Head Chef’s Guide to Cooking for The Reluctant and Completely Disinterested Un-Enthusiast

Yea I know you travelers. You’re not artists like me, and you just want units, nanites, and power! So let’s stop beating around the echinocactus and get to the point.

Cooking isn’t the most profitable way to make money and nanites, but it is the best way if you want to focus on exploring the universe and don’t like building industrial facilities. And if you don’t like industrial extraction then we at least have one thing in common, I suppose.

However, selling your food, be it for units or trading to me for nanites, is secondary and supplemental to the huge profits made from Nutrient Ingestor scanning bonuses. These bonuses can get you millions of units per scanned creature, for example, when combined with maximum scanner upgrade tech. That’s more than the typical crashed starship is worth. And you can earn this money doing what you’d rather be doing anyway, which I will assume is exploring, rather than mining or building industry.

In addition to that, you can increase the value of extra ingredients you collect by cooking them into something before selling. This is not a huge earner but does gain you more units than raw ingredients.

If you need nanites I will consume your dishes (for evaluation purposes only of course) and pay nanites based on quality, usually 0-129 per critique. Yes I’m slow because I take my time. Very rarely I might pay more, up to 300, but that almost never happens. If you don’t like waiting you can also donate some selected dishes and ingredients we need at the Space Anomaly in larger quantities (up to 30) for similar nanite awards per item, and you will also have my eternal esteem. [Note: Chronus' esteem isn't worth anything in game terms.] I do have to admit though that this is not really the fastest way to earn nanites.

(Earning nanites is especially slow if you try to give me Carbon Nanotubes. Those are worth exactly 0 nanites. Why does everyone keep trying to give me those? And an even better question, why do I keep falling for it?)

Cooking can still make one of the faster ways to earn nanites even faster using the Nutrient Ingestor to gain mining bonuses when mining Curious Deposits.

And if you just want the most extreme and overpowered jetpack, cooking the right foods can get you bonuses like that too.

So without any further delay, let’s get to the details.

Cooking requires a Nutrient Processor of some sort, but there are multiple options.

Your first option, no matter how poor and homeless you are, is to use "my" grill on the Space Anomaly. I’m standing right next to it all the time in the back right-hand side of the station.

Overlooked by most, this is open to everyone and allows for all possible nutrient processing, but it’s also important to know that (like any other nutrient processor) it gives you access to Ingredient Storage as soon as you can make it to the Space Anomaly.

Ingredient Storage allows you to free up your limited inventory by moving some food (and even some non-food) into this special inventory. This is probably most important for survivalists and those travelers who really do die permanently if they get killed.

And if you haven’t made it to the Space Anomaly yet then I can say with confidence that, as a traveler, you are destined to find it soon as long as you don’t completely avoid looking for answers among the stars.

Of course you probably want your own equipment for the sake of convenience, so here’s a complete list of your options.

• Nutrient Processor[nomanssky.fandom.com] - This is the basic unit that you can buy the blueprint for for 10 Salvaged Data from the Construction Research Station on the Space Anomaly. It’s made of common materials and is also portable. It can be deployed without a base in almost all places, and picked back up again without demolishing.

• Exo-Skiff[nomanssky.fandom.com] Portable Grill - if you find yourself on the water with no land in sight, you might find the Exo-Skiff to be useful. It has a full-featured nutrient processor built in. The skiff is actually an exosuit module and you can buy the blueprint for it from the Exosuit upgrade “research” seller on the anomaly.

• Nutrition Unit[nomanssky.fandom.com] (Corvette) - If you have a corvette you can build nutrient processors in your corvette. Everyone who has a corvette will know how to build one as the plans come with the corvette itself.

• Nutrition Room[nomanssky.fandom.com] (Freighter) - On a freighter the Nutrient Processor facilities are part of the Nutrition Room blueprint. This must be purchased from the upgrade control station on the freighter’s bridge.

Note that cooking usually involves preparing multiple ingredients or mixtures for the same recipe and doing this in parallel will speed things up tremendously. So whatever nutrient processors you use, you probably want to build 3-5 of them.

While you can just consume food normally at any time, any boons from doing so are minor, short-lived, and nearly useless. To address this problem, the exosuit Nutrient Ingestor[nomanssky.fandom.com] was invented. This exosuit module, the blueprint for which can be obtained from the usual exosuit research “assistant” on the anomaly, turns food into an extremely concentrated slow drip lasting 3-10 minutes per dish.

