Key takeaways
- One at a time: 12 pizzas × 33 s = 396 s, or about 6.6 minutes. Payout: 1,440 coins. That’s roughly 218 coins per minute.
- Batched, four per wave: 3 waves × (5 s preheat + 30 s cook) + about 30 s total plating = roughly 135 s, or 2.25 minutes. Same 1,440 coins, about 640 coins per minute.
You cook every recipe in Craft Food by working through stations in unlock order, not by scrolling the menu top to bottom: prep all the shared bases first (dough, sauce, chopped vegetables, batter), then run each station in one continuous batch — skillet, oven, grill, fryer — because most dishes reuse the same three or four prepared ingredients. Do that and you’ll finish the recipe book in a fraction of the time it takes players who cook dish-by-dish in menu order.
Craft Food has been patched repeatedly since launch, so treat the numbers below as a planning reference. The in-game recipe book and craft menu are the authority on current ingredients, times, and prices — check them after any update before you commit a big batch.
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Why cooking order matters more than the recipe list
Roughly 80% of the dishes in the game trace back to four prepared bases: dough, tomato sauce, chopped vegetables, and batter. A pizza, a bread loaf, a cookie tray, and a donut all start from dough. Onion rings, fried chicken, and pancakes all start from batter. If you prep in menu order you’ll re-chop the same onion six times; if you prep in base order you chop it once and feed every recipe that needs it.
The second reason is station heat. Ovens and fryers lose temperature between loads, so every cold start costs you extra cook time. Batching four items per wave instead of one is the single biggest speed gain available to a new player.
Station reference: cost, capacity, and throughput
| Station | Unlock cost | Recipes it unlocks | Typical cook time | Consumable | Practical batch size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prep Table | Free (starting station) | 4 bases, 3 cold dishes | 2–5 s per item | None | 8–10 bases per run |
| Skillet | ~350 coins | 6 recipes | 8–12 s | Butter, 1 per 3 cooks | 2 items |
| Oven | ~1,200 coins | 7 recipes | 20–45 s | None (5 s preheat per wave) | 4 items |
| Grill | ~2,500 coins | 5 recipes | 15–22 s | Charcoal, 1 per 3 cooks | 3 items |
| Fryer | ~4,000 coins | 4 recipes | 9–14 s | Oil, 1 unit per 4 cooks | 4 items |
Total: 25 recipes across the five stations, plus the four prep bases. Unlock order matters — the Oven before the Grill before the Fryer, because each station’s recipes need bases from the station below it.
Step-by-step: the efficient cook order
Definition: the efficient cook order is the sequence that minimises repeat prep and cold starts — all bases first, then one station at a time from cheapest to most expensive.
- Stock the fridge before you touch a station. Buy ingredients in bulk from the supplier at the start of a session. Reason: trips to the shop reset your station heat and cost roughly 15–20 seconds each.
- Prep every base you’ll need for the whole session. Chop all vegetables, mix all dough and batter, simmer all sauce. Reason: the Prep Table is instant and never burns, so it’s free throughput.
- Run the Skillet first. It’s the cheapest fuel and the shortest cook times, so it clears recipes off your list fastest while you wait on nothing.
- Load the Oven in full waves of four. Reason: the 5-second preheat is per wave, not per item — four items per wave quarters your preheat overhead.
- Grill while the Oven runs. Reason: the two stations don’t share fuel or slots, so parallel running roughly halves wall-clock time.
- Finish with the Fryer. Oil degrades and burns fastest, so fry last when you’re not switching between stations and forgetting a basket.
- Sell or plate in the same order you cooked. Hot dishes lose value the longer they sit; the Fryer’s output should be sold within about a minute of leaving the basket.
Recipe reference table
Coins-per-minute assumes one item at a time with about 3 seconds of handling per dish. Batching raises these figures substantially — the Oven and Fryer columns roughly double at a full four-item wave.
