How to Cook in PEAK: Food Guide

Cooking and eating in PEAK is key to surviving the climb. Hunger lowers your max stamina, so you’ll need to forage or loot food, then cook it at open flames like campfires or the plane crash site. Cooking once boosts stamina effects, but overcooking burns it and may poison you. In-game are 19 edible items, and it might be different in terms of cooking. Packaged food doesn’t need cooking, but poisoned items stay dangerous even when cooked.

Here’s a quick PEAK food guide to help you stay alive. I’ve been testing what works and what just drains stamina. If you don’t figure out food and cooking early on, your climb is going to end fast.

How to Cook in PEAK

Cooking in PEAK is simple. Hold the food item near any open flame — a campfire, portable stove, or even the plane crash fire — and interact to cook it. Coconuts, berries, mushrooms, and other foraged foods can all be cooked. Cooking boosts how much stamina the food restores (up to 66% more if cooked once).

If you cook something twice, it loses the bonus and goes back to normal. If you cook it three times, it burns and will poison you.

You can’t cook packaged food like trail mix or antidotes — these come ready to use. Also, cooking doesn’t remove poison from bad berries or mushrooms. It just boosts their stamina return.

Complete Food Table

There are currently 19 edible items in the game. You’ll find food in luggage, trees, bushes, or growing out of the ground.

Here’s the complete PEAK’s food table and what it does:

Cooking food at least once is useful — just don’t burn it or overdo it. And if a food is poisonous, it stays that way even after cooking.

Advice for Beginners

Stick to coconuts early on. You’ll find plenty on the beach, and each one cracks into two halves — easy to cook, easy to store, and solid stamina return. Just throw them hard to break them open.

Avoid anything green or speckled unless you are certain of its identity. If you're unsure about a berry or shroom, leave it. For more help on early-game survival, check out our PEAK Beginners Guide — there is more detail about climbing and the necessary features at the beginning of the game. Have a nice trip.

PEAK Boom

PEAK launched in June 2025 and quickly hit over 130,000 concurrent players on Steam, according to SteamDB, and two million copies sold in nine days! It became one of the most-played survival titles of the month.

The core of the game is vertical climbing — stamina, handholds, and elevation. But food plays a major role, too. It’s not the main mechanic, but it’s always there. If you ignore it, you’ll lose stamina, get poisoned, and eventually fall. You need the right food and the right way to cook it if you want to make it to the summit.