Practicing this timing will help avoid undercooked (rare) or burnt steaks, which provide lesser or no buffs. After stopping the grilling at the right moment, you enter a slicing mini-game where you cut the meat in rhythm with the music; pressing the button in time here can double your well-done steak yield, so focus on the beat to maximize output.
Repeated practice will build muscle memory for the exact moment to press the button after the flip and during slicing, turning grilling into a satisfying rhythm challenge that rewards perfect timing with the best buffs and more consumables.
