Cooking Guide: Best Food, Every Recipe and Kitchen Upgrades

Cooking in Graveyard Keeper 2 is a fuel problem, not a gourmet one: every swing of the shovel is paid in energy, and the kitchen is where you print more of it. The short version: rush Bread, mince your Flesh into Burgers and Lasagna, fillet the cheap fish, and bake your forage instead of eating it raw.

This page is about what to cook and every recipe. To refill the energy bar fast, cure insanity or sleep, use the energy and insanity guide instead.

Cooking at a glance

How the kitchen works

Kitchen Table, Kitchen Oven and Millstone

Your home comes with a Broken Kitchen Table and a Broken Oven. Repair the table with 2 Wooden Plank and the oven with 2 Piece of stone, both at Building mastery 3. Each repair hands you a free cooking technology on the spot.

• The Kitchen Table is a manual workbench: you stand there and pay energy every tick, usually 2 (1 for baits). It burns no Fuel, with one exception: Chocolate on the Kitchen Table II. It lists 31 recipes in the game files, about 20 of them obtainable in 1.008: snacks, fish fillets, baits and quality upgrades.
• The Kitchen Oven is an auto-crafter. Load a batch, start it and walk away: it finishes on its own while burning Fuel. It lists 36 recipes in the game files, 26 of them obtainable in 1.008: every baked, fried and stewed dish. Queue a long batch before a long errand and dinner is waiting when you come back.
• The Millstone (2 Board and 2 Piece of stone, Millstone technology) grinds Wheat into Flour, Flesh into Minced Meat and seeds into Seed oil. A zombie can work it, and the zombie Miller perk raises Flour from 5 to 8 per batch.

Wheat seeds are the easy choice for Seed oil: at 2 bronze they tie Carrot seeds as the cheapest, Wheat grows at Farming 2, and every harvest pays seeds along with the grain.

Fuel: the oven’s real diet

Fuel is not something you carry. It is a meter on the oven, filled by a Firewood shed in the same work zone: every 2 Firewood become 20 Fuel. Firewood shed I (10 Stick, 2 Bronze Nails, Bronze Melting) holds 100 Fuel; Firewood shed II (20 Stick, 6 Bronze Nails, 2 Bronze Detail) holds 500.

A Short Log splits into 10 Firewood, so one log is 100 Fuel: four Lasagna batches, or ten once you have the Heat Saver talent. Twenty Sticks also make 10 Firewood, and tree stumps give both Sticks and Short Logs.

Mastery, perks and what cooking pays back

Every kitchen, brewing, pressing and milling recipe runs on Farming mastery. Kitchen Table recipes ask for Farming 1 to 6, the oven 2 to 8, and Chocolate on Kitchen Table II asks for 10. Below a recipe’s requirement you cannot start it at all; only the two star crafts, Vegetable salad and Bowl of sauerkraut, start lower, and then each tick is a gamble. A Muffin (+2 Farming) bridges a small gap.

Cooking pays you back in three small ways:

• Tech points. Almost every batch pays 1 green point; Chocolate pays 10.
• The Cook inspiration. Every dish you cook counts toward it. Its six levels (5, 15, 30, 50, 100 and 200) cost 21 Faith to claim in all and fill the Farming inspiration bar, which is exactly what buys the Cook, Heat Saver and Cook II talents. See the talents and inspirations guide.
• The Master Cook achievement for 100 dishes. Multi-portion batches count every dish, so it tends to arrive while you are busy doing something else.

How to unlock every cooking recipe

Cooking technologies cost no tech points. They sit hidden on the Cooking tree until you do the thing that reveals them. On the Farming tree, the Millstone (Flour and Seed oil), Bread and the first two baits are bought with points.

The baits come from the Farming tree: Fishing II (40 green) for Breadcrumb Bait and Fishing III (120 green) for Insect Bait. Fishing IV, for Live Bait, lists 150 green but stays hidden until you finish Plenty of Fish in the Sea (3 Flax Thread for the twins), which unlocks it. The Spices and Umami upgrades come from the alchemy tree (see below).

Every obtainable Kitchen Table recipe

Portions read base / with the Cook talent. Energy is per serving.

The table also turns fish into fillets and makes bait; the fishing guide says where each fish bites. The Fish Filleter talent doubles every fillet count below.

Every obtainable Kitchen Oven recipe

Fuel reads base (with Heat Saver). Portions read base / with the talent: Cook for Baked apple, Baked mushrooms, Bread and Berry Pie, Cook II for everything else. Graded batches depend on the crop’s grade: with Cook II they become 3 / 6 / 10 (Cabbage soup 6 / 10 / 14, Pumpkin soup 4 / 6 / 8).

* Tooltip value. These five dishes also grant tech points when eaten, and the energy actually applied seems to be higher (see the legendary fish note below).

Kitchen Oven II runs the same 26 obtainable recipes with 5-second ticks, twice the speed of the base oven. Need the whole ingredient tree for a batch? The crafting calculator breaks Lasagna down to the last grain of Wheat.

