When you play in normal or creative mode long enough, it can be easy to forget that Minecraft is basically a survival game. This situation becomes more common when you reach the endgame stages, and there are massive farms to give you an endless source of food. Yet, food still remains one of the core systems that shape the gameplay. To stay alive and regenerate health, we’ve listed some of the best Minecraft food sources that you should use. So, let’s dive right in.
1. Bread
- Source: Craft using 3 Wheat pieces or 3 Hay Bales
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 2.5
- Saturation Points: 6
Bread opens our list for today, and well, this is quite an average food source in Minecraft. Eating one bread will replenish 2.5 drumstick hunger points and 6 saturation points.
The reason we even included bread in our list is that it’s extremely easy to get early game. Full hay bale blocks are generated in villages, which you can break down into wheat. Now, using only three pieces of wheat, you can craft a piece of bread on the crafting table.
Alternatively, you can also plant wheat seeds and grow the wheat yourself. All in all, it’s a pretty good option for you in the beginning.
2. Cooked Mutton
- Source: Cooking raw mutton dropped from killing sheep or from a fire-killed sheep
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 3
- Saturation Points: 9.6
Cooked mutton is the same as cooked salmon point-wise. But we included this instead of salmon because of the fact that you’re much more likely to obtain it. Cooked mutton is a result of cooking raw mutton in a furnace or a smoker. The raw version of this meat is a drop from the sheep mob in Minecraft.
Sheep not only give you mutton but also wool, a useful block used in building and crafting. One of the first tasks Minecraft players accomplish is killing sheep so they can make a bed. Also, creating a sheep pen in the early game is pretty common. Therefore, cooked mutton is surely easier to come by and, therefore, one of the best Minecraft food sources.
3. Cooked Chicken
- Source: Cooking raw chicken or from fire-killed chickens
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 3
- Saturation Points: 7.2
Cooked chicken is another strong contender for the best Minecraft food that restores 3 hunger points. While the saturation is lower than that of mutton, chickens are far easier to find in the game. Moreover, you can easily create a chicken farm with a minimum number of blocks. And, this farm can automatically produce cooked chicken for you.
Although chickens are just another ordinary passive mob, killing them can drop feathers used in making arrows for your bow or crossbow in Minecraft.
4. Rabbit Stew
- Source: Made from combining cooked rabbit, carrot, baked potato, any mushroom, and a bowl on the crafting table
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 5
- Saturation Points: 11
Rabbit Stew is a solid choice for the best Minecraft foods because of the hunger it can restore. Eating one of these will replenish 5 drumsticks and 11 saturation points, which makes it one of the highest in the game.
However, getting this item takes lots of resources. First, you need to kill a rabbit, cook its meat, get a carrot, any mushroom, and a baked potato. Combining them on a crafting table along with a bowl will form the rabbit stew. Since it takes a lot of ingredients, it may not be feasible to get this food at all times.
5. Cooked Porkchop
Cooked porkchop is an excellent Minecraft food source, restoring 4 drumsticks and 12.8 saturation points in-game. You can obtain this food item by cooking raw porkchops, drops from pigs, and hoglins. Its hunger-to-saturation points ratio is pretty good, keeping you full for a while.
When you reach the late phase of your world, it’s even possible to make an OP hoglin farm in the Nether dimension, and it will collect cooked porkchops as well as leather for you.
- Source: Cooking raw porkchops from pigs or hoglins or fire-killed pigs/hoglins
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 4
- Saturation Points: 12.8
6. Steak
- Source: Cooking raw beef from cows or mooshrooms, or fire-killed cows, or from Butcher villager trades
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 4
- Saturation Points: 12.8
Steak is our last cooked meat entry on this list. It refills hunger and saturation points identical to the cooked porkchops. However, the reason it’s better is that this item is a result of cooking raw beef (a drop from cows).
Cows are the most important early-game passive mobs, which give you leather as well as meat. Also, with a few resources and perhaps one Vindicator, you can make a functional cow farm that will produce these drops automatically. So, it’s better to stick to steak in the early game, and you could then use porkchops in the late game. However, there are even better food sources in Minecraft, so keep reading to find out which one is the best.
7. Suspicious Stew with Saturation Effect
- Source: Crafting with mushrooms and dandelions or blue orchid; or milking a brown mooshroom after feeding it either of the flowers
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 6.5
- Saturation Points: 21.2
Suspicious stew with saturation effect is the best saturation-restoring and the second-best hunger-restoring food item in the whole game. Eating only one of these will refill a massive 21.2 saturation points and 6.5 drumsticks. So, why isn’t it the best Minecraft food item?