I have to interject at this point that I’m positively HORRIFIED by this unseemly tech abomination that bypasses the taste buds, and art and enjoyment along with it, to exploits food using such mad science atrocity, but you’re the one who’s going to be using it not me. Don’t blame me if it goes wrong.

And it’s absolutely required for the highly profitable bonuses that will later be discussed.

Note: Installing the Nutrient Ingestor will require a Lubricant which normally has to be crafted using the Lubricant blueprint.

The Lubricant blueprint can be obtained free by doing the Expanding the Base side missions which will eventually be spawned while completing mission objectives in The Artemis Path storyline. But if in too much of a hurry you can buy it for 250 nanites from the Synthesis Laboratory on the Space Anomaly. Lubricant only needs some Gamma Root and Faecium to make.

Skip the next two sections if you want because I will list off the full production chain for key recipes anyway.

I’m going to tell you about some patterns that most recipes follow. I call these patterns, and not rules, because not all recipes follow the usual patterns. Some patterns and their usual substitutions don’t result in working recipes. So while these patterns help with remembering and experimentation, they don’t always work. There are also recipes that seem to have nothing to do with common patterns.

The patterns are still useful.

Again, there are exceptions, like eggs, and some recipes use unprocessed ingredients that normally need processing, but usually everything raw needs to be processed at least once, by itself. Some need two, or even three, rounds depending on the recipe.
Here are the most important ingredients and the easiest (but not necessarily the only) way to produce them:

• Refined Flour - Grow Frost Crystals and process them into Glass Grains, then process the Glass Grains into Refined Flour. (Heptaploid Wheat and Kelp Sac can also be used.)

• Processed Sugar - Grow Cactus Flesh and process it into Cactus Nectar. While the nectar can be used alone sometimes, most of it you will want to process again into Processed Sugar. (Grahberry and Sweetroot can also be used.)

• Wild Yeast - needed primarily for plain dough, which is needed for doughnuts, this is obtained by processing Faecium by itself. Faecium can be produced in an industrial refiner by refining Faecium x1 + Oxygen x1 to Faecium x3. Mordite can also be refined into Faecium. Gutrot Flower[nomanssky.fandom.com] is a farmable plant that produces Faecium as well.

• Creature Pellets - These are not really ingredients, not directly, but you will need them to gather the next two ingredients. Carbon in a nutrient processor will produce one creature pellet per carbon and this is the most efficient way to mass produce them. Put 200+ carbon in there and go to town. (Chronus' Grill can be used if you don't have a nutrient processor yet.)

• Cream - Seldom is Milk from creatures used directly. It must be processed into Cream, and often cream must be processed into Churned Butter. Milk is perhaps the most common animal product and comes from a variety of creatures, so feed creature pellets to creatures and try harvesting them. Typically you will find milkable creatures anywhere with more than a few fauna species. (Note that Warm Proto-Milk and Craw Milk are proto-milk that produce “proto-“ versions of cream and butter. Bone Milk is another rarer type. Substituting those works in some recipes but may produce a variant result.)

• Eggs - These do not require a round of processing and can be used directly. Creature Eggs, Tall Eggs, and Giant Eggs are pretty much the same when it comes to recipes. It’s slightly more difficult to find egg layers than milk producers, so look for: triceratops-looking creatures, striders, and diplos (long neck dinosaurs). A good spot with lots of egg layers spawning is difficult enough to find that I suggest building a base there when you find one even if you don't have the Livestock Unit.

• Raw/Steamed Vegetables - process Fungal Mould, Solanium, or Gamma Root into their edible raw versions. Process the resulting raw vegetables by themselves to get Steamed Vegetables. Some other non-cultivatable plant products, like Jade Peas, also process into steamed vegetables.

• Meat - A variety of meat types are obtainable by killing creatures, and some of them result in special recipes when substituted, but Mordite also processes into Meat Flakes which process into Meaty Chunks, the most bland and generic form of meat. Mordite can be produced by Mordite Root plants. Since Mordite can also be produced from Faecium in an industrial refiner at a 3:2 ratio, Meaty Chunks can also be produced from Faecium. Some meats such as internal organs tend to have their own recipes.

So a complete farm for cooking only requires:

• 2-3 plants of Frostwort
  
• 2-3 plants of Echinocactus
  
• A location where you can reliably find milk-producing creatures.
  