| Dish | Ingredients | Station | Cook time | Sell price | Approx. coins/min |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Garden Salad | Lettuce + chopped vegetables | Prep Table | 3 s | 25 | ~250 |
| Grilled Cheese | Bread + cheese | Skillet | 8 s | 35 | ~190 |
| Pancakes | Batter | Skillet | 10 s | 40 | ~185 |
| Bread Loaf | Dough | Oven | 25 s | 60 | ~130 |
| Cookie Tray | Dough + chocolate | Oven | 20 s | 90 | ~235 |
| Margherita Pizza | Dough + tomato sauce + cheese | Oven | 30 s | 120 | ~220 |
| Chocolate Cake | Batter + chocolate | Oven | 45 s | 180 | ~225 |
| Cheeseburger | Patty + bread + cheese | Grill | 15 s | 110 | ~365 |
| Grilled Chicken | Chicken + seasoning | Grill | 18 s | 95 | ~270 |
| Steak | Steak cut + seasoning | Grill | 22 s | 160 | ~385 |
| French Fries | Potato | Fryer | 10 s | 55 | ~255 |
| Donut | Dough | Fryer | 9 s | 85 | ~425 |
| Onion Rings | Chopped vegetables + batter | Fryer | 12 s | 105 | ~420 |
| Fried Chicken | Chicken + batter | Fryer | 14 s | 130 | ~460 |
A worked example: the 12-pizza session
Say you want to clear the Margherita Pizza recipe and bank some coins. Pizza sells for 120 and takes 30 seconds in the Oven, plus about 3 seconds of plating.
- One at a time: 12 pizzas × 33 s = 396 s, or about 6.6 minutes. Payout: 1,440 coins. That’s roughly 218 coins per minute.
- Batched, four per wave: 3 waves × (5 s preheat + 30 s cook) + about 30 s total plating = roughly 135 s, or 2.25 minutes. Same 1,440 coins, about 640 coins per minute.
The batching difference is nearly a 3× speed gain with no extra ingredients, no extra station upgrades, and no extra risk. This is why “cook the expensive recipes first” is bad advice — cook the recipes that fit your station’s batch size, and the expensive ones will come.
What wears out, and what actually costs you coins
Stations in Craft Food don’t break permanently, but they do degrade in ways that quietly slow you down. Oil and butter are the consumables that run out first, and a Fryer running dry burns items instead of cooking them — a burnt dish is worth nothing and still consumes the ingredients. Charcoal on the Grill is the second-most common shortage, because it’s consumed per three cooks rather than per item, so a three-item wave costs the same fuel as a single cook.
Burnt pans are the third. Leaving an item on the Skillet past its timer leaves residue that adds a few seconds to the next cook until it’s cleaned at the Prep Table sink. Cleaning is cheap; ignoring it for a whole session is not. The most common mistakes, in rough order of how much time they cost:
- Prepping perishables you won’t cook this session — spoilage eats the ingredient cost and the prep time.
- Cooking a recipe before its station is unlocked — the craft menu will grey it out, but the ingredients are already spent.
- Walking away from a loaded Oven — an unattended oven burns the whole wave, four items at once.
- Selling a dish you need for an order board — orders pay above menu price, so selling first is a net loss.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many recipes are there in Craft Food?
The current recipe book sits at 25 cookable dishes plus the four prepared bases (dough, tomato sauce, chopped vegetables, and batter). The bases count toward completion for some players and not others depending on the version of the tracking menu, so check whether your book shows 25 or 29 total. Updates have added recipes in past patches, so the number can change.
Does the order I cook recipes in actually matter?
It doesn’t change what you unlock, but it changes how long the book takes you. Cooking in station order — Prep Table, Skillet, Oven, Grill, Fryer — lets you reuse the same bases across multiple recipes and run parallel stations instead of waiting on one. Cooking in menu order forces you to re-prep the same ingredients repeatedly.
Which station should I unlock first?
Save for the Oven at roughly 1,200 coins before the Grill. The Oven unlocks the most recipes per coin and its four-item capacity gives the biggest time saving, while the Grill’s recipes mostly need a cooked patty that you can’t make until the Skillet is already running. The Fryer is last because it costs the most and unlocks the fewest recipes.
Why isn’t my dish registering in the recipe book?
The most common cause is a missing ingredient — the craft menu accepts a near-match and produces a generic dish that doesn’t count. The second is cooking on the wrong station; a grilled item made in the Skillet won’t register even if the ingredients are correct. Cancel the cook and re-read the ingredient list in the recipe book before retrying.
What’s the fastest way to earn coins while completing recipes?
Run full four-item waves on the Oven and Fryer, and work the order board rather than the sell counter, because orders pay above menu price for the same dish. Fried Chicken and Donuts have the best coins-per-minute among the mid-tier recipes, at roughly 425–460 coins per minute unbatched. Batching a full Fryer wave pushes those figures higher still.
Do the recipes change after a game update?
Yes — Craft Food has been patched several times since launch, and past updates have adjusted ingredient lists, cook times, and sell prices. Always confirm current values in the in-game recipe book before committing to a large batch, especially after a major patch. The cook order strategy above survives updates even when individual numbers shift.
