How to Cook in My Time at Portia

Just like any good crafting-simulator role-playing game, My Time at Portia has a mechanic which allows you to cook food that you may consume, sell, use for quests, and gift to Portia’s residents. If this has piqued your interest, keep reading to learn more about cooking in this game.

Aside from building and crafting items, cooking is an activity you will occasionally do in this game. But before anything else, you will, of course, need a place to cook. Instead of a kitchen, you must build cooking stations before you can start putting together ingredients and making a meal.

Building Cooking Stations

Having a Cooking Set is mandatory if you want to produce a proper dish. And other cooking stations are also vitally important as they are necessary for finishing several missions or tasks. So let us get started on assembling a cooking station!

Cooking Set

1. To get a Cooking Set, you will need to obtain its diagram to learn how to craft it. The diagram for the Cooking Set can be obtained from Petra at the Research Center. Give her five Data Discs and wait until she gives you the diagram, which she will send to your mailbox.
2. The materials needed to build a Cooking Set are 6 Stone Bricks, 1 Iron Pan, and 3 Marble Planks. Stone Bricks are made from Stones, and you will need a Stone Furnace to process them. Gather 48 Stones to make 6 Stone Bricks. To make an Iron Pan, get 5 Iron Bars and 5 Rubber Fruits, and craft them at the Worktable. Keep in mind that before you can make an Iron Pan, you are required to have a Level 2 Worktable first. Marble Planks are refined Marbles that are processed in the Civil Cutter. You’ll need at least 9 Marbles to create 3 Marble Planks.
3.  Put together all the gathered materials in the Assembly Station, and you have got a Cooking Set!

Other Cooking Stations

In the same vein as the Cooking Set, you will need to obtain the other cooking stations’ diagrams from Petra before you can start building them in the Assembly Station. Assuming you have already done that, you can collect these materials in advance while waiting for their blueprints in the mail:

Blender: This is where you can make various consumables and crafting materials. You will need 3 Copper Bars, 2 Simple Circuits, and 2 Grinding Blades to construct this at the Assembly Station.

Grill Set: Use this to produce tasty grilled food like Roasted Meat and Salty Grilled Catfish. Prepare 3 Copper Pipes and gather 10 Wood from trees to build a Grill Set.

Drying Rack: The only cooking station that does not require a diagram, and it is used to make food such as Dried Apple Slice, Dried Apricot, Nori, and Dried Fish Blade. You can craft a Drying Rack at a Level 2 Worktable using 6 Bronze Pipes.

Cooking in My Time at Portia

The Drying Rack, Blender, and Grill Set may function like normal crafting stations where you will only need to drop the materials in the station and wait until they finish processing an item, but it is a different case with the Cooking Set. 

The Cooking Set will have you manually picking out the ingredients and putting them one by one in the boiling pot, giving you the chance to be directly involved in the cooking process. It can be a tad confusing to some at first. That is why we have written down a step-to-step guide that can help you cook food successfully in this game.

1. You can get cooking recipes from Django or from accepting Missions from NPCs who would often request cooked meals.
2. Before you start cooking, check the recipes by navigating the Missions Menu to look for quests that involve food and learn their recipes by heart. You can also search for the recipes by standing in front of the Cooking Set and clicking the right mouse button.
3. Once you learn the dish’s cooking recipe, move all the necessary ingredients to the quickbar and line them all up so it would not be hard for you to find them while you cook.
4. Start putting all the ingredients in the pot accordingly. To do that, stand in front of the Cooking Set and select the ingredient by clicking the left mouse button. A timer will appear once you begin the cooking mini-game, and it will only take 15 in-game minutes before it runs out. Make sure to put all the correct ingredients before the timer ends if you do not want them to go to waste.
5. After you successfully cook a meal at least once, it will be added to the Cooking Recipe menu so you can refer to them whenever you need them.

In making sure that you can put all the correct ingredients in the pot before the 15 in-game minutes pass, you can avoid producing Wasted Food. Wasted Food is just like what its name implies — it essentially belongs to the trash. However, if you would like to get the Bad Cook achievement, it is alright to cut loose and fail at cooking at least once.

If you are feeling tempted to experiment, you can try combining some ingredients and see if you can discover or come up with new cooking recipes you have not tried before! Just be sure you will not regret wasting ingredients should your experiments fail since gathering items for cooking can be expensive and quite tedious, after all.