• A location where you can reliably find egg-laying creatures.
  
• Gutrot Flower or industrial Faecium source (for Wild Yeast)
  
• Optionally: some Solar Vine, Gamma Root, or Fungal Mould (for vegetables)
  
• Optionally: Mordite Root, industrial Mordite source, or area with lots of creatures to kill (for meat)

Note that only a few plants are needed compared to industrial farming for producing Valuable Products to sell.

(Note that all of the farmable plant blueprints can be obtained by doing the Expanding the Base agricultural specialist side quests which will get spawned after doing enough The Artemis Path storyline missions. The only reason to pay nanites for them is if you're in too much of a hurry.)

Everything else is much less important and can be gathered opportunistically.

For the egg and milk farming, the Automated Feeder[nomanssky.fandom.com] and Livestock Unit[nomanssky.fandom.com] can be helpful if you find good spots to locate them, but they aren't as reliable as plant farms. They also require a base with power.

The main difficulty with the feeder and livestock unit is that creature spawn depends on you to be present nearby and you can't filter which creatures eat or get harvested. So the best you can do is find the best spot where the needed creatures spawn, build the units there, and then idle, or find other stuff to do (like cook or refine stuff), in a shelter nearby.

Tip: On arrival at the base, run around the base at least 100u or so from the livestock unit and throw some creature pellets on the ground. This will trigger more creatures to spawn and lure them in range of the automated feeder, jumpstarting ingredient collection.

If that isn't working, feed one creature which will cause it to start following you, then run over to the automated feeder. Other creatures should start following you as well. Hang around the automated feeder until the creatures start eating from it. Possibly repeat this with some other group of creatures.

Or just forget all this, do something else in the base area, and eventually check the livestock unit to see what it's collected.

Usually it's faster to manually feed and harvest the creatures, but if you can arrange to be doing other stuff in a base with enough creatures around the Livestock Unit can be worthwhile. It is very location-dependent though.

Skip to the next section if you want because I will list off the full production chain for key recipes anyway.

These are the most important prepared mixtures for the key recipes described below, and some less important ones that you might still encounter.

• Extra-Fluffy Batter: (Used to make some key high-powered recipes.)
  • Egg + Processed Sugar → Delicate Meringue
    
  • Delicate Meringue + Refined Flour + Egg → Extra-Fluffy Batter[nomanssky.fandom.com]
    
  • Variants: Replace meringue with different sweetened butters and/or replace egg with Larval Core.
  
  
• Lumpen Doughnut: (The plain 'blank' doughnut used for all other doughnuts including the most useful.)
  • Faecium → Wild Yeast
    
  • Refined Flour + Wild Yeast → Dough
    
  • Butter + Butter → Clarified Oil
    
  • Dough + Clarified Oil + Processed Sugar → Lumpen Doughnut[nomanssky.fandom.com]
  
  
• Custard: (Stellar Custard is the most important.)
  • General recipe pattern: Cream + Processed Sugar + Egg or Salt → Custard
    
  • Chromatic Metal → Silicon Egg
    
  • Cream + Processed Sugar + Silicon Egg → Stellar Custard[nomanssky.fandom.com]
    
  • Note: Silicon Eggs can not be used in place of creature eggs in most recipes.
  
  
• Sugar Dough: (biscuits/cookies)
  • Refined Flour + Processed Sugar → Sugar Dough[nomanssky.fandom.com]
    
  • Note: Uncooked Sugar Dough is combined with one other ingredient to make all biscuits (cookies).
  
  
• Pie Case: (pie crust used for all pies/tarts)
  • Refined Flour + Any Butter → Pastry (dough) → Pie Case[nomanssky.fandom.com]
    
  • Pie Case + Raw/Cooked Meat/Vegetable, Custard, Jam, etc. → Pie/tart of some sort
    
  • Note: Pastry dough isn’t used for anything but making pie cases.
  
  
• Sauces and Improved Stews:
  • Steamed Vegetables + Steamed Vegetables → Flavoursome Sauce[nomanssky.fandom.com]
    
  • Cream + Cream → Creamy Sauce[nomanssky.fandom.com]
    
  • Raw Meat/Vegetable + Raw Meat/Vegetable → Some type of Basic Stew
    
  • Creamy/Flavourful Sauce + Basic Stew → Some type of Improved Stew
    
  • Note: These are mostly good for maximum nanites when offering to Cronus because they aren't worth many units, but some have worthwhile shield bonuses in a nutrient ingestor.
  
