No Man's Sky Cooking Guide: Nutrient Processor Recipes

Part of the Resources & Crafting series:

• No Man's Sky Resources & Crafting Guide Hub: Start here.
• Crafting & Refining Basics: Portable Refiner Recipes: The refining system that feeds many cooking chains.

Quick Answer

• The Nutrient Processor is the portable cooking device. Craft it from 1 Metal Plating and 40 Oxygen, then place it like a Portable Refiner.
• It accepts up to three ingredient slots, so single-step and multi-step recipes both work in one device.
• Raw ingredients come from fauna (creature meat, milk, eggs, fatty organs), the Fishing Rig (fish and their processed parts), and flora (crops, marrow bulbs, fungal mould, honey, gamma root).
• Most raw items must be processed first: meat becomes Processed Meat, milk becomes Butter or Cheese, wheat crops become Flour, then Bread.
• Cronus (Iteration: Cronus) on the Space Anomaly posts a daily cooking request and pays Nanites for the correct dish, plus periodic Quicksilver during food-themed events.
• Finished dishes stack and sell for solid Units at Galactic Trade Terminals, making cooking a steady income loop.
• Pin any food recipe you have discovered to track missing ingredients on your HUD.

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Overview

Cooking sits slightly off the main progression path, but it rewards players who explore planets and interact with wildlife. Every dish begins with raw material harvested from creatures, fish, or plants, and the Nutrient Processor turns those inputs into edible products that heal you, sell for Units, or satisfy a hungry NPC on the Anomaly.

The system runs on discovery. You rarely start knowing a recipe. Instead you experiment by loading ingredients into the Processor, and each successful combination is logged in your catalogue for reuse. Because the same base ingredients branch into butter, cheese, jam, bread, and dozens of composite dishes, a handful of farm animals and a fishing spot can feed an entire cookbook.

Building and Using the Nutrient Processor

The Nutrient Processor blueprint is available early from the Space Anomaly's Synthesis Laboratory, or through the Base Computer research tree. Once learned, craft it from 1 Metal Plating and 40 Oxygen. Metal Plating itself comes from 50 Ferrite Dust, so the whole device costs almost nothing.

Deploy it from your Quick Menu the same way you place a Portable Refiner. Unlike the Portable Refiner, which handles only one input, the Nutrient Processor has three ingredient slots plus an output slot. It needs no fuel. Cooking is instant once you press start.

Single-ingredient cooking covers the first processing step for most raw goods. Drop raw creature meat in alone and it becomes Processed Meat. Drop Gamma Root in alone and it becomes Roasted Gamma Root. These one-item conversions are the backbone of the whole system because their outputs feed the multi-ingredient recipes.

Multi-ingredient cooking combines two or three processed parts into a finished dish. Flour plus a creature product plus a sweetener can become a baked good; a fruit plus sugar plus a solvent can become jam. When a combination is valid, the output preview appears before you commit, so you can experiment without wasting rare inputs. If the Processor shows no output, the combination is not a recipe and nothing is consumed.

Where Ingredients Come From

Raw material collection is where cooking connects to the rest of the game.

Creature products are gathered two ways. Killing fauna drops raw meat and sometimes fatty or storax organs. Feeding tamed creatures the correct bait lets you milk them or collect eggs without harming them, which is the renewable route. Our companion mechanics are covered in the feeding and milking creatures walkthrough, and tamed animals you keep long-term are explained in the companion pet guide.

Fish arrive through the Fishing Rig, a deployable added in the Aquarius update. You cast into water bodies, reel in dozens of species, and many of those fish are cooking inputs once filleted or processed. The full mechanic is in the fishing guide; note that some Aquarius catches double as bait, so fishing and cooking reinforce each other.

Flora and crops cover the vegetarian half of the cookbook. Wild plants like Marrow Bulb, Fungal Mould, Gamma Root, Frost Crystal, and Solar Vine can be picked directly. Cultivated crops such as wheat and various fruits grow in a base's Hydroponic Trays or on Agricultural planets, and honey comes from a base beehive.

Several of these raw items overlap with the refining system, so keep the refining basics handy for the steps a refiner handles better than the Processor.

Ingredient Source Reference

Cooking the Dishes

Recipes fall into repeatable categories rather than one-off tricks, which makes them easy to remember. The reference table below lists the categories most players lean on, the general ingredient shape, and why each is worth cooking. Where a precise ratio matters, experiment in the Processor and let the output preview confirm the combination, since ingredient counts occasionally shift between updates.

Recipe Category Reference

The workflow is: harvest raw goods, run each through the single-ingredient step, then combine the processed parts. A butter-and-flour base plus one sweetener produces most baked goods; a fillet plus a roasted vegetable produces most seafood plates. Keep a small stock of processed intermediates in a Storage Container so you can assemble whatever dish Cronus asks for that day.

A practical tip: batch your processing. Cook twenty portions of Flour and twenty of Butter in one sitting rather than making them per-recipe. Because the Nutrient Processor consumes stacks, and because most composite dishes reuse the same two or three intermediates, a stocked pantry means you can fulfil a Cronus request in seconds instead of scrambling to farm on demand. Label the storage slots by intermediate (dairy, flour, fillets, roasted produce, sweeteners) and the daily turn-in becomes a routine rather than a chore.

The Dishes Actually Worth Cooking

Once the system clicks, the temptation is to chase the most elaborate recipe you can assemble. That is the wrong instinct, and understanding why saves a great deal of farming.