Best food for energy

Ranking dishes by energy per serving only tells half the story. What runs out in practice is an ingredient: Flesh, Dough, fillets or crops. So the useful question is how much energy each scarce ingredient can become.

Two patterns jump out. Meat is worth five to eight times more minced than baked, and forage four to seven times more cooked than raw. Beet slices and Carrot cutlets are the two worst food recipes in the kitchen: cook them only for the inspiration counter.

Early game: cook your forage, then rush Bread

Early on you live on foraged Berries and Brown Mushrooms, plus Apples once the Vegetable Stand or an Orchard supplies them. Bake them as soon as the oven has Fuel: five Apples are 15 energy in your mouth and 105 as Baked apples, and five mushrooms jump from 20 to 81 once baked.

Then buy Gardening, Millstone and Bread: 5 red and 40 green points in all. The chain is 4 Wheat → 5 Flour → (with 2 Water) Dough → Bread, so one Wheat ends up as a little over one Dough. Bread itself is a modest 18 energy, but Burgers, Lasagna, pies and pastries all run on Dough. Dough is also what the Berry Pie waits for (4 Dough, 6 Berry): each slice takes 3 insanity off, and the first batch reveals Pastries. Januarius sells Berry Pie at the Village Tavern from his first trade level; the town Baker, which sells Bread, Dough, Berry Pie and Croissants, only opens after Market Stalls II and its restoration. Planting tips live in the farming guide.

Mid game: Lasagna, soups and graded crops

Once Anyway… is unlocked, Lasagna becomes your daily bread: 50 energy for a single point of insanity, four per batch. Pair it with the root soups, which cost no meat at all: Vegetable soup turns 2 Beets and 2 Carrots into 125 energy, Grated beets turn 4 Beets and a Seed oil into 140 without touching the oven.

Graded crops are the mid-game secret. A better grade does not make a better dish, it makes more of it: two gold Cabbages make 10 Cabbage soups instead of 4, three gold Onions make 7 Onion rings instead of 2. You only have to grow them once: the recipes unlock with your first Cabbage and Onion harvests, and after that you can buy the crop.

At its base price, the Vegetable Stand sells gold Cabbage for 13 bronze from its second trade level and gold Onion for 18 from its third. Two gold Cabbages (26 bronze) and a bucket of Water become 250 energy, roughly a tenth of a bronze per point; the same stall’s Apples (2 bronze each) bake at about the same rate. The Baker’s Bread costs half a bronze per point. Prices climb as you empty a shelf, so buy a few at a time.

Late game: Burgers and fish

The Burger beats Lasagna on almost every count. Per Minced Meat it gives 320 energy against 200, per Dough 160 against 67, and its Bread costs 5 Fuel to bake against Lasagna’s 25. It needs Farming 5, Lasagna 6. Its only flaw is 5 insanity per serving, 20 per batch. Answer it with a Toast with onions and one Beer: under Beer thirst a single Beer removes 24 insanity, more than four Burgers add.

Skip the Sandwich once Burgers are open. It spends a Baked meat (half a Flesh) on four 50-energy servings, while the same half Flesh, minced, makes four 80-energy Burgers. It exists to get you from Oh no! to Anyway…, not to feed you.

Flesh comes from corpse pockets, but it is also a white skull, so take it only from bodies you will not bury (the corpse quality guide explains the stakes). The Baker sells it from trade level 2 at a 35 bronze base.

Fish dishes add no insanity at all. Per fillet, Baked salmon (120) and Fish nuggets (75) are your best options. The Salt for Baked salmon falls out of every cremation, or costs 20 bronze at the Apothecary and the Baker. Fillet the cheap catches: Roach and Gudgeon are worth 10 bronze and Anchovy 48. The Fish Stand pays full price for fish, and from its second trade level it takes an Eel (192 bronze), Swamp Ghost (154), Trout (140) or Salmon (126), which are then worth more in your purse than on your plate. The catch: the Town has seven stall plots for eight stall shops, and the Fish Stand is the one most players leave out. Without it, nobody buys those four, so fillet them too.

The full insanity side of the menu, cures and sleep included, is in the energy and insanity guide.

Buff dishes: eat before you work

Six dishes are worth more for their side effect than for their energy.

Salad and sauerkraut are star crafts: 7 ticks, silver at 4 successful ticks, gold at all 7. Below their Farming 4 requirement ticks can fail and the grade drops; at Farming 4 or more, every tick lands and the bowl can come out gold straight away. That matters for the next section.

Spices and Umami: what they really upgrade

Only four things in the kitchen carry a grade: Wine, Grape Juice, Vegetable salad and Bowl of sauerkraut. At the Kitchen Table you can push each one up a step:

Since salads and sauerkraut already come out gold at Farming 4, the upgrades really exist for Wine and Grape Juice, where gold otherwise needs gold Grapes and Farming 14 at the press and the barrel, or a Brewery restored to its third level, which sells gold Wine. The wine guide covers all three roads to gold Wine.