  
• Sweet Jam/Butter type stuff: (usually least important)
  • Fruit/Nectar/Mucous + Processed Sugar → Some Type of Jam
    
  • Processed Sugar or Creature Nectar + Churned Butter → Some type of sweetened butter
    
  • Note: Some recipes use raw fruit or nectar, others require making Jam.

Again, you don't need to remember them right away because I repeat the required ones below.

Most of these aren't really that important unless you just want to collect all the recipes or don't like discarding/selling excess ingredients so want to use them somehow. They're also useful to help remember or guess recipes.

Note that cooking usually involves preparing multiple ingredients or mixtures for the same recipe and doing this in parallel will speed things up tremendously. So whatever nutrient processors you use, you probably want to build 3-5 of them.

Another tip: If you just want to “unlock” (reveal) recipes in the guide, placing the ingredients in the nutrient processor such that the result indicator shows up dimmed in the output is sufficient to reveal the recipe in the guide. It’s not necessary to actually make one of the recipe.

Before you have a Nutrient Ingestor, you might find making Cream Fingers[nomanssky.fandom.com] to be worthwhile. They're worth 105,000 units each and so 50 are worth over 5 million units. That's more than most normal crashed starships you find.

• You only need Frost Crystals, Cactus Flesh, and creature Milk.
  
• You can also opportunistically gather Heptaploid Wheat or Kelp Sac in place of the Frost Crystals, and Grahberry or Sweetroot in place of the Cactus Flesh. So this is doable even before you can farm.
  
• Frost Crystals → Glass Grains
  
• Glass Grains → Refined Flour
  
• Cactus Flesh → Cactus Nectar
  
• Cactus Nectar → Processed Sugar
  
• Refined Flour + Processed Sugar → Sugar Dough
  
• Wild/Fresh Milk → Cream
  
• Sugar Dough + Cream → Cream Fingers[nomanssky.fandom.com]
  
• Note: Proto and Bone Cream also work. Custard works, but is a waste of ingredients since it uses up more ingredients and only gives you the same Cream Fingers worth the same amount.

Less profitable variants needing only frost crystals and cactus flesh (or their wild substitutes) but no milk:

• Sugar Dough + Frost Crystals → Cough Biscuits[nomanssky.fandom.com]
  
• Sugar Dough + Glass Grains → Cough Biscuits[nomanssky.fandom.com]
  
• Chromatic Metal → Silicon Egg
  
• Sugar Dough + Silicon Egg → Baked Anomaly[nomanssky.fandom.com]

These are only worth 40,000 units each but that is better than other alternatives you can make without milk.
The big unit-maker is using max scanner upgrades with the Nutrient Ingestor[nomanssky.fandom.com] to further multiply the value of scanning Fauna (creatures). Build all scanner blueprints plus get three Class S scanner upgrades with +% bonuses to Fauna scan value and ideally put them in overcharged multitool slots. There are actually about 20 different recipes that give you a +6000% or more fauna analysis reward bonus, but only a few are practical to mass produce on a regular basis. So I'm just going to provide the easiest ones.

• Extra-Fluffy Cream Cake[nomanssky.fandom.com] (+6,422% fauna analysis, 10 minutes):
  • Creature/Tall/Giant Egg + Processed Sugar → Delicate Meringue
    
  • Delicate Meringue + Refined Flour + Creature/Tall/Giant Egg → Extra-Fluffy Batter
    
  • Extra-Fluffy Batter + Cream → Extra-Fluffy Cream Cake[nomanssky.fandom.com]
  
  
• Replace Cream with Syrupy Nectar (from plant creatures) for Nectar Islands.

• Cream can also be replaced with Custard (which only makes sense if you're out of cream but have excess custard.)

With all these bonuses you can get something like 5-28M per scan which means you can make about 100M per typical planet explored even without scanning all creature species on the planet.

While in the long term it's probably less time intensive to make money using industrial extraction and crafting, the Fauna Analysis Reward bonus is easily worth it if you're going to be scanning and exploring anyway and especially if you don't want to do industrial setup.

See the Nutrient Ingestor[nomanssky.fandom.com] page for a full list of recipes and bonuses. The main bonuses that are worthwhile are for Fauna Analysis, Resources Mined, and Jetpack Tanks. The other tend to not be worth enough to justify the effort.

