Cooking Guide
Cooking turns whatever you've grown, fished, or bought into dishes worth eating, selling, or gifting. This guide covers how the stove's timing mechanic decides star quality, what that quality actually buys you, and how to keep new recipes coming as you level up.
How Cooking Works
Start a dish at a stove and a countdown begins on its own. Partway through, a heat prompt appears -- catching it cleanly is what pushes a dish toward a higher star tier, while missing it can leave you with a low-star result or, if it's bad enough, a burnt dish that's not worth serving at all.
Golden Rules
Every recipe can come out anywhere from 1★ to 5★ -- how well you time the stove prompt (and the quality of ingredients you feed in) decides which tier you land on, not the recipe itself.
Let the heat prompt run out and the dish can come out ruined instead of just low-star -- worth redoing rather than serving or selling a burnt result.
Recipes with a "choose N of these" ingredient slot let you swap in whatever you have on hand -- handy when you're short on one item, without changing what dish comes out.
A dish's energy restoration scales with its star tier, same as its sell price -- worth cooking (or holding onto) a higher-star version instead of eating the first one that finishes.
Star Quality & Energy
Every dish carries a 1-5★ quality tier. Both its sell price and how much energy it restores when eaten climb with that tier -- a 5★ dish is worth meaningfully more than a 1★ version of the exact same recipe.
Choose 2 of: White Radish, Potatoes, Tomato, Eggplant, Lettuce, Corn, Carrot, Wheat.
Sells for 90 at 1★, up to 720 at 5★.
Restores 15 energy at 1★, up to 30 at 5★.
Mastery Tiers
Cooking the same dish repeatedly builds toward its own mastery track -- novice, expert, and master tiers, each needing more total dishes cooked than the last. Using House Salad as an example:
Learning From Massimo
Massimo, the restaurant chef at Central Square, is Heartopia's Cooking mentor -- he's the one who gets you started with the hobby, and new recipes keep unlocking through him as your Cooking level climbs. Check in on his shop and any quests he has regularly rather than only visiting once.
Special Ingredients From Massimo
On top of everyday ingredients, Massimo's shop carries a couple of items that smooth out the timing minigame above.
3,000
Cooking Achievements
A few real achievements track your progress in the kitchen, if you like checking things off.
Maximizing Your Kitchen
- Learn a recipe's ingredient list before you start so you're not scrambling mid-cook
- Watch for the stove's heat prompt and respond the instant it shows up
- Keep a stock of common choose-slot ingredients so a recipe is never blocked on one missing item
- Sell off a batch of low-star dishes rather than letting them sit -- they're not getting better
- Save your best dishes for gifting or for their energy value instead of dumping them all on the market
- Check Massimo's shop and quests regularly as your Cooking level climbs
Troubleshooting
Star quality comes from how well you handle the stove's timing prompt during cooking, plus the quality of any ingredients you fed in -- a rushed or missed prompt caps you at a lower tier.
A badly missed cook doesn't just come out low-star -- it can fail outright into a burnt result instead of a sellable dish, so it's often worth restarting rather than pushing through.
Yes -- both sell price and the energy you get back from eating scale up with star tier, so a 5★ version of a dish is worth meaningfully more than a 1★ one, not just a cosmetic difference.
New recipes open up as your Cooking level increases -- check in with Massimo regularly, since his shop and quests are tied to your current level.