Install with Gale
Chef's Kiss
Cooking you actually play.
In vanilla Valheim you throw it in, wait and take it out. Chef's Kiss turns that into short, hands-on, hand-made mini-games: chop the meat, crush the berries, pour the honey, stir the pot, turn the skewer over the fire. Cook well and you get a Chef's Kiss: double the food and progress through Mastery. No overpowered buffs or rewards: everything stays balanced and vanilla-friendly. Mess it up and the pot burns.
Everything is built from the game's own models, sounds and style, so it should feel like it was always part of Valheim.
Press Caps Lock + E (configurable) at a cooking station to open the Chef's Kiss menu. Normal E stays 100% vanilla, so when you just want a quick meal, cook like you always do.
What this mod is NOT
Most food mods add more stuff. This one changes how you cook the food Valheim already has.
- No new foods, items or buildings. Same recipes, same stations, same rewards.
- No overpowered rewards. No crazy buffs or game-breaking bonuses. Everything stays balanced and vanilla-friendly.
- No inventory bloat. Nothing new to farm or store. You get normal vanilla food that stacks like always.
- Not a chore. Mini-games are short, and you never have to play them.
Eis always there. - Not complicated. One key. A ghost hand shows you what to do, no walls of text.
- Not a shortcut. A Chef's Kiss gives you more food, not better food. Mastery perks only unlock after you beat the boss.
- Not risky. Press Tab to cancel at any time and your ingredients come back. If something goes wrong, the mini-game closes and you get them back too.
- Not a commitment. Client-side, nothing is saved into your world, the server doesn't need it. Remove it whenever you want.
Features
SEE IT IN ACTION (click to expand)
Sausages at the cauldron
Cooked egg
Blowing on the fire at the cooking station
Every station plays different
HOW EACH STATION COOKS (click to expand)
• Cooking station: blow on the fire and keep the heat in the green.
• Campfire and hearth: sit down and turn a skewer over the flames.
• Cauldron: prep your ingredients, throw them in the right order, then stir.
• Food preparation table: bread dough, fish, Lox pie and feasts.
• Stone oven: feed the fire, turn the pie and take it out before it burns.
Batch cooking
Make several of the same dish at once with the [-] / [+] selector. The menu stays open after each dish, and you can click to skip the result screen.
Favorites
Click the star next to the Cook button to pin a recipe to the top of the list.
20+ mini-games
Chopping, smashing, pouring, cleaning fish, peeling, cracking eggs, grinding, stuffing mushrooms, wrapping and much more. Each ingredient gets the one that fits. I'll let you find the rest.
Chef's Kiss
Every dish is scored.
SCORES (click to expand)
• ~90% and up: Chef's Kiss, double food
• 50% and up: normal meal
• 30-50%: ingredients come back
• Below 30%: burnt, ingredients lost
Difficulty grows with the biome
Meadows food is easy, Plains asks more, Mistlands is hard. It's about timing and precision, not repeating the same thing ten times.
Mastery
Cook food from a biome to fill its bar and unlock small perks that help you on your journey. The more Chef's Kisses you collect, the more you unlock.
Biome mastery perks only work while at least two of your active foods come from that biome. So you choose: eat the previous biome's food for weaker stats and its perks, or eat the stronger food of the biome you're in now.
SPOILER: WHAT YOU UNLOCK (click to expand)
• Double Portion: cook a recipe up to x5 at once: more ingredients, more food.
• Menu Prep: prep up to 3 recipes and stir once.
• Feasts: cook together with up to 2 friends. A perfect feast gives a short biome bonus.
• Haldor's Food Wheel: trade some dishes with Haldor and spin for food from the next biome.
• ...and more to come!
Multiplayer
Friends with the mod can see you blowing on the fire, turning the skewer and stirring the pot. Stations lock while someone is using them.
Installation
- Install with r2modman, Thunderstore Mod Manager or Gale. BepInEx and Jotunn come with it.
- Stand at a cooking station and press Caps Lock + E.
Manual install: put the ChefsKiss folder (with ChefsKiss.dll and Translations) into BepInEx/plugins/.
Controls
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Open the Chef's Kiss menu at a station | Caps Lock + E |
| Cancel a mini-game | Tab |
| Everything else | Shown on screen (mostly Left Click) |
All keys can be changed in the config.
Configuration
Edit BepInEx/config/Creco.ChefsKiss.cfg or use the Configuration Manager in game (F1). You can turn off the ghost hand, choose how minigames start (1 - General / StartMode), unlock all general mastery perks right away (3 - Mastery / UnlockGeneralMastery), change difficulty, sounds, mastery, feasts, the wheel and more. If the server has the mod, balance settings come from the server.
If your cape jitters while blowing on the fire, try 9 - Experimental / CapePhysics.
A detailed configuration guide is coming soon.
Compatibility
- Valheim 1.0.17: tested and working.
- Food from other mods: hidden from the Chef's Kiss menu by default. Add them in
9 - Experimental / RecipeMechanicsor turn on2 - Cooking / ModdedRecipes. Ingredients without their own mini-game use a simple timing bar.
Languages
English and Turkish are included. Want to translate it? Copy English.template.json from BepInEx/config/ChefsKiss/Translations/, rename it to your language (for example German.json), translate it and keep it in the same folder. Send it to me on Discord and I'll add it to the mod!
Known issues
- No controller support yet, mouse and keyboard only.
- Ashlands and Deep North food is still vanilla for now.
Contact
Found a bug or have an idea? Find me in the Valheim Modding Discord (https://discord.gg/mb9bpsfmz) or message me directly on Discord: creco.
Title font in the images: Norse by Joël Carrouché (free for personal and commercial use).