The best way to make nanites with cooking is actually not to make food and give it to Cronus on the Space Anomaly, but early on it might be worth doing some if only to get some nanites needed for some important BPs etc. The lowest effort stuff worth the most nanites, on average, is stews improved with sauces.

• Raw Vegetable (wild vegetables, non-toxic mushroom, sievert beans, solartillo, etc) → Steamed Vegetables
  
• Steamed Vegetables + Steamed Vegetables → Flavoursome Sauce[nomanssky.fandom.com]
  
• Cream + Cream → Creamy Sauce[nomanssky.fandom.com]
  
• Raw Meat/Vegetable + Raw Meat/Vegetable → Some type of "Basic" Stew
  
• Creamy/Flavourful Sauce + Basic Stew → Some type of sauce-improved Stew

These can be made with only milk from creatures, followed by killing the creatures for their meat, or only vegetables. Cronus doesn't really care about fancy rare ingredients as much as how many processing rounds go into making something.

Fishing and releasing caught fish is another possibly easier early way to get nanites. Also see here for more ways, including one needed for the next tactic.

The most productive way to get nanites involving cooked goods is to use the mining bonus provided by The Stellarator (doughnut) or other recipe with a large mining bonus to mine Curious Deposits[nomanssky.fandom.com], ideally one that you've built a base on. See here for more about Curious Deposit farming.

In short, the ideal setup for this is to build two bases next to different Curious Deposits, get a multitool with a decent invisible mining bonus and upgrade modules with close to maxed-out mining bonuses, use the Nutrient Ingestor with The Stellarator or alternative, then teleport back-and-forth between the CD farm bases mining the runaway mould balls.

Here's a table from the multi-tool page[nomanssky.fandom.com] on the wiki showing which multi-tool types have the best mining bonus.

A Class S Pistol is the best common multi-tool for mining beam bonus as everything else is rare or found only in special locations. Upgrading the class helps significantly. Note that a Rifle gets an absolute 0 bonus no matter what class it is. It is the worst type to use even if it might be a little faster due to its damage bonus.

Here's how to make The Stellarator and the alternatives that are almost as good.

The Stellarator[nomanssky.fandom.com] (+64% Resources Mined for 10 minutes):

• Chromatic Metal → Silicon Egg
  
• Fresh/Wild Milk → Cream
  
• Cactus Flesh → Cactus Nectar → Processed Sugar
  
• Silicon Egg + Cream + Processed Sugar → Stellar Custard[nomanssky.fandom.com]
  
• Frost Crystals → Glass Grains → Refined Flour
  
• Faecium → Wild Yeast
  
• Refined Flour + Wild Yeast → Dough
  
• Wild/Fresh Milk → Cream → Churned Butter
  
• Churned Butter + Churned Butter → Clarified Oil
  
• Dough + Clarified Oil + Processed Sugar → Lumpen Doughnut
  
• Lumpen Doughnut + Stellar Custard → The Stellarator[nomanssky.fandom.com]

There are a few other alternatives that are easy or easier to make, though with slightly lower bonuses:

• Lumpen Doughnut + Meaty Chunks → Proteinous Doughnut (+51% for 10 minutes)
  
• Caramel Doughnut[nomanssky.fandom.com] (+60% for 10 minutes):
  • Processed Sugar + Salt → Crunchy Caramel
    
  • Lumpen Doughnut + Crunchy Caramel → Caramel Doughnut
• Cake batter-based Cream Buns[nomanssky.fandom.com] (+57% for 10 minutes):
  • Churned Butter + Processed Sugar → Sweetened Butter
    
  • Sweetened Butter + Refined Flour + Creature/Tall/Giant Egg → Cake Batter
    
  • Cake Batter + Cream or Bone Cream → Cream Buns
    
  • Alternative cake substitutions: Replace Cream with Crunchy Caramel or Bittersweet Cocoa (from Impulse Beans)

See here[nomanssky.fandom.com] for the full list of alternative recipes because there are quire a few options. These are just ones with the most common and least difficult to obtain ingredients.

Example of harvesting one mould ball with a highly upgraded Atlantid multi-tool:

You will very quickly have many stacks of Runaway Mould and will want lots of corvette or freighter refiners to refine all of it into nanites. Refining takes more time than harvesting, so ideally should be done in parallel with many refiners.