Well, the answer is simple, really. Suspicious stews don’t stack in Minecraft. You can only have one stew per inventory slot, which is not at all ideal when you go exploring and expect to get a ton of new items and blocks.
Yeah, you can fill a shulker box with them and carry it around, but that’s still not practical. You can make this item yourself with one brown and one red mushroom, as well as a bowl and a blue orchid or a dandelion. If you’re lucky, you can also buy it from farmer villagers.
The most difficult method would be to feed the brown mooshroom one of the two flowers and then milk it using a bowl.
8. Golden Apple
- Source: Crafting with an apple and 8 gold ingots; Also found in loot chests of dungeons, mineshafts, strongholds, woodland mansions, and many more.
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 2
- Saturation Points: 9.6
Golden apple is admittedly not the greatest when it comes to the points it provides. Eating one will replenish only 2 drumsticks and 9.6 saturation points. However, what makes it an extraordinarily amazing food source is the two effects it gives you.
One of them is regeneration II for 5 seconds, and the other is absorption for 2 minutes. Consuming a golden apple at the right time could save you from dying. Thus, if you are playing on hardcore mode, it could save your entire world as well.
Golden apple appears in loot chests of several structures, but you can also craft it on the crafting table. Or simply follow our dedicated guide to make a golden apple in Minecraft.
9. Enchanted Golden Apple
- Source: Can only be found from loot chests of Ancient Cities, Mineshafts, Woodland Mansions, Desert Temples, Dungeons, and more.
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 2
- Saturation Points: 9.6
Golden Apple is good, but let us take it a step further. Enchanted golden apple (also known as the notch apple) restores hunger and saturation points equal to the regular golden apple. It’s the most powerful food item in the game due to the effects it provides.
By eating one, you will get regeneration II (Java edition) or regeneration IV (Bedrock edition), absorption IV, resistance, and fire resistance. The enchanted golden apple is the only Minecraft food item in the game that’s not at all renewable.
It rarely generates only in some structures’ loot chests and cannot be crafted. To be fair, this item is more of a treasure item that players keep in their ender chest for the duration of the world. Though technically, it’s arguably the best food source in the game, you will probably never find that many of them to use as a consistent food source.
10. Golden Carrot
- Source: Crafting a carrot with 8 gold nuggets; or from master-level Farmer villager trades
- Hunger Points (drumsticks): 3
- Saturation Points: 14.4
The last best Minecraft food source on our list is the golden carrot. This item restores 3 drumsticks, which is less than some of the food items mentioned above. However, its primary advantage is that it replenishes a total of 14.4 saturation points. Unlike the stew, golden carrots are stackable to 64 items, which makes them already a lot better.
Thanks to the high saturation restoration, golden carrots will keep you nice and full for longer and therefore minimize the number of times you have to eat in-game. Furthermore, this food item is not difficult to get either. You can buy them from farmer villagers or craft them with 8 gold nuggets and one carrot. All in all, the saturation value golden carrots grant makes them the most frequently used food item in the late game.
What are Hunger and Saturation Points?
Hunger and saturation points are the primary benefits of consuming food. Hunger is indicated to the player by a drumstick bar at the bottom right of the HUD. These points directly affect your ability to sprint and regenerate health. If the hunger bar is full and you have taken damage, a couple of your hearts will refill while the hunger bar gets drained slightly.
Meanwhile, if the hunger bar reaches 3 or fewer drumsticks, you won’t be able to sprint in the game anymore. Also, if the hunger reaches 0 points, your health will start to deplete quickly. This isn’t the case in the peaceful mode, where the health regenerates automatically.
On the other hand, saturation is a hidden value that determines how fast you’re going to get hungry. As soon as the saturation depletes fully, the hunger bar will slowly start to deplete as well. This is a fairly important stat that affects your hunger bar and your in-game experience.
Every food item gives both hunger and saturation points. Some of them even provide the player with quite a bad ratio of these two values, which makes them instantly not a very great option. In this list, we focus on the hunger and saturation points of food items, as well as how easy or hard they are to obtain.
That’s all about the best Minecraft food items and how likely you are to use them in your survival world. So, the reason why you won’t find food sources such as cake or pumpkin pie on the list even that eating them will restore a lot of hunger points. It’s simply not practical to carry them around, so you wouldn’t even use them all that much.
With that said, did you like our list of the best Minecraft food sources? Which is your favorite item to use? Tell us in the comments below!
You can eat by simply having the food item selected on your hotbar and holding the right-click or the secondary action button.
No, milk does not restore any hunger or saturation points.
Unlike the more realistic and much harder Don’t Starve game, food in Minecraft does not spoil.
