TotK Rock Salt: What It Does in Cooking, Where to Buy and Mine It

Rock Salt is the seasoning of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The game describes it as “crystallized salt from the ancient sea commonly used to season meals” and adds: “Cannot be eaten in this form.” It restores no hearts and carries no effect, yet 36 dishes in the recipe book cannot be cooked without it. Carry ten or so at all times and you will rarely miss it.

What does Rock Salt add to a dish?

Not healing. Rock Salt has no hearts of its own and the recipes that use it get no bonus from it, so a Salt-Grilled dish heals what its main ingredient would. What Rock Salt adds is three things:

• Access to recipes. 36 dishes in the recipe book name Rock Salt and accept nothing in its place. Without it, a mushroom and a pot make a Mushroom Skewer; with it, Salt-Grilled Mushrooms.
• A little duration. In a dish with a timed effect, a Rock Salt adds 1:00 where an ordinary ingredient adds 0:30. See how to cook.
• Nothing that cancels. It has no effect of its own, so it never clashes with the effect you are cooking for.

The 36 dishes fall into a few families:

The full list, with recipe book numbers:

• 28 Salt-Grilled Greens
• 29 Salt-Grilled Mushrooms
• 30 Salt-Grilled Meat
• 31 Salt-Grilled Prime Meat
• 32 Salt-Grilled Gourmet Meat
• 33 Salt-Grilled Fish
• 34 Salt-Grilled Crab
• 50 Fruity Tomato Stew
• 53 Cream of Vegetable Soup
• 54 Veggie Cream Soup
• 55 Cream of Mushroom Soup
• 56 Creamy Meat Soup
• 57 Creamy Seafood Soup
• 80 Vegetable Risotto
• 81 Mushroom Risotto
• 82 Salmon Risotto
• 83 Crab Risotto
• 84 Cheesy Risotto
• 88 Seafood Paella
• 92 Seafood Fried Rice
• 93 Crab Omelet with Rice
• 94 Meat and Rice Bowl
• 95 Prime Meat and Rice Bowl
• 96 Gourmet