Once Human Cooking Guide | How to Get Food and Water

This Once Human Cooking Guide will tell you how cooking works, how to unlock more cooking recipes, and how you can preserve your food.

A big part of staying alive in Once Human is keeping your stomach full. While you can eat the raw ingredients you find or grow with farming, it's better to make them into delicious meals. Our guide will tell you everything you need to know about the basics of cooking!

How to Unlock Once Human Cooking

You can unlock Once Human cooking by unlocking the "Stoves" Memetic in the Logistics Tree. While you may have a handful of recipes available from the start, you won't have very many options at first. Later Memetics (such as "Dishes I" and "Air Drying") will unlock even more recipes.

Naturally, you'll need to do most of your cooking at a stove. Some cooking can be done on your Camp's Stove, but you'll want to build at least two proper Stoves in your base. Advanced Cooking recipes will require different crafting benches such as the Meat Drier or Electric Stove.

How Cooking Works in Once Human

As with most crafting in Once Human, cooking requires you to expend resources at the appropriate crafting station. Most early-game cooking will also require Logs to fuel the cooking fire.

Cooking takes a certain amount of real-world time to complete. It's a good idea to build at least two Stoves so you can cook many items at the same time rather than waiting around. Don't forget that you can queue multiple recipes in most crafting stations.

Most food spoils; good cooked food will typically last approximately 24 hours before it spoils. Fortunately, you can turn spoiled food into Fertilizer for farming at a Compost Bin if you've unlocked that particular Memetic.

How to Unlock More Cooking Recipes

You can unlock more cooking recipes in Once Human by unlocking certain Memetics in the Logistics Tree. Each Memetic related to cooking will unlock a few new cooking recipes.

Note that unlocking new crafting stations will also unlock new cooking recipes. For example, unlocking the "Electric Stove" Memetic also unlocks seven new cooking recipes including Fried Vegetables, Sanity Gummy, and Bread.

How to Get Food

There are five main ways to get food in Once Human:

1. Harvest wild plants
2. Hunt animals
3. Go fishing
4. Loot food from points of interest
5. Cook meals

Many of the things you find in the world (such as Blueberries) can be eaten raw, but certain food items are dangerous if you attempt to eat them. Pay attention to the tooltips on food before you eat anything!

Some food — especially food that you loot from points of interest — will never spoil. It's a good idea to save these food items as emergency food and eat anything that will spoil first!

How to Get Clean Water

You can get clean water in Once Human by collecting Dirty Water from a river or lake and making Boiled Water at a Stove. Keep in mind that Dirty Water (and Boiled Water) are quite heavy in large quantities. You'll also need Logs to fuel the fire.

As you unlock more Memetics, you'll find alternate ways to get clean water such as the Rainwater Collection System and Water Filters. It will take quite some time to unlock these, though, so you should ensure that you always have a supply of Boiled Water on hand.

How to Keep Food from Spoiling

Unfortunately, you cannot keep food from spoiling entirely in Once Human. There are, however, two ways to reduce food spoilage:

• Using the Air Dryer and Salt to make preserved meats
• Using the Fridge

You'll have to collect Seawater in order to make Salt for preserved meats. The Fridge can be applied to a wider range of food, but you'll need to set up power at your base to use it.

That's the end of our Once Human Cooking Guide — why not check out our other guides below?