Cronus does not pay proportionally to effort. A dish worth thirty times the units and needing four times the processing steps does not pay thirty times the nanites. In practice his payouts cluster around the hundred-nanite mark at the top end regardless of what you hand him. The winning dishes are therefore the ones with the best ratio of nanites to farming time, not the ones with the longest ingredient chain.

Three come up again and again among players who cook seriously:

Fibrous Stew is the one to start with. Fungal Mould grows on the surface in quantity, requires no taming, no fishing and no farm, and the whole chain is short. A player who wants nanites rather than a hobby should farm mould and stop there.

Bring variety, not volume. Handing Cronus a dozen identical dishes hits diminishing returns. Repeats of the same item pay progressively less. Turning up with three or four different high-tier dishes pays substantially more than the same number of one dish. Build your pantry around a small rotation rather than a single mass-produced item.

That combination (a cheap staple, a mid-tier meat dish, and something from an organ or fish chain) is the practical shape of a cooking session. It is roughly twenty minutes of gathering for a payout that compares reasonably with the mid-tier methods in the nanites guide, with the advantage that it renews from a farm you already own.

The Payoff: Cronus, Nanites, and Units

The main reason to cook is Cronus (Iteration: Cronus), the food-focused NPC standing on the Space Anomaly. Cronus posts a daily cooking request for a specific dish. Hand over the correct food and you are paid in Nanites, the currency used for upgrade modules and technology. Because the request resets on a daily timer, cooking becomes a repeatable Nanite source that stacks with the methods in our Nanites farming guide.

Cronus also ties into Quicksilver. During food-themed limited events and through certain Anomaly milestones, cooking-related objectives reward Quicksilver, the currency spent at the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion for cosmetics. Pair this with the dedicated Quicksilver guide to see where cooking fits among the faster QS methods.

Beyond the NPC, finished dishes are simply good merchandise. Composite plates and baked goods sell at Galactic Trade Terminals for far more than their raw components, and because ingredients renew through milking, farming, and fishing, the profit loop never dries up. A base with a couple of tamed dairy animals, a wheat tray, a beehive, and a nearby fishing spot can supply an endless kitchen.

Growing Your Ingredients

Hunting for plants across biomes gets old quickly. Most cooking inputs can be grown at a base instead, which turns a scavenging trip into a harvest. See the farming and agriculture guide.

FAQ

Do I need a special device to cook, or can the Refiner do it?

You need the Nutrient Processor. A Portable or base Refiner cannot cook food recipes. The Processor is cheap (1 Metal Plating, 40 Oxygen) and portable, so carry one alongside your Portable Refiner.

How do I learn recipes?

By experimenting. Load ingredients into the Nutrient Processor, and if the combination is valid the output preview appears. Cooking it once logs the recipe in your catalogue permanently. Cronus also teaches recipes as rewards, and some are found in data logs across the galaxy.

Where does Cronus stand, and how often can I trade?

Cronus (Iteration: Cronus) is on the Space Anomaly, near the other Iteration NPCs. The specific dish request refreshes on a daily cycle, so you can turn in one qualifying meal per reset for a Nanite reward.

What is the fastest renewable ingredient supply?

Tamed creatures and crops. Feeding and milking animals gives dairy and eggs without killing anything, Hydroponic Trays grow wheat and fruit on a timer, and the Fishing Rig restocks fish at active spots. Together they remove the need to hunt for raw goods before every cook.

What is the best dish to give Cronus?

Fibrous Stew for effort, Herb-Encrusted Flesh for value. Cronus's payouts flatten out around a hundred nanites at the top end, so an elaborate dish requiring four processing steps is not worth four times a simple one. Fibrous Stew comes from surface-gathered Fungal Mould with almost no processing and still pays around seventy.

Why is Cronus paying me less than he did last time?

Because you handed him several of the same dish. Repeats of an identical item hit diminishing returns quickly. Bring three or four different high-tier dishes rather than a stack of one, and the total payout goes up substantially for the same amount of cooking.

Is cooking worth it purely for Units?

Yes, as a secondary income. Composite dishes and baked goods sell well and cost only farmed inputs. It will not out-earn dedicated trade routes or Stasis Device crafting, but it converts otherwise idle farm output into steady Units and Nanites at the same time.

Key Takeaways

• Build the pantry before you chase specific dishes. Batch twenty Flour and twenty Butter in one sitting, park the intermediates in a Storage Container labelled by type, and the daily Cronus turn-in takes seconds instead of a farming run.
• Experiment without worrying. An invalid combination shows no output and consumes nothing, and cooking a valid one just once logs the recipe in your catalogue permanently.
• Set up the renewable sources early: tamed creatures you can milk, a Hydroponic Tray of wheat, a beehive, and a fishing spot. Hunting fauna works but does not restock itself.
• Pin a discovered recipe when you're short an ingredient so the HUD tracks what's missing while you're out doing something else.
• Trust the Processor's output preview over any written ingredient ratio, since counts occasionally shift between updates.
• Cook for ratio, not for prestige. Cronus's payouts flatten near a hundred nanites, so Fibrous Stew from surface-gathered Fungal Mould beats a four-step gourmet plate on nanites per hour.
• Rotate your dishes. Repeats of one item pay less each time, so three or four different plates beat a stack of the same one.
• Think of this as a Nanite loop that happens to pay Units too. The Cronus request resets daily, so it's dependable income, but it won't out-earn dedicated trade routes.