Animal Crossing is one of those cozy Nintendo Switch games we love to curl up with on the couch for hours on end. The popular life sim offers a vast variety of gameplay options, one of which is cooking.

Although the last update was released a while back, and cooking isn’t a brand-new feature, many players still have a hard time figuring out how to unlock cooking in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH).

If you’ve updated your game to the latest version, keep reading for the cooking feature you’ve been looking for.

How to Unlock Cooking in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

At this point, you’re probably familiar with the currency on your Island, aka Nook Miles. You need to earn Nook Miles that can be traded in for other items required in the game.

To unlock cooking in ACNH, go to the resident services building and open up the Nook Stop Kiosk. Here, if you go to redeem miles, you’ll see various options.

With the latest Animal Crossings update, one of these options is “Be a Chef! DIY Recipes +”, which is the one you’re looking for. You can purchase this redemption for 2,000 Nook Miles. Once you’ve redeemed the ticket, you will receive all the DIY recipes directly to your Nook phone.

You now can learn DIY cooking recipes in addition to cooking various food items in the kitchen. If you look closer at your Nook phone, you’ll discover an update with a small whisk option, which indicates that you can collect food DIY recipes.

Similar to using a crafting table for crafting DIYs, you’ll learn the stonework kitchen DIY after redeeming the feature at the Nook stop. However, you do have other kitchen furniture items that you can cook on.

These include the ironwood kitchen, gas range, clay furnace, and open-frame kitchen. But what happens if you can’t find the Be a Chef option at your Nook Stop Kiosk to unlock cooking in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

How to Get Building Upgrades from Tom Nook

A building upgrade is one of the first things you must do to unlock cooking in Animal Crossing. You need to upgrade from your resident services tent to a building.

And the secret to all the upgrades you will need to unlock cooking is Tom Nook.

How to Upgrade to Resident Services Building

You will initially start with a tent, which you can upgrade to a house when you pay off your loan to Tom Nook using Nook Miles. Once you have a house, you can expand and upgrade it further by taking on new loans paid in Bells. Each upgrade enlarges your living space and enhances your storage capabilities.

However, there is a catch. The expansion of Resident Services begins only when you have at least five animal residents. Initially, your island will have two residents, and to attract three more, you need to set up additional plots and furnish them as required by Tom Nook.

You also need to develop substantial infrastructure on the island. Some of these essential structures include Nook’s Cranny and a bridge. These help to expand your island community by attracting new villagers.

Once you’ve fulfilled Tom’s requests, such as placing housing plots and attracting new villagers, you’ll be able to access the Resident Service upgrade from a tent to a building.

To do this, visit a mysterious island with a Nook Mile Ticket. You’ll find a villager on that mystery island and invite them to live on your island. The next day, Tom Nook will announce the upgrade and construction of the resident services building.

This upgrade will introduce new features and services that will unlock your game further by adding new skills, such as cooking. But that’s not all!

You must also get your island to three stars and complete Tom Nook’s DIY customization workshop.

While this could appear daunting to new players, keep in mind that most of the work you’re putting in is part of the game progression.

How to Get My Island to Three Stars

Both new and old players struggle with reaching three stars on their island, but it can be easy if done systematically. Watch out for Island evaluations, and here’s how you can ace them and gain more stars:

• Pay off your first loan
• Moving into a house instead of your tent
• Attract villagers

Tom will help you build your first bridge on the island. Many people underestimate the importance of bridges and inclines – you need at least one to progress in the game.

As we’ve said before, it’s also necessary to make buildings – the most important of which will be Nook’s Cranny at this stage. You’ll later upgrade Nook’s Cranny after paying off your loan with the help of Timmy and Tommy. The shop will offer important building materials you’ll need later.

Other factors involve building the campground. This campground means you can host villagers on the island and depending on space availability, they might move in!

A significant way to ensure happy residents is to beautify and improve the aesthetic living conditions of the island. These island renovations involve planting flowers and trees, weeding, building fences, and cleaning up. It also helps to add furniture outdoors.

It sounds like a lot of work, but that’s why we play the game. Most of the time, you will already be doing enough tasks for Isabelle to give you a 3-star rating. But if not, she does offer helpful improvement tips!

How to Prepare for Cooking

With a 3-star island rating, upgraded buildings, and a Be A Chef: DIY Recipes+ purchased, nothing can stop you from cooking on the island. To start, you need crafting recipes.

How to Find Recipes

Head on over to Nook’s Cranny, where you’ll see all the options for the recipe you want available for purchase. This is a good start, and sometimes, new packs will be available for you to purchase. But purchasing them isn’t the only way you can get them.

