Red Dead Redemption 2: How to Get Food & Best Food to Eat

How to Get Food & Best Food to Eat in Red Dead Redemption 2

You can’t go around adventuring on an empty stomach, can you? Here’s how to get food and best food quantities in Red Dead Redemption 2.

Learning how to cook is one of the basic functions you’ll learn during your journey in Red Dead Redemption 2. Meals play a big part in how you’ll regain your strength, both in terms of your Health, Stamina, and Dead Eye cores, so it’s important to learn how to actually get food. Failing to do so could result in your cores running low, which will slow down the speed at which your Health, Stamina, and Dead Eye replenish in Red Dead Redemption 2. So, you know, we’d advise making sure you’ve had some food before heading out on your next mission in the old west.

How to Get Food

That said, there are actually a few ways to grab yourself a good meal in Red Dead Redemption 2. The first being actually making the dish yourself, or you can spend some cash for your meal instead.

Both options are pretty much viable, so there’s no going wrong with either one. If you don’t know how to prep your own meal, we’ll walk you through it.

How to Cook

Before you can actually start cooking, you’ll need to get your hands on some ingredients first. There are two ways you can do this in Red Dead Redemption 2. You can either buy items from the General Stores that can be found in nearly every town. Here, you’ll find basic ingredients and snacks which can be consumed to quickly replenish your cores.

Alternatively, you can always head out into the wilderness of Red Dead Redemption 2’s world, and go hunting animals and skin them for their pelt and meat. We don’t advise you try eating that pelt, though.

If you choose the latter option, keep in mind that different animals produce different meat. Deer and elk provide venison, boars give pork, and wolves and other predators offer game meat. We’ve got a comprehensive Hunting guide that’ll guide you through everything you need to know about this vocation, so be sure to check that out.

Once you have your ingredients ready, hold L1/ LB to open up the Weapon wheel and use R2/ RT to tab over to your items and select the camp option by moving the right analog stick to the bottom. After a little transition scene, Arthur will be set up in front of a camp, and you’ll now have a list filled with different recipes you can cook. That also includes ammo and other non-consumable items, in case you were wondering. Most of the food items that are immediately suggested to you when you’re sat at a camp will be ones that you can make off the current items or meat in your inventory.

We personally found that Hares and Deer were fairly common, and the meals you can make with their meat will nicely replenish your cores.

Once you’ve selected the meal you want to cook, simply hold down Square/ X to cook your meal. When it’s done, Arthur will eat his freshly-made dish to replenish his cores.

The Best Food

Since Red Dead Redemption 2 is packed with different meals, you might have trouble deciding which is the best food to eat.

One of the best foods you can get in Red Dead Redemption 2 is actually the camp stew that you can take for free every once in a while from the gang’s camp. Look out for a campfire with a cooking pot over it. This meal restores your health and stamina cores back to max, so it’s the perfect pick-me-up in Red Dead Redemption 2. You can also upgrade this a little later one when money’s a little less tight, and it’ll replenish your Dead Eye core completely, too. You can’t ask for a better food than that!

Those who have some extra change in their pockets might want to consider buying food from the hotel or saloons. The dishes being sold in those establishments are some of the best meals in the game and are definitely worth the price. It just comes down to whether or not you want to actually spend your hard-earned cash on these pricier dishes.

That’s everything you need to know about how to get food in Red Dead Redemption 2. For more tips and tricks on the game, be sure to check out our nifty Red Dead Redemption 2 guide wiki.