Brewing Spices and Umami

Both come from the Alchemy Lab. Spices (0 red, 2 green, 2 blue) is two Ash at Laboratory I, and the Alchemist also sells it from trade level 2. Umami (0/4/4) needs three ingredients, so Laboratory II; Hops + Hops + Night flower is an easy mix, and it brews even before you know the formula. The Kitchen Table only offers the silver-to-gold step once Alchemy, Advanced is researched. Every rune sum, mix and study cost is in the alchemy guide.

Kitchen upgrades and cooking talents

Kitchen II and Oven II stay invisible on the Farming tree until you repair the matching station, so fix both on your first day even if you cook nothing. Kitchen Table II adds a single recipe, which makes Kitchen II mostly a toll gate: you pay it to reach Oven II, and Oven II in turn opens Bed Improvement (100 green, 20 blue) for the bed and home upgrades.

The kitchen talents sit on the Farming tree and cost 1 Farming inspiration point each:

• Cook (row 3): more portions on 12 basic recipes, such as Bread 6 instead of 4 and Burger 6 instead of 4.
• Heat Saver (row 4, after Cook): Fuel for every oven recipe, and for Soldier’s ale, drops from 10 to 5, 15 to 5, 20 to 10 and 25 to 10. Lasagna goes from 25 to 10.
• Cook II (row 6): more portions on the other 22 oven recipes, Lasagna and every legendary dish included.
• Fish Filleter (row 4, after Fisherman): twice the fillets from every fish.

Cook and Heat Saver sit low on the tree, so take them first: Heat Saver alone cuts a Lasagna batch from 25 Fuel to 10. Cook II later makes that same batch 6 servings instead of 4.

The factory Kitchen cooks crates, not dinner

The Kitchen I and Kitchen II you build in the Factory make nothing to eat. A zombie on the line packs crops, Beer and Wine into town Supply crates, starting with Vegetable Supplies (120 green, 25 blue). Graded crops fill a crate with fewer items there too: one gold Pumpkin does the work of three bronze ones. See the factory guide and town orders.

Drinks in brief

Pressed juices are food too. Grape Juice gives 50, 55 or 60 energy by grade, Blueberry Juice 35, Apple and Berry Juice 25 each, all from 6 fruit and an Empty Bottle at the Vine Press. As energy that is poor value next to the oven: six Apples press into one 25-energy bottle, while five bake into 105. Beer, Mead, ciders and Wine are insanity cures rather than meals, and Soldier’s ale is a trap (5 energy, +20 insanity). The wine and alcohol guide has every drink recipe.

Can you sell what you cook?

Barely. No trader buys Burgers, Lasagna, soups, fish dishes, Muffins or Croissants. The exceptions are small change: Januarius pays 25 bronze for a Berry Pie at his usual stock, the Baker buys Dough and Flour, and the Brewery buys Apple and Berry Juice. Selling Flour to the Baker does earn weekly Likes, which helps more than the coins. If you want money from the garden, sell fish, drinks and raw crops; the money making guide has the numbers.

The game also contains an Omelet, cakes, pancakes, jellies and fish kebabs, but nothing in version 1.008 lets you cook or buy them. Do not hold ingredients for them.

Common mistakes

• Eating forage raw. Five Apples are 15 energy raw and 105 baked.
• Eating Flesh twice. The first bite unlocks Oh no!; every bite after that is 10 energy for 10 insanity.
• Baking Flesh after Anyway… is open. Two Baked meat give 80 energy; the same Flesh minced gives 8 Burgers or 8 Lasagna.
• Making Sandwiches once Burgers exist. Same Bread, same Flesh, 30 less energy per serving.
• Cooking Beet slices and Carrot cutlets for food. They are the worst energy per vegetable in the kitchen.
• Filleting expensive fish when you have a Fish Stand. From its second trade level, Eel, Swamp Ghost, Trout and Salmon pay more there than they give on a plate. No Fish Stand in your Town? Then fillet them.
• Pouring Umami into salads or sauerkraut. At Farming 4 they come out gold anyway. Save Umami for Wine and Grape Juice, or sell it.
• Buying the Baker’s Spices for the Kitchen Table. It is a study-only item; the seasoning comes from the laboratory or the Alchemist.
• Forgetting the Firewood shed. The oven cooks on Fuel, and Fuel comes only from a shed in the same work zone.
• Skipping the oven repair because you are not cooking yet. The repair is what reveals Oven II on the tree.
• Eating a big meal near a full bar. Energy above your maximum is lost; save Burgers for when you are at least 80 short.
• Visiting the pre-order Sauna before a feast. Steamed Up adds 10% food energy for an hour, then food gives 10% less, and players report that later visits do not reliably lift the penalty. Keep a save from before your first visit.

Where Chocolate comes from