The recipe list in Nook’s Cranny includes tomato puree, organic bread, brown sugar (which will help craft the brown-sugar pound cake), seaweed soup, carrot cake, and more.

It’s possible to buy a pack of basic cooking recipes, too. It will cost you a challenging 4980 Bells, but you can do it.

You guessed it, the balloons will drop them too. However, you don’t need to sit around waiting for your lucky day. Check out the bottles on your beach – those tend to have recipes too. However, seasonal items are usually obtained by shooting down balloons.

Keep a slingshot in your inventory so when the next balloon pops up, you won’t have to regret missing whatever’s inside it.

For instance, you can only find Cherry Blossom recipes within the first ten days of April. You won’t find seasonal items during any other time of the year, although Isabelle will sometimes offer a seasonal recipe. She will offer the recipe during her news segment when your in-game day starts.

The fun part is that you can check to see if the bottle includes a cooking recipe before opening it. It’s a great way to find recipes, and it’s just one of those in-game quirks they added to the update.

Another way to discover recipes is through fishing in the sea. One fun instance is getting a recipe after catching specific fish like a red snapper, that will also unlock a recipe to use the snapper in!

Lastly, you can get recipes from the villagers on your island. This is one of the most fail-safe ways to earn daily cooking recipes. Visit villagers’ houses as often as you can to discover if they’re crafting a favorite recipe.

Keep in mind that villagers have personality group types that will yield a certain type of recipe exclusive only to them. This means there are some recipes you won’t get from other villagers, usually 35 to 38 exclusive to them.

If they’re holding a frying pan instead of crafting materials like a hammer, it’s your lucky day. If you speak to the chef in the restaurant, you can obtain cooking-related recipes.

Planting Crops

You can’t cook without the perfect ingredients and you can get plenty of ingredients by growing crops through Leif’s seeds. Another more costly way is to purchase seeds through Harv’s outdoor market.

You can also pay off Leif’s plot, although this will cost you a pretty penny. However, it does mean you don’t have to wait for Leif to show up; instead, he will be present for you to shop from whenever you want.

Travel to Harv’s Island and find a small campground in the back. You have to purchase the campgrounds for a hefty price of 100,000 Bells, and you’re done.

Instead of being a traveler, you can access him every day. All of this will be unlocked within the game once you’ve witnessed your first concert event with K.K.

Try asking Captain to take you to a mysterious island for crops, but this isn’t the most reliable way. This costs 1000 Nook Miles every time and can only be done once a day.

Animal Crossing 2.0 has five different varieties of crops and you should be planting them all to get base-level ingredients for the food recipes. You can harvest small, medium, large, and then ripe plants for all the fresh ingredients you’ve planted. This is a four-day life cycle.

They all have different yields and do not rot, regardless of the season. For instance, the tomatoes won’t ever fall off, nor will the potatoes die off. Other items like turnips are another story.

If you want a double yield for the crop, just water it once through its four-day life cycle, and you’ll get double the yield, for instance, with wheat. If you water it twice a day, you’ll get a maximum triple yield.

You can also plant some of your yields into the ground instead of purchasing from Leif or Harv to grow crops. It doesn’t matter what season you’re in, you can plant, harvest, and repeat the process for the whole year.

How to Start Cooking

You can craft a stoneware kitchen with stone, iron, and clay. Once that’s out of the way, you can officially make headway into your kitchen adventures.

Here’s a fun tip – you don’t necessarily need a stoneware kitchen. You can also use the microwave and the kitchen stove that’s been in the game since the beginning. However, some recipes are specific to the kitchen furniture like the gas range.

For basic items, such as flour, you need five wheat. You can make sugar from sugarcane, carrot potage from flour and carrots, and so on. You can craft delicious recipes from a long list that seems never-ending.

Brown sugar can also be turned into cupcakes – it’s one of the things that makes the game so lovable and playable.

Find craftable fundamental ingredients and then use those to make additional recipes.

For instance, you don’t just make flour but also whole-wheat flour for items like tomato bagel sandwiches or mixed fruit bagel sandwiches, mushrooms, and more.

Fruits such as apples can be turned into apple jam, or peaches into peach jam. Flat mushrooms, round mushrooms, and flour make mushroom potage.

However, you’ll have to wait for the mushroom season to begin. Mushrooms are located near cedar and hardwood trees in the northern hemisphere in the month of November. You can find them in the southern hemisphere in May.

The game also includes more than just savory or sweet item recipes. You can also craft drink recipes like orange smoothies.

Animal Crossing has so many recipe combinations beyond the basic categories, which makes it fun to experiment and play around with everything you’ve harvested and crafted.

