With Minecraft being primarily a survival game, collecting food is extremely important. It fills up your hunger meter, which in turn refills your health. Some items will only replenish hunger, whilst some will give extra effects such as health regeneration. In this list, we’re going to show you the Best Food items in Minecraft!
All food items share the same stats and benefits between Minecraft on PC, Xbox, PS4, Nintendo Switch and Pocket Edition. So no matter what platform you’re playing on, the list below will be correct for you.
The list below is sorted from worst to best (with best being at the bottom). For more Minecraft content including Resource Packs, Mods and Guides, make sure to check out our dedicated area here.
Bread
First up, we have Bread. We’ve placed it first in the list as it’s one of the easiest food items to obtain and mass-produce in Minecraft. To craft a single piece of Bread, you need to place 3 Wheat inside a crafting table. Wheat is easy to get in large amounts too, simple hoe a bit of grass and plant some seeds near a water source. Eating Bread will replenish 5 hunger. It can also be found inside Chests or traded with Farmer Villagers.
Cooked Salmon
Next up is Cooked Salmon, it replenishes 6 hunger in Minecraft. To get Cooked Salmon, first you’ll need to actually catch some Salmon by fishing. Use Luck of the Sea and the Lure enchantments on your fishing rod to increase the speed and chance of catching them. Once you have Raw Salmon, place it inside a furnace to cook it.
Golden Carrot
Golden Carrots are slightly different to Golden Apples. Instead, they’ll only replenish your hunger and not health, it will replenish 6 hunger. However, Golden Carrots also have the highest saturation points rate in the game. Saturation points determine how fast the hunger level depletes, so Golden Carrots will leave you feeling full for longer! They’re not harvested, instead you craft them. Surround a Carrot with Golden Nuggets inside a Crafting Table.
Mushroom Stew
Like other food items so far in this list, Mushroom Stew will also replenish 6 hunger. However the resources to get them are a little harder to obtain. You’ll need to place a bowl, a Red Mushroom and a Brown Mushroom inside of a Crafting Table. However, if you find a Mooshroom mob, you can use a bowl on it to ‘milk’ it, giving you a constant supply of Mushroom Stew. Add a flower to the recipe and you can add some interesting effects such as Jump Boost, Fire Resistance and more (from Suspicious Stew).
Cooked Porkchop
Moving towards meat, we have Cooked Porkchops, which are probably one of the most common food items in Minecraft. They replenish a lot of hunger too, 8 in total. Killing Pigs will give Raw Porkchops, which can then be cooked in a furnace to receive Cooked Porkchops. You can also obtain them by trading with a Butcher Villager.
Steak
Steak is practically identical to Cooked Porkchops. Instead, you get Raw Beef from killing Cows and cook them in a furnace to get Steak. It will replenish 8 hunger too, and can also be traded with a Butcher Villager. It’s a good idea to set-up some animal farms if you want Steak and Porkchops to be a constant source of food in Minecraft.
Pumpkin Pie
Pumpkin Pie also replenishes 8 hunger like the items above, but requires a bit more work. You can craft Pumpkin Pie inside a Crafting Table by adding a Pumpkin, Egg and Sugar. However you can also get them from Farmer Villagers or find them inside a chest in Taiga Villages.
Rabbit Stew
Next up is another Stew, this time made up of Rabbit. It replenishes 10 hunger, but requires quite a few ingredients. Specifically a Bowl, Carrot, Baked Potato, Mushroom and Cooked Rabbit. Mix all these items together in a Crafting Table to get Rabbit Stew. Getting all these ingredients can be difficult, so it might be worth looking towards better food items.
Cake
Cake offers the most hunger replenishment in Minecraft. Eating an entire cake will fill up 14 hunger, nothing else in the game is higher. However they aren’t the easiest to make, requiring 3 Wheat, 1 Egg, 2 Sugar and 3 Milk (place them in the Crafting table as shown above). You can’t eat Cake from the inventory either, instead it needs to be placed down and then eaten.
Golden Apple
Finally, we have Golden Apples. Now, they only replenish 4 hunger, but will give Absorption 1 for 2 minutes, giving you an extra 2 hearts, whilst also giving Regeneration II, which will also heal 4 normal hearts of damage. It gets better though, you can Enchant a Golden Apple too. An Enchanted Golden Apple will give Absorption IV for 2 minutes, giving an extra 8 hearts and Regeneration II, restoring 8 normal hearts. For that reason alone, Golden Apples are the best food item in Minecraft. However they’re expensive to create. Surround an Apple in a Crafting Table with Gold Ingots to make one, then take it to an Enchanting Table.
