Introduction
Cooking is an important life skill in Black Desert. It is used to create food which provide various buffs when consumed.
Check our Recipes list for Cooking
High Cooking skill can be quite profitable and is a great way to make money whilst AFK. All you really need to start, is a Cooking Utensil and a house to put it in. A basic Cooking Utensil can be bought from a food merchant for 1,000 silver, crafted using a Tool Workshop or bought from the Central Market.
After you have acquired a cooking utensil and placed it in your house, you can interact with it by pressing the R button to open the cooking window. Here you can select ingredients to cook or select a food/drink from the recipe list of dishes. The recipe list will not tell you the ingredients for items you have not prepared before.
When you prepare some dishes, you have a chance of earning a higher item grade.
There are 5 item grades (lowest to highest):
- White
- Green
- Blue
- Yellow
- Orange
All dishes in our Cooking recipes list are the lowest craft-able grade for that item. The highest grade you can cook with all basic dishes is yellow grade, and specials have a chance to be orange grade.
Cooking Utensils
Ideally you want to use Advanced Cooking Utensils for the cooking time reduction and because of it’s high durability but this is really one of the biggest bottlenecks when it comes to cooking. You may have a hard time buying this utensil off the marketplace and should make them yourself. The other alternative is to use the Intermediate Cooking Utensil which has less durability but does not give the cooking time reduction.
The base Cooking Utensil and the Balenos Traditonal Cooking Utensils can be bought from a cooking vendor for the prices listed below.
Cooking Gear
When cooking you really want to achieve the fastest possible cooking time. This is done using a combination of various buffs.
Ideally, to get 1 second cooking time, you would want to use: Pearl store costume (-2s), Advanced Cooking Utensil (-1s), +3 Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothes (-4s), Sharp Alchemy Stone of Life (-1.4s) and Seafood Cron Mea (-0.6s). If you don’t have the pearl store costume you can use the Verdure Cron Elixir instead for -1 second and a +4 Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothes.
Cooking Mastery clothes are not used for cooking because in most cases you need the Silver Embriodered Clothes to reach a 1 second cooking time. However, Mastery clothing is still used to hand in imperial cooking boxes for the extra bonuses.
How to start cooking
To batch produce a recipe, you simply go to your Cooking Utensil in your house and press “R” to use it. Right-click your ingredients and make sure you enter ingredients for 1 result. (Entering more will consume all of your ingredients and only give you 1 result.
Next click “Batch Production”.
Click “Yes” then enter the amount you wish to make. You can click “Maximum quantity” or press “F” to cook as many as possible. Then click “OK” and you will automatically make as many as you have ingredients or energy for.

Imperial Cooking Boxes
Imperial Cooking boxes must be crafted by opening your processing window (L) then selecting Imperial Cuisine. The amount of boxes you can hand in each day depends on your current Contribution Points and is shared for both alchemy and cooking.
To calculate how many you can hand in, divide your total contribution points by 2. So if you have 300 contibution points, you can hand in up to 150 boxes per day.

Imperial Cooking boxes weigh 50 LT each and you cannot sell the boxes if you are overweight. The amount of silver listed in the rewards is a base silver reward and will increase depending on your cooking mastery level, which is why you should wear cooking mastery clothing when handing in these boxes and popping a Seafood Cron Meal or Savory Steak to boost your mastery if needed. More information about mastery is listed further in the guide.
Your daily turn-in limit resets with your servers daily reset. (You need to swap channels or log out/in to refresh daily turn-in limit.) The NPCs current limit resets every three hours. You can view the next reset on our website in the navigation bar and also set an alarm to be notified when the daily, or NPC limit resets

