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Food: the fuel that keeps you going. The energy that restores those empty bars lost to Creeper explosions and Skeleton arrows.
And the most sought-after type of item in the game. Food is the most essential item in Minecraft as it keeps you alive and helps you(in some cases) snag those useful buffs.
Searching around for the best foods will help you keep your character going for days, as one stack of the finest food won’t need to be replenished any time soon.
I’ve gone through and organized my picks for the absolute best foods you can get in Mincraft, and I’ll share a little about all about them & how to obtain them.
I’ll be mainly focusing on food items that fill you up, which means that some of the saturation levels of these food scan be quite low. Cookies, cakes, and pumpkin pies are the main food items on this list that aren’t known to give you a good level of saturation. But they do an amazing job filling up those empty food bars which earns them a well-ranked position in this list.
20. Carrot
Carrots may not restore the most hunger in the game, but they’re really easy to farm once you get a single one of these in your inventory.
You can usually find them on most villages, shipwrecks, or even in dungeon chests (including mine shafts!)
Carrots earn a spot in this list because you can plant a single carrot to get an additional 5 of them. So they’re kinda like rabbits in that they multiply really fast. But seriously watch out for rabbits, they’re known to love carrots.
You can also use carrots to create the legendary golden carrots which are far more useful than their basic counterpart. This is because the golden variety offer a lot of saturation to go alongside the hunger bars that it fills.
Carrots are one of those foods that you’ll love having on a redstone farm, and they may also be used to lure pigs and rabbits as well as breed them.
19. Apple
Apples on their own aren’t the most popular food item to carry around, simply because they can’t be obtained as easily as carrots, potatoes, or even most types of meat. But an apple a day, something something it’s a good idea to eat apples.
They drop when you break down oak trees(or their leaves, to be more precise). And they restore four food points which adds up to bars of your total value.
Did you also know that apples can be used to make baby horses grow quicker?
You can use this to your advantage if you’re looking to speed up the process of breeding the perfect racehorse, as it takes quite some time for baby horses to grow into adults.
18. Cooked Rabbit
Ever since rabbits were introduced to the game in what feels like half a decade ago, rabbit meat has become a popular food to carry around.
Especially you get your farm going.
Seeing as rabbits can be bred using carrots, it’s far from difficult to obtain the necessary items to make your small buddies reproduce by the bunch.
17. Cooked Cod
Remember those days when the cod model was one of the only types of fish that you could get in the game?
Long are those days gone, and now cod itself has become quite a popular food item and an easily farmable one as well.
Cooked cod restores 5 total points of health and gives you a saturation of 6, making it easily one of the smartest items to shove down your esophagus.
Or you can also find this little fishy in various hidden chests across the world of Minecraft.
Plus you can stack a lot of them so be sure to get that fish cooked and keep it ready for your adventures!
16. Bread
Bread. The food that predates many modern and fancier options on this list.
Bread can be obtained by simply combining your wheat, which makes it one of the preferred options for every player to get started.
But given how easy it is to farm, it also serves as a good item for people who simply can’t be bothered to set up their own animal farms.
Even though cod restores a bit more hunger points than bread, it’s just so easy to obtain this item that it’s ultimately a far better option to keep around and consume.
Think about it: your stocks can be replenished with a quick trip to your seed farm.
15. Baked Potato
Potatoes can be quite tricky to get your hands on as you’ll need to find a village or a dungeon that hosts them.
However once you get a single one of these goodies, they will keep coming by the bunches if you build a farm to produce them.
Potatoes can be cooked quickly and restore a lot of hunger points while also offering good saturation points too.
You can get a bunch of them if you let them grow near water, so go on and plant as many as you wish – your food problems will be solved within 30 minutes.
14. Suspicious Stew
Probably the iffiest item on this list but it has to be said.
The suspicious stew is a very easy-to-craft dish that can be made by the bunch if you happen to have a lot of mushrooms.
As you would expect from the stew, it needs to be crafted using a couple of mushrooms and any flower that you find in the wilderness.
It restores 6 points of hunger which is great, but interestingly it also gives you a random effect. Which effect you might wonder? No one knows!
That’s why it’s a suspicious stew I guess.
13. Mushroom Stew
The mushroom stew overtakes the suspicious stew on this list because it doesn’t have the potential to give you a negative status effect when you eat it.
It does restore the same number of hunger points than its magical counterpart, so go for this option if you’re a bit risk averse.
12. Cooked Salmon
If you run into the salmon mob it’ll offer the best way to snag salmon for cooking. They can be found spawning everywhere in most types of bodies of water too.
Cooked salmon restores even more hunger than cod and it’s one of the best types of marine food that you can easily obtain in Minecraft.
Just make sure you know how to cook it before you go out fishing.
11. Cooked Mutton
Mutton might not restore as much hunger as cooked beef or chicken, but the addition of mutton as a food item was one of the best updates we’ve had.
