Raft – How to Use the Cooking Pot


To survive in Raft, you must maintain your hunger and thirst.

While getting water and raw food can be done in a few easy steps, knowing how to turn those raw ingredients into delicious dishes requires a bit more work, but is definitely worth it!

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use the Cooking Pot and all the cooking recipes in Raft.

Table of Contents

How to Use the Cooking Pot in Raft

The Cooking Pot can be unlocked by researching 1 Plank, 1 Plastic, 1 Metal Ingot, 1 Vine Goo, and 1 Bolt. It will then be located in the Food/Water crafting tab (the first tab).

Once you’ve unlocked the Cooking Pot, you can craft it using:

  • 6 Planks
  • 6 Plastic
  • 2 Metal Ingots
  • 4 Vine Goo
  • 1 Bolt

After crafting it, place it on your raft. You’re now ready to start cooking!

To start cooking, you must put 4 ingredients corresponding to one of the cooking recipes on the papers around the pot.

Next, light it up by looking at the pot’s bottom and pressing the “E” key.

You can place up to 6 Planks. Each Plank lasts 50 seconds, allowing you to cook 1 to 3 dishes.

Finally, press “E” while looking at the center of the pot to start cooking your chosen dish.

After starting the cooking process, all the ingredients will be put into the pot. The lid is put on the pod, and you can hear the sounds of cooking.

Once the pot is done cooking, you can use a Clay Bowl to collect the food from the pot by pressing the “E” key.

The Clay Bowl recipe can also be found in the Food/Water crafting tab. If you can’t find it, remember to research Clay in the Research Table first.

All Cooking Recipes

Currently, there are 12 cooking recipes in Raft. They’re divided into 2 groups:

  • Normal recipes: can be found in Loot Boxes and Barrels. The dishes in this category don’t have any special effects besides restoring your hunger and thirst.
  • Premium recipes: can be obtained by trading with the Trading Post. These dishes not only provide hunger and thirst, but they also offer special effects.

Besides the difference in the ingredients and effects, each dish in Raft also has a different cooking time, as seen in the table below.


NameIngredientsCooking Time (seconds)Effect
BBQ1 Raw Meat
1 Raw Mackerel
1 Raw Drumstick
1 Cave Mushroom
90+65 Hunger
+75 Bonus Hunger

Overall, you want to focus on the food that requires common ingredients and provides a high amount of Bonus Hunger.

Since Bonus Hunger reduces much slower than normal Hunger, you’ll have more time before you need to think about Hunger again.

All recipes in the game require 4 ingredients, so make sure all the papers have ingredients on them before cooking.

You can’t use cooked ingredients for cooking dishes in Raft, so only cook/use ingredients when you actually need them.

You can hang a recipe on the Cooking Pot’s board to easily keep track of the required ingredients.

You don’t need to find the recipe for a specific dish to cook it, you can memorize the ingredients from previous playthroughs or find the required ingredients online to cook any dish.

As far as we know, the reason why most new players can’t use the Cooking Pot is because they forget to use Planks to light up the pot. That’s why nothing happens when you try pressing “E” on the pot.

That’s how to use the cooking pot in Raft!

Have any suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.