If you’re looking to upgrade your skills, like expand the range of Water Gun or smash through harder rocks with Rock Smash, in Pokémon Pokopia, you’ll need to cook food to do so. Different types of food upgrade different skills, so you’ll want to make a variety of dishes to keep on you so you can use them in a pinch.

Every dish uses one primary ingredient and other additional ingredients will change the outcome. Sometimes, you’ll need to bring Pokémon with specific specialties to make something special.

Below we list out the various cooking recipes that we’ve found so far and what skills they upgrade in Pokémon Pokopia. Note this is a work-in-progress, as we’re still discovering new recipes.

Update (March 9): We’ve updated this guide with more recipes, along with more details about unlocking soup with Chef Dente.

How to unlock cooking in Pokémon Pokopia

First, you need to finish the Withered Wasteland “Yawn up a Storm!” important request in order to access Rocky Ridges, which is behind the northwest green gate.

You unlock cooking shortly after getting to Rocky Ridges, but before the “Time to Party!” important request begins. You’ll need to meet Chef Dente, the Greedent, before you can start chefing it up. After repairing the PC in front of the Pokémon Center, you’ll hear a voice call out to you in the nearby abandoned kitchen, which will prompt you to meet Chef Dente. This will start your cooking journey, as Chef Dente will walk you through several basic recipes.

Pokopia salad (Leafage upgrade) recipes

Eating any salad will power up your Leafage so you can hold ZR down to make larger areas grassy in one go, as well as grant you the ability to summon moss on rocks, duckweed on water, and vines on walls.

Salads use leaves as the primary ingredient. You need to use a cutting board to make salad.

Bread (Cut upgrade) recipes

Eating any bread will power up your Cut, allowing you to slice in a bigger area at once if you hold down ZR. You can also use your powered-up Cut ability to break through metal fencing and other harder objects.

Bread uses wheat as the primary ingredient, and you need to make bread in a bread oven.

Hamburger steak (Rock Smash upgrade) recipes

Image: Koei Tecmo, Game Freak/Nintendo, The Pokémon Company via Polygon

Eating any hamburger steak will power up your Rock Smash, allowing you to break harder blocks, like iron ore, gold ore, and Pokémetal blocks.

Hamburger steaks use beans as the primary ingredient. You can make hamburger steaks with a frying pan.

Pokopia soup (Water Gun upgrade) recipes

Slurping down any soup will power up your Water Gun, allowing you to hold down ZR to water a larger area. Notably, we didn’t learn how to make soup until quite a bit later. After clearing the aforementioned “Time to Party!” important request, Chef Dente had a request that taught us how to make soup. There may be other requirements to make this request appear, such as more progression in the fourth area. If you find a pot before this quest, you can take it upon yourself to make soup, even without this request.

Soup uses fresh water as the primary ingredient. You’ll need to make soup in a pot. You can get fresh water from powered vending machines (though this is random), and from the PC shop — though it only sells 5 sets of 10 bottles.

If you’re starting out in Pokémon Pokopia, we have guides to help you spruce up your island. We have both a Pokédex and Habitat Dex to assist in figuring out what can spawn where, and what you need to build to summon your favorite creatures. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can also check out our beginner’s guide for some early tips and tricks to help smooth out your journey.

We also have walkthroughs for the important requests that progress the story: “Yawn up a Storm!,” “Brighten Things Up!,” “Time to Party!,” and “Build the Huge Building!” If you’re looking to play with friends, know that there are restrictions for the regular Pokopia multiplayer and for the GameShare version.