No longer will you feel bad for killing that sheep instead of shaving it.
OK maybe not the best justification but come on, a player’s gotta eat.
10. Cooked Chicken
Chicken farms are quote fun to make and practical to maintain given how small chickens are. Not to mention they can’t fly away if you fence them in.
Cooked chicken is, therefore, one of the best items that you can keep around your inventory if you want a lot of hunger restored at once.
You don’t even have to go the farmer’s route if you can find a few chickens in the wild. But maybe you can spare them and try to go vegetarian instead.
9. Beetroot Soup
Long gone are the days where mushroom stew was the only type of non-solid food that you could consume in the game.
Ever since the introduction of beetroot, which on its own is quite a poor hunger restorer, beetroot soup made its triumphant entrance with a 6-point restoration value alongside awesome saturation to go with it.
This delicious concoction can be crafted, as you might expect, with a bowl and 6 beetroots. Dwight Schrute would be so proud.
8. Cake
You’d think that a slice of cake would restore a massive amount of hunger right. For some reason this dessert does pretty much the opposite.
However, given that you can set a cake on the ground and quickly eat it whole while spamming your right click, a cake is one of the most efficient items in the game if you wish to restore your entire hunger bar in an instant.
It’s quite tricky to craft as it requires eggs, milk, sugar, and wheat. But getting your hands on one of these treats will keep your heart content for a few extra miles.
7. Pumpkin Pie
Here’s another lip-smacking treat made with sugar, an egg, and a pumpkin.
The pumpkin pie wasn’t originally in the game when Minecraft first released. But it’s a welcome addition among many other newer food items.
It restores a solid 8 points of hunger and offers a decent amount of saturation. And even though it isn’t the most common food to carry around, your hunger won’t be an issue anymore if you keep a few on you.
6. Golden Carrot
Golden carrots can be crafted using regular carrots and 9 gold nuggets. This means you can get one golden carrot per gold ingot so it’ll take a bit of effort.
It’s one of the three golden food items in the game and even though it only restores 6 hunger points, it gives you a saturation boost of over 14!
These goldies might not be as easily obtained as other foods. But they sure as hell offer a great bang for your buck!
5. Steak
Contrary to popular belief, steak isn’t the most effective meat when it comes to restoring hunger.
Both steak and cooked porkchops restore the same number of points and provide the same amount of saturation, although steak can be harder to obtain in some cases.
Steak is a great food to carry around if you happen to have a cow farm.
Cows are also very easy to breed, and even more so in the early game when you might not have what it takes to create a pig farm.
In any case, a stack of steaks will last you for a long time no matter how big your adventure.
4. Cooked Porkchop
Just like with steak, cooked porkchops restores over 12 points of saturation and 8 points of hunger.
Both cooked porkchops and steak are the best meat items in the game when it comes to how easy you can obtain them. Even though other foods are far more effective, you should be able to get your hands on a stack of either meats not long after getting started in a new world.
You can breed pigs using carrots too so be sure to make a carrot farm for yourself before you start harvesting those piggies for meat.
3. Rabbit Stew
Lo and behold, the rabbit stew.
It might not be common dish or the most popular among the Minecraft fandom, but rabbit stew is the best type of food in the game when it comes to restoring hunger points.
Consuming one of these stews will grant you 5 full bars of hunger which translates to 10 points altogether.
The only downside of rabbit stew is that it doesn’t give you as much saturation as steak or cooked porkchops, but it’s still one step ahead of them in terms of overall food quality.
2. Golden Apple
The Golden Apple is the first type of “legendary” food item in the game. It has been used to fight the Ender Dragon for years and players often prioritize obtaining a golden apple over many other things.
The Golden Apple allows you to heal for 2 minutes after consuming it. Plus it also prevents you from taking as much damage as you would without eating it so this adds a defensive buffer and a regen healing effect.
It just requires one apple and 8 gold ingots to craft, so your main goal if you want to get your hands on one of these is to farm as much gold as you can.
Keep in mind that you may also come across golden apples in hidden chests but they’re not as common as you’d like them to be.
1. Enchanted Golden Apple
The Enchanted Golden Apple is the rarest and most effective food item in the game.
It’s an improved version of the traditional golden apple, but it requires you to craft it using Gold Blocks instead of ingots. This makes it a much rarer and much more expensive item to pig out on.
Contrary to the regular apple which gives you Absorption 1 for a couple of minutes, the Enchanted version gives you Absorption 4 and much better health regen.
If you’re serious about snagging this rarity you might check in dungeon chests since they are known to spawn there.
Born in the first half of the 90s, video games have been a part of my life ever since I was introduced to Age of Empires I by my dad. I'm a Mass Communications graduate with a specialization in Marketing, as well as a hardcore gamer. My aim is to bring you quality content so you can get the best out of your games and take your experience to the next level!
