In order to start cooking in No Man’s Sky, you will first need to gather some ingredients. Ingredients can be found pretty much anywhere in the game, depending on which specific components you are looking for. There are plants that can be harvested, meat that can be obtained by killing animals, and milk, which comes from milking those same animals. Additionally, some ingredients are minerals that can be mined, such as sodium and salt.
Harvesting Plants
There are several types of plant to harvest for cooking ingredients. Some of these can only be found on certain types of planets, while others can be found on any planet that can support plantlife. You can find harvestable plants using your scanner — a wheat symbol will mark their location.
- Aloe Flesh – Found on desert (abandoned, barren) planets/moons.
- Cactus Flesh – Harvested from Echinocactus on desert (abandoned, barren) planets/moons.
- Fireberry – Found on superheated (scalding, fiery, torrid) planets/moons.
- Frost Crystal – Harvested from Frostwart on frozen (freezing, sub-zero) planets/moons.
- Frozen Tubers – Found on frozen (freezing, sub-zero) planets/moons.
- Fungal Mold – Harvested from Fungal Clusters on fungal (blighted, corrosive) planets/moons.
- Gamma Root – Harvested from on radioactive (high radio source, high energy) planets/moons.
- Grahberry – Found on radioactive (high radio source, high energy) planets/moons.
- Gravitino Ball – Found on planets/moons with high security.
- Heptaploid Wheat – Found on any planet/moon types that support cookable plantlife.
- Hexaberry – Found on anomalous (shell-strewn) planets/moons.
- Jade Peas – Found on fungal (blighted) planets/moons.
- Kelp Sac – Harvested from Candle Kelp in underwater biomes.
- Impulse Beans – Found on lush (bountiful, viridescent, paradise, overgrown, rainy) planets/moons.
- Pulpy Root – Found on any planet/moon types that support cookable plantlife.
- Sac Venom – Super rare plant that can be found on several planet/moon types.
- Solanium – Harvested from Solar Vine on superheated (scalding, fiery, torrid) planets/moons.
- Sweetroot – Found on any planet/moon types that support cookable plantlife.
- Star Bulb – Harvested from Star Bramble on lush (bountiful, viridescent, paradise, overgrown, rainy) planets/moons.
Harvesting Meat
One of the things the game doesn’t really tell you is that different types of creatures will produce different types of meat. Unfortunately, when you scan a creature, it doesn’t tell you which kind of meat it will contain. However, all meat when processed in a Nutrient Processor will become Processed Meat.
Here is a list of meat and where you can find it:
- Feline Liver – Harvested from land creatures, often with doglike or catlike faces.
- Leg Meat – Harvested from crablike creatures.
- Meaty Chunks – This seems to be the default meat for land creatures, perhaps the most common of meat types. This will be harvested from any of the land animals that aren’t listed elsewhere. Also can be harvested from jellyfish.
- Meaty Wings – Harvested from birds.
- Offal Sac – Harvested from hopping critters (see the image below).
- Raw Steak – Harvested from “beefier” land creatures. This seems to be a fairly common meat.
- Salty Fingers – Harvested from fish.
- Scaly Meat – Harvested from T-rex-type dinos.
Harvesting Additional Animal Products
Animals are good for more than just meat. You can also harvest additional food products, such as eggs and milk. This takes a bit more work than just finding an animal in the wild, however. Taming creatures is a complex process that requires its own guide, so we won’t go over that here. However, we’ve created a full guide on taming animals and using bait, so click over to that if you need to learn how that process works.
Also, if you want to automate the process, you can build an Automatic Feeder and a Livestock Unit. That combination will produce eggs and milk much faster than manual labor.
- Creature Egg – You must tame an animal by tossing it its preferred bait. If it is an egg-laying creature, you can simply harvest the Creature Egg from it.
- Faecium – This is basically poop. Feed an animal some Creature Pellets and it will poop out Faecium. It will probably also summon several more animals, which will also eat the pellets and poop. You do not need to tame an animal to harvest Faecium.
- Wild Milk – You must tame an animal by tossing it its preferred bait. Once it is tame, if it is milkable, you can simply harvest the Wild Milk from it.
Harvesting Minerals
Some of the minerals in the game can also be used in cooking. The method for farming these has not changed with the release of Beyond.
Here’s a list of minerals that can be used in the Nutrient Processor:
- Chromatic Metal – Created by refining Copper, Emeril, Cadmium, or Indium.
- Condensed Carbon – Created by refining Carbon.
- Carbon – Harvested from plantlife.
- Salt – Mined from deposits, but sometimes found in rocks.