Other than the previously mentioned bonuses, there aren't too many other bonuses that are usually worthwhile. The main one seems to be Jetpack Tank capacity. Here are a few like this that might be useful:

• Jetpack Tanks:
  • Churned Butter (+189% 5 min)
    
  • Churned Butter + Churned Butter → Clarified Oil (+207% 5 min)
    
  • Stellar Custard + Frost Crystal → Stellar Ice Cream (+308% 10 min)
    
  • Stellar Custard + Pie Crust → Stellar Custard Tart (+314% 10 min)
    
  • Pie Crust + Clarified Oil → Solidified Grease Pie (+316% 10 min)
    
  • Cake Batter + Stellar Custard → Interstellar Fancy (+328% 10 min)
    
  • Note: A +300% or so jetpack tank bonus will allow you to jump about 500u on a normal planet with other maximum jetpack upgrades, but it will take 3 times as long as normal to fully recharge the 3 times as large tank.
  
  
• Shield Strength:
  • Vegetable Stew + Flavoursome Sauce → Delicious Vegetable Stew (+42% Shield 10 min)
    
  • Mystery Meat Stew + Flavoursome Sauce → Herb-Encrusted Flesh (+42% Shield 10 min)
    
  • Stewed Organs or other organ stew + Flavoursome Sauce → Flavoursome Organs (+43% Shield 10 min)
    
  • Bone Milk or Bone Cream/Butter/Cheese (+31-32% Shield 7 min)
    
  • Steamed Vegetables (+23% 5 min)

Again, see the whole list here[nomanssky.fandom.com] but these are the main bonuses that are sometimes worth it to me. (I tried the jetpack recharge bonus, but it's too low to make any significant difference to me.)

Others have found different ones worth it, but for resistances and such I usually just max out the normal tech modules quickly enough so nothing else really stood out to me and I didn’t want to make the list too large. So it is probably worth looking at the full list and trying out some other recipes as you may still find others that are helpful with your playstyle.

It's almost never worth consuming any food directly. The vast majority just recharge life support, hazard protection, etc, when eaten and this is much more easily done with regular elements.

While most things would be more useful when sold than eaten, there are a few that might sometimes be worth eating sometimes, maybe to help with survival in Permadeath.

• Refined Flour + Wild Yeast → Dough → Bread (8 Second Jetpack Overload)
  
• Extra-Fluffy Batter + [Cream, Nectar, Jam, Crunchy Caramel, Custard, or Synthetic Honey] → Some type of cake (8 Second Jetpack Overload)
  
• Any Fish + Any Fish → Assorted Roe (50% Health)
  
• Syrupy Batter Cakes (50% Health):
  • Churned/Bone Butter + Syrupy Nectar → Butter Syrup
    
  • Butter Syrup + Refined Flour + Creature/Giant/Tall Egg → Syrupy Batter
    
  • Syrupy Batter + Sweet Jam/Nectar/Honey (+ Cream) → Some sweet food restoring 50% health
    
  • Note: Syrupy Nectar comes from plant creatures, the ones that appear as though made of vines.

This is about all I have found.

This is an additional section about the raw ingredients that can't be farmed but that you might opportunistically collect while out running around. They can be worth collecting to save time on farming and processing in some cases.

Remember that you don't really need a huge number of most food products since you won't usually use them up very quickly, so just a few things picked here and there can save some time and trouble.

The following wild plants can be used as raw vegetables in many or most recipes and they all process into Steamed Vegetables when processed alone. Some also have special uses (see below).

• Jade Peas
  
• Frozen Tubers
  
• Hexaberry
  
• Impulse Beans
  
• Aloe Flesh
  
• Marrow Bulb (needs processing into Marrow Flesh first)

In addition, some of these and other wild plants have special purposes:

• Heptaploid Wheat - Refines directly into Refined Flour in one step rather than requiring two steps like Frost Crystals.

• Kelp Sac - Processes to Kelp Rice which is most notable because of the recipe Raw Fish + Kelp Rice → Fish and Rice which is worth 52,500 units. Kelp Rice also processes into Refined Flour.

• Grahberry - Mostly useful for making Processed Sugar in one step. Can be used to make jam, which isn't significant, and Fire Water + Grahberry → Scorching Sauce.

• Pulpy Roots - Processes to Root Juice. Root Juice processes to Crunchy Caramel, and Root Juice can substitute for one ingredient in Scorching Sauce. Also notable for Raw Fish + Pulpy Roots → Starched Fish worth 52,500 units.

