Cauldron

The Cauldron is a cooking station used to prepare food and mead bases. It is placed with the Hammer under the Crafting tab, and unlike many other stations it does not need a fire in order to be placed. However, it does require a fire beneath it, such as a Campfire or Hearth, in order to be used for cooking.

The Cauldron recipe is unlocked after the player first picks up Tin after smelting it and has built a Forge. It costs 10 Tin to build and must be placed near a Forge. Once built, it unlocks a large part of Valheim’s food progression, from early-game meals to later Mistlands and Ashlands recipes.

Upgrading a Cauldron unlocks additional crafting recipes. It can be upgraded to level 6 by building these stations nearby:

• Spice Rack
• Butcher’s table
• Pots and Pans
• Mortar and pestle
• Rolling pins and cutting boards

Its recipe set expands in tiers as upgrades are added. Early recipes include Boar Jerky, Carrot Soup, Cooked Egg, Deer Stew, Minced Meat Sauce, and Queen’s jam. Later levels add more advanced foods such as Black Soup, Serpent Stew, Turnip Stew, Sausages, Muckshake, Wolf Jerky, Wolf Skewer, Eyescream, Unbaked Lox Pie, Bread Dough, Fish Wraps, Blood Pudding, Uncooked Honey Glazed Chicken, Uncooked Meat Platter, Uncooked Misthare Supreme, Mushroom Omelette, Salad, Seeker Aspic, Yggdrasil Porridge, and Uncooked fish n’ bread.

A few practical notes make the Cauldron easier to use:

• Hold Shift while cooking to process 5 items at a time.
• If you are setting up a new base, it is worth placing the Cauldron close to your Forge and then building the upgrade stations around it to reach higher-tier recipes as soon as possible.
• Since the station depends on a fire below it, keep it in a sheltered cooking area to make meal preparation more convenient.

The Cauldron is one of the most important stations in the game’s food system, because nearly all progression meals and many mead ingredients pass through it.