Food & Cooking — Raw Food

Overview

Raw food in DayZ is the primary source of nutrition, harvested from animals or scavenged from the environment. Consuming meat without proper preparation results in food poisoning, making the transformation of raw items into cooked meals a life-or-death necessity for every survivor.

How It Works

Raw meat (from hunting) or raw gathered items (like mushrooms or fruits) carry a risk of salmonella or cholera. To make them safe, you must reach an internal temperature threshold through heat. This is achieved by placing food onto a cooking implement (a Long Wooden Stick or a Metal Cooking Tripod) and holding it over a lit fire until the texture changes to a cooked state. You must monitor the cooking status; if you leave food over the flames for too long, it will burn and become inedible.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Equip a knife or sharp tool and skin a carcass to obtain raw meat pieces.
2. Craft a Long Wooden Stick by cutting a bush or a small tree with a blade.
3. Combine the raw meat with the Long Wooden Stick to attach it to the tip.
4. Build a fireplace using Kindling (rags/paper) and Fuel (firewood/wooden sticks) and light it with a match or hand drill kit.
5. Hold the stick with the attached meat in your hands and interact with the fireplace to begin cooking.
6. Observe the meat's visual change; it will transition from raw to cooked, and finally to burnt if left too long.
7. Remove the meat from the fire once the color shift is complete to store it in your inventory.

Tips

• Always check your hands for blood before eating; use gloves to avoid contaminating your food with disease.
• Boiling meat in a Cooking Pot filled with water is the most efficient way to cook large batches without burning the food.
• Animal fat is the highest-calorie food source in the game; cook it until it turns golden brown to maximize energy gains.
• If you lack a knife, use any sharp object like a screwdriver or an axe to harvest meat from a fresh kill.
• Mushrooms found near hay bales or in forests can be eaten raw if they are fresh, but cooking them increases their caloric value.

Common Mistakes

• Eating raw meat while suffering from blood loss; your weakened immune system will succumb to food poisoning significantly faster.
• Attempting to cook meat by dropping it directly into the fire pit; it will be destroyed rather than cooked.
• Forgetting to remove the meat from the stick, which causes the stick to be ruined and the meat to drop if you switch items.
• Overestimating your hunger and eating burnt food; burnt meat provides significantly less nutrition and can still cause minor health degradation.

Related Items

• Wolfsteakmeat
• Walleyepollockfilletmeat
• Worm
• Woodenhook
• Waterpouch Natural

Related Guides

• Skinning
• Cooking
• Firecrafting
• Health & Sickness