• Sweetroot - Similar to Grahberry, processes directly to Processed Sugar saving some time. Can also be used as a raw vegetable but doesn't make Steamed Vegetables. Acts as a Scorching Sauce ingredient. Like Pulpy Roots, Raw Fish + Sweetroot → Starched Fish worth 52,500 units.

• Frozen Tubers - Can be used in place of Frost Crystals for ice cream recipes.

• Hexaberry[nomanssky.fandom.com] - These are only found on exotic and mega-exotic planets and can save some time on especially useful recipes. They grow on bushes and some anomalous fauna have them making it possible to farm them with a livestock unit. They can be used to make "Anomalous" and "Perpetual" recipes which can be significant:
  • Hexaberry + Processed Sugar → Anomalous Jam
    
  • Lumpen Doughnut + Anomalous Jam → Anomalous Doughnut (+6443% Fauna Analysis Rewards 10 min)
    
  • Pie Case + Hexaberry → Anomalous Tart (+54% Resources Mined 10 min)
    
  • Cake Batter + Anomalous Jam + Cream/Bone Cream → Perpetual Cake (+329% Jetpack 10 min)
    
  • Viscous Custard + Frost Crystal + Hexaberry → Perpetual Ice Cream (+320% Jetpack Tank 10 min)
    
  • Note: also try other batter or custard types and the jam can be used in place of raw hexaberry.
  
  
• Impulse Beans - Processes to Bittersweet Cocoa used to make chocolate stuff.
• Fireberry[nomanssky.fandom.com] - This is basically a hot pepper used for "spicy" recipes. The most useful thing to do with it is process it into Fire Water and then do Fire Water + Fireberry → Scorching Sauce[nomanssky.fandom.com] which can be used in place of Creamy or Flavoursome Sauce. Grahberry, Root Juice, Sievert Beans, or Solartillo can also substitute for one ingredient when making Scorching Sauce.

A few notable odd things.

• Hypnotic Eye → Horrifying Mush worth 90,000 units.
  
• Hypnotic Eye + Meat or Vegetable → Abyssal Stew worth 90,000 units.
  
• Hypnotic Eyes can also be converted to Living Slime in an industrial refiner.
  
• Pie Case + Regis Grease → Solidified Grease Pie good for a jetpack tank bonus. (This is the only worthwhile use for Regis Grease.)
  
• Crab 'Apple' and Leopard-Fruit can be used to make jam and in place of other fruit but aren't very noteworthy.

I didn't do anything with the cooking mechanic for a long time because it's not really the most important mechanic in the game, but when I finally decided to look into it I tried to dig through everything that might not be a waste of time.

Lets face it. Most of the recipes are a waste of time be it in unit, nanite, or bonus multiplier terms. But a few are worth the effort, especially the mining resource bonus when combined with curious deposits and the fauna scan bonuses that allow explorers to make similar amounts of units to industrialists.

Hopefully I didn't leave anything major out but if so please comment below.

A list of external links with reference information:

• Wiki Page: Cooking[nomanssky.fandom.com] - All recipes, nicely organized but no ingestor bonuses listed here.
  
• Wiki Page: Nutrient Ingestor[nomanssky.fandom.com] - All the Nutrient Ingestor bonuses sorted by type.
  
• Cooking Products[nomanssky.fandom.com] is a wiki page with a visual index of ingredients and final products.
  
• NMS Depot: Cooking Recipes[www.nmsdepot.com] - Nice looking database with what makes what.
  
• Xaine's World Recipe List[www.xainesworld.com] - Slightly out of date, but has the "Cronus coefficient" (from 0 to 1) which shows which recipes Cronos is most biased toward handing out the most nanites for.

This work © 2026 by NimrodX on Steam Community is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0[creativecommons.org]

This work contains a ridiculous parody of the NPC "Iteration:Chronus" from the game which is obviously not official lore and doesn't imply any endorsement from Hello Games.

Some content from the Fandom-hosted No Man’s Sky Wiki[nomanssky.fandom.com] used under CC BY-NC-SA.

Anyone who wants to translate this guide to any language is free to do so based on the license mentioned above, but please let everyone know about your translation in comments below and link to the original English guide somewhere in your translation.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3679976925
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3696071220
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3647979303
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3677621728