I highly recommend taking a look at this Google Sheet or using Velia Inn which shows you the best boxes to make for profit. Prices are based on the EU market but you can make a copy of the sheet and change it to NA on the “Ello” tab.
You choose ONE item to pack into a box. For example, if you are making the Apprentice Cooking Box you only need Teff Bread x390 OR High-Quality Carrot Juice x360. You don’t need all the items listed those are just alternatives you can use!!! You can also use the procs of the items. For example, you can use Spongy Teff Bread, which is the proc of Teff Bread and you only need 1/3 of the amount listed. So you can use Spongy Teff Bread x130 instead of Teff Bread x390
Item Name |
Package ONE of the following Items |
Reward |
Apprentice’s Cooking Box
(Cooking Apprentice 1+)
|
Teff Bread x390
High-Quality Carrot Juice x360
Special Carrot Juice x180
Exotic Herbal Wine x180
Fig Pie x60
Smoked Fish Steak x180
Fruit Juice x60
Beer x60
Fried Fish x90
Grain Soup x45
Five-Grain Chicken Porridge x30
Boiled Bird Eggs x30
Seafood Mushroom Salad x30
Aloe Cookie x21
Steamed Fish x30
Fried Vegetables x15
|
130,000 Silver
Shiny Golden Seal – [Imperial Cuisine] x1
|
Skilled Cook’s Cooking Box
(Cooking Skilled 1+)
|
Grilled Bird Meat x90
Pickled Fish x120
Date Palm Wine x60
Honey Wine x60
Fish Fillet Chips x75
Fruit Wine x45
Pistachio Fried Rice x36
Seafood Grilled with Butter x36
Fish Soup x33
Tea With Fine Scent x21
Steamed Seafood x30
Fruit and Vegetable Salad x21
Steamed Bird x18
Seafood Pasta x18
Omelet x18
Stir-Fried Vegetables x18
Delotia Juice x24
|
200,000 Silver
Shiny Golden Seal – [Imperial Cuisine] x1
|
Professional’s Cooking Box
(Cooking Professional 1+)
|
Fruit Pie x24
Fish Fillet Salad x24
Steamed Prawn x24
Fried Bird x24
Meat Pie x21
Aloe Yogurt x18
Stir-Fried Seafood x21
Desert Dumpling x18
Roast Marmot x18
Couscous x18
Meat Stew x18
Prawn Salad x18
Freekeh Snake Stew x15
Pickled Vegetables x18
Soft Bread x15
Fruit Pudding x15
|
300,000 Silver
Shiny Golden Seal – [Imperial Cuisine] x1
|
Artisan’s Cooking Box
(Cooking Artisan 1+)
|
Coconut Cocktail x54
Coconut Fried Fish x36
Coconut Pasta x21
Rainbow Button Mushroom Cheese Melt x21
Teff Sandwich x18
Pan-Fried Oyster x18
Rainbow Button Mushroom Sandwich x15
Meat Soup x15
Delotia Tart x18
Grilled Scorpion x15
Borscht x15
Grilled Sausage x15
Cheese Pie x15
Meat Pasta x15
Lizard Kebab x15
Steak x15
Oatmeal x15
|
400,000 Silver
Shiny Golden Seal – [Imperial Cuisine] x1
|
Master’s Cooking Box
(Cooking Master 1+)
|
Assorted Side Dishes x27
Frank Sandwich x21
Delotia Milk Tea x21
Sute Tea x18
Milk Tea x18
Skewered Llama Cheese Melt x18
Cheese Gratin x18
Stir-Fried Meat x18
Hunter’s Salad x18
Honeycomb Cookie x18
Lean Meat Salad x18
Meat Croquette x18
Stir-Fried Bracken and Meat x18
Stir-Fried Bracken x18
Delotia Pudding x18
King of Jungle Hamburg x15
Meat Sandwich x15
Ham Sandwich x15
Dark Pudding x15
Ghormeh Sabzi x15
Savory Steak x15
|
550,000 Silver
Shiny Golden Seal – [Imperial Cuisine] x1
|
Guru’s Cooking Box
(Cooking Guru 1+)
|
Kamasylvia Meal x33
Margoria Seafood Meal x21
Butter-Roasted Lobster x21
Serendia Meal x21
Valencia Meal x18
Special Drieghanese Meal x18
Knight Combat Rations x18
Calpheon Meal x18
Mediah Meal x15
O’Dyllita Meal x15
Khalk’s Fermented Wine x12
Hard-Boiled Shellfish x12
Special Arehaza Meal x27
Balenos Meal x24
|
800,000 Silver
Shiny Golden Seal – [Imperial Cuisine] x1
|
After crafting your cooking box, you can hand them in at an Imperial Cooking NPC at one of the locations show below (click tabs for each location):