Skyrim:Food

Food items can be eaten to restore your health or stamina. Raw food provides only trivial benefits, but it can be cooked to create more nutritious items.

Food is cheaper and more widely available than potions, and creating cooked food does not involve the Alchemy skill. However, even cooked food typically provides weaker effects than potions do. Nonetheless, a small number of dishes provide quite long-lasting effects, while Elsweyr Fondue is actually more powerful than a number of magicka potions.

Alcoholic beverages like ale, mead, and wine typically provide an immediate boost to stamina but reduced stamina regeneration for a period of time.

Stamina regeneration food such as vegetable soup is rather useful for melee based characters; the stamina regeneration each second allows you to use power attacks continuously until the effect wears off.

Most food items can be sold to any innkeeper or food vendor, as well as to general goods merchants (exceptions are noted in the following tables). A limited number of food items are categorized as raw food, and these items can also be sold to apothecary merchants. In addition, innkeepers and food vendors will have a selection of food items available for purchase.

With the addition of Survival Mode food is also used to replenish hunger. Different foods have different weights of replenishment lowering the hunger meter by set amounts. Very small replenishes 2, small replenishes 18, medium replenishes 220 and large replenishes 380. 

Raw Food
This section includes all food items that can be used when cooking. Several of these items are also classified by merchants as being raw food, which means that they can be sold to apothecary merchants and innkeepers.

Raw Meat
Raw meat can generally be obtained from the bodies of dead animals. In the case of small game (e.g., rabbits and pheasants), already-caught animals can also be found hanging in homes and inns, and can be harvested to obtain the meat. Similarly, salmon can also be found hanging from racks near rivers. Certain barrels are internally identified as meat barrels and will always contain raw meat, as well as salt piles.

Three stall merchants, Hogni Red-Arm in Markarth, Anoriath in Whiterun and Marise Aravel in Riften, specialize in raw meat. In addition, some varieties of meat can be bought from hunters encountered in the wilderness.

Nearly all raw meat can be cooked by simply combining it with salt. A few meats (beef, venison) can also be made into more elaborate stews by combining them with vegetables as well as salt.


Fruit/Vegetables
In addition to the specific sources listed in the following table, most of the following fruits and vegetables are also commonly found in food containers, namely barrels, large sacks, sacks, and small sacks. The only items not randomly found in such containers are gourds and leeks.

 
  

Baking Food
These raw foods, introduced by Hearthfire, are used in baking and/or cooking.



Other Raw Food
These other items are listed here either because they are classified as raw food by merchants, or because they are used in recipes.

 

Player-Baked Food
These items can all be created by baking raw food.


Player-Cooked Food
These items can all be created by cooking raw food. For items with two icons, the second icon is a new appearance given to the item after Hearthfire is installed.

 

Hot Soups
These soup recipes are made at the standard cooking locations but are only available to be crafted if Survival Mode is enabled as part of the Survival Mode Creation. Their primary use is to counteract the cold, but they also act as hunger reducers.



Other Food
Most of these items can be bought from innkeepers. They are also commonly found in most inns and houses, though they will usually be owned by the owner of the property. With the Hearthfire add-on and player-built kitchen, a few of these items can be made by the player.

 

Beverages
Consuming alcoholic beverages like meads, wines and brandies typically provide an immediate boost to stamina, along with reduced stamina regeneration, for a period of time.

Several other alcoholic beverages are classified as potions instead of food, meaning they are displayed in your inventory under potions: 
Argonian Ale
Balmora Blue wine
Cliff Racer wine
Cyrodilic Brandy
Skooma, including Double-Distilled Skooma and Kordir's Skooma
Stros M'Kai Rum
Velvet LeChance wine
White-Gold Tower wine
Many of these other beverages do not have the negative reduced stamina regeneration side effect.