Hey, no judgment if you burn your toast, I still occasionally eat dinosaur chicken nuggies. We don’t all have what it takes in the kitchen, but the life simulation game Disney Dreamlight Valley lets everyone take control of their destiny.
In Dreamlight, your protagonist is inherently a winner. You’re always safe, even when commanding a stovetop. Cooking is an extension of the peaceful nobility Dreamlight sparkles over you—it replenishes energy and earns money, bonds you closer to characters, and stays magically, totally mess-free.
Even if you burn your toast, Dreamlight looks fancifully beyond the blackened crust and offers a chance to earn your crown as a cooking champion. And getting started is as easy as one, two, three.
1. Find somewhere to cook
The game introduces you to cooking early with Mickey’s “Foodception” quest. In this quest, Mickey will have you collect and grow crops and then give you a stove to create crackers and fruit salad. Mickey has GERD.
Completing Mickey’s quest is the simplest and cheapest way to obtain a stove, but if you’d like to customize, you can buy a stove from Scrooge’s store or unlock his crafting table to build one yourself, like a cute Pink Flat-Top Stove or Pale Gray Gas Stove, with a combination of iron ingot and glass. All stoves can handle all recipes, though.
That’s how you can start cooking in Dreamlight, but to make high-powered, expensive meals that will keep you sustained and net you cash if you’re ever short on Star Coins, you need Ratatouille’s cooking rat Remy in your game as soon as possible. This is the same process Elon Musk used to gain control of Tesla.
To find him, clear the Night Thorns in front of the Dream Castle, talk to Merlin, and decide to enter “a restaurant with a great little chef” from his dialogue options. This will begin Remy’s “An Important Night at the Restaurant” quest.
He’ll immediately put you to work in his restaurant because rats still believe in unpaid internships. After you prove your cooking worth, Remy will agree to come back to Dreamlight Valley with you. Spend 2,000 Coins to build a house for Remy and an additional 2,000 on the Restaurant Furniture Kit. After he’s in the Valley, Remy will ask for a few ingredients—find them, and you will be able to purchase butter, eggs, milk, cheese, peanuts, and slush ice from Remy as you level up your friendship with him (slush ice comes with level 10). Everything for a price, with this one. Otherwise, spend some time upgrading Goofy’s stall, planting the seeds you can buy there or pick up while exploring new lands, fishing, and foraging to amass a tasty trove of ingredients.
2. Build your recipe collection
Some recipes, like crackers and fruit salad, you’ll pick up while completing characters’ quest lines. But you can also pick up Recipe Books hidden in chests, buried in dirt and forgotten, or by going to Remy’s restaurant to experiment with ingredients until you’ve found a match.
You can also turn to this helpful, in progress spreadsheet put together by Reddit user Ildrim, which lists every recipe currently available in Dreamlight. Idrim notes that three recipes, Futomaki, Grilled Eel, and Strawberry Pie, seem to be “unobtainable” in its early access, but that “the absolute moment that we can either figure out the secret to it, or they actually get added to the game properly, they will be available on the spreadsheet.”
3. You’re all grown up now
Every recipe belongs to a one-to-five star category depending on how many ingredients they require (one-star recipes need one ingredient and so on), but monetary and energy value doesn’t necessarily increase with that categorization. So, though you won’t yet have a kingdom-wide access to obscure ingredients at the start of your cooking, you can still perform plenty of undemanding recipes to replenish your energy and your bank account.
Kotaku writer Zack Zweizen advises budding Dreamlight chefs not to overthink crudites, which come up during Mickey’s “Missing Minnie” quest line and involve any single vegetable, or ratatouille, which only requires one tomato despite Remy’s insistence on using the word “tomatoes” while giving instructions.
Read more: How To Make Crudites And Ratatouille In Disney Dreamlight Valley
Here’s a quick rundown of some other recipes players have been getting stuck on:
- Vegetarian Stew: requires carrot, onion, tomato, restores 617 energy, and sells for 475 Coins. Everything you need to grow for this recipe can be bought at Goofy’s stalls—in Peaceful Meadow, Forest of Valor, and Dazzle Beach, respectively.
- Sweet Slush: requires sugarcane and slush ice, restores approximately 500 energy, and sells for approximately 210 Coins. As mentioned above, you’ll need to get your friendship with Remy to level 10 before accessing slush ice. Supposedly, this recipe is meant to be made with anything “sweet” in place of sugarcane, but using fruit will get you Fruit Sorbet instead.
- Lobster Roll: requires wheat, lobster, garlic, butter, lemon, restores 4,928 energy, and sells for 1,975 Coins. You can buy wheat and butter from Remy, find garlic in the Forest of Valor, lobster in the Glade of Trust, and lemon in both the Forest of Valor and Glade of Trust.
- Fish Pie: requires wheat, butter, and any fish, restores approximately 860 energy, and sells for approximately 300 Coins. Buy the wheat and butter from Remy and go fishing for the fish.
- Maguro Sushi: requires seaweed, rice, ginger, and tuna, restores 1,206 energy, and sells for 413 Coins. Forage seaweed near any body of water or fishing spot, find ginger in the Forgotten Lands, buy rice from Goofy’s Glade of Trust stall, and catch tuna in the Forgotten Lands or Glade of Trust.
Other straightforward, useful recipes include:
- (One star) Hard-Boiled Egg: requires egg, restores 578 energy, sells for 264 Coins
- (One star) Leek Soup: requires leek, restores 414 energy, sells for 370 Coins
- (Two star) Scrambled Egg: requires egg and cheese, restores 1,070 energy, sells for 520 Coins
- (Two star) Oyster Platter: requires oyster and lemon, restores 1,155 energy, sells for 367 Coins
- (Three stars) Onion Puffs: requires onion, egg, and cheese, restores 1,392 energy, sells for 798 Coins
- (Three stars) Porridge with Fruits: requires any fruit, wheat, and milk, restores approximately 1100 energy, sells for approximately 350 Coins
- (Four stars) Souffle: requires egg, butter, milk and cheese, restores 2,386 energy, sells for 1200 Coins
- (Four stars) Peanut Butter Waffles: requires wheat, egg, milk, and peanuts, restores 1938 energy, sells for 978 Coins
- (Five stars) Large Seafood Platter: requires four pieces of any seafood and lemon, restores approximately 2000 energy, sells for approximately 300 coins
- (Five stars) Vegetarian Pizza: requires two of any vegetable, tomato, wheat, and cheese, restores approximately 750 energy, sells for approximately 350 Coins
What are your favorite Disney Dreamlight Valley recipes and tips?