Resident Evil Village's traveling merchant, the Duke, will sell you a whole lot of useful stuff over the course of the game. One service you might not know he offers, though, is his culinary expertise. If you find the ingredients, the Duke will cook various meals and share them with you. These meals are extremely useful--they boost protagonist Ethan Winters' overall stats, giving him more health, faster movement speed, and a stronger defensive guard.
The ingredients the Duke needs for these meals are all various kinds of meat, which you can find around the village and surrounding area. Whenever you see animals such as fish, chickens, pigs, or goats, you should, uh, kill them. They'll drop different kinds of meat you can then deliver to the Duke for each kind of meal. But there are several special, one-of-a-kind animals you'll need to find in the village to make the very best foods. Below you'll find all the details you need to make each of the Duke's meals, including where you can find the rarest animals.
Quick Cooking Tips
You'll gain access to the cooking system the first time you return to the village after venturing into Castle Dimitrescu. It's a good idea to scour the village for ingredients every time you return to the village. Each time you head to different areas around the village outskirts, you'll gain new keys and items that let you unlock new places, and thus, new animals.
Mostly, the cooking system is just about finding animals. You'll find most of them around the village just as you're exploring during the game. When you find animals, they'll be marked on your map, so you can easily return to get any that you might have missed. And sometimes, even animals you haven't seen for yourself will be marked on the map--so make sure to use it to help you track down the ingredients you need.
You can turn in your ingredients to the Duke at any time in the cooking menu, applying them to whatever recipe you want. This is a good practice for keeping your inventory clear, in fact; meat can take up a lot of space in your suitcase if you're holding onto ingredients for a long time. That makes it tougher to pick up new weapons, ammo, and health items, dump ingredients quickly to free up space.
As you work through the game, you might find photographs that show you rare animals. Each of these photos shows the animal and its background will give you clues about where those animals are located. We're marking those animals' locations in this guide, but if you want to find them on your own, you can do that by diligently searching through Resident Evil Village. You'll know the rare animals by their coloring: you're looking for a bluebird, a white pig, and a yellow fish.
After leaving Moreau's Reservoir, there will be several signs scattered through the village directing you to your next objective. Follow them until you see the one marked "Good Luck!" that points you into a tunnel. If you turn left here and follow the path, you'll come across Otto's Mill, where the Cannibal's Plunder treasure is marked on your map. Expect a fight when you go inside the mill, but it's worth the effort to unlock room filled with spare meat, fish, and poultry. You can use it to shore up any recipes you might be lagging on (specifically if you need Meat; there's a lot less Poultry and Fish to be found, unfortunately), and if you don't need the ingredients for recipes, sell it all to the Duke to make some extra Lei.