Another one of the game’s updates includes being able to do something with all the fish you’ve caught, particularly the infamous sea bass. Many players joke about opening an entire restaurant dedicated to cooking recipes involving sea bass. One of these recipes is grilled sea bass with herbs.

You can do the following with food items you’ve cooked:

• Show it off
• Place item
• Drink/eat
• Put in storage

You can’t eat or drink items you’ve “placed” anywhere. You can only consume them if you use the drink/eat option. Eating or drinking the food will increase your energy too.

Orange smoothies will give you around four energy, and grilled sea bass will offer you six energy.

As if that wasn’t enough, food can also help you build better bonds with your island community. You can increase your interaction with islanders by offering or gifting the food you’ve cooked. You can even get a gift in return from the villagers.

Want another fun fact? You can cook outdoors.

That’s right – you can place cooking ranges outdoors and cook as you please! Try making an outdoor salad bar just for fun.

You should also learn how to use crops and cooking to maximize your profits. Cooking is one of the skills in the game that can yield money if you’re smart about it.

For instance, sometimes cooking food will lower its selling price. Other times, it will sell at a profit as opposed to selling the raw material on its own. When C.J.is visiting the island, all your raw fish will sell for 50% more of its original worth.

Almost all dishes have a chance of yielding good profits.

For instance, mushroom curry is one of the most cost-efficient dishes if you consider the ingredients it takes to make it and the profit it yields.

However, if you’re looking to turn profits in the game, crafting non-food items is a better bet than cooking. Crafting is more cost-efficient and can also become a hot item at Nook’s Cranny.

Secret Recipes and Tips for Animal Crossing: New Horizons

While you can find a long list of recipes, there are still some that are usually forgotten about or overlooked.

We’ve already talked about Leif, but he does more than just offer seeds and hedges, the item many players flock to.

He also provides a fun vegetable basket containing all the vegetables that became part of the game with the 2.0 update. This basket includes a tomato, potato, carrot, wheat, sugar cane, and carrot to craft.

All you have to do to obtain this crafting recipe is to purchase vegetables from Leif on three separate days before he sends the recipe your way in the mail.

The next secret recipe everyone misses is one you can obtain from Daisy Mae. She will offer you cooking recipes like the bamboo shoot soup, the jarred bamboo shoot, the kabu, and the turnip salad.

If you buy turnips from Daisy Mae, you can use the turnip mechanic and receive the recipe in the mail, similar to Leif’s. Since we’ve mentioned Daisy Mae, it’s important to note that Brewster is another NPC who can offer you recipes for your cooking adventures.

We’ve previously mentioned improving the islanders’ quality of life, and one of the main ways to do this is through decor. Rather than voting for aesthetic decor and furniture, try making your island more functional.

Redeeming your Nook Miles to get an ABD means you can withdraw or deposit bells at any given time, but not always from the resident services. Try placing it outside Nook’s Cranny or the airport, making it convenient for visitors and yourself when learning from Tom Nook.

Generally, having them outdoors can be helpful.

You should also consider getting storage sheds. They make it more convenient to deposit items that you don’t want in your inventory. The UI is even better for these sheds than in your house.

You can put a wooden storage shed in your pocket and bring it anywhere on the island. While it can take up some space in your inventory, it is still one of the most useful items in your inventory.

Pipes are yet another tip we would offer. If you want to teleport from one location to another in the game, pipes will be your best bet. They’ll increase your efficiency because you can teleport places rather than walking all the way over there.

These are some of the best items in the entire game and no other items perform the same function.

Instead of buying items from Nook’s Cranny or eating fruit one by one, place an outdoor cooking station. This will help you cook and retain your energy when you’re working around the island.

Many players forget that cooking earns you Nook Miles, which are the most valuable in-game resources. However, keep in mind that they aren’t as easy to farm as Bells or pick up from Treasure Island.

There’s a new trick you can use. Go over to resident services and have a chat with Tom Nook. You can convert your Bells into Nooks because renovating a villager’s home for Bells means Tom will reward you with 1000 Nook Miles.

Conclusion

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of Nintendo’s best offerings to the gamer community — the game, with the new 2.0 update, is a classic that many players enjoy.

Among the many activities you can pursue, cooking is a handy and useful activity that will enhance your in game experience.

To learn how to unlock cooking ACNH, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops like paying off your loans, upgrading from a tent to a house, building a Resident Service building, getting a 3-star island, and more.

However, it’s not that difficult as you end up achieving most of this while achieving game goals set for you by Tom and Isabelle.

We hope this guide helped you out. Leave any questions or tips you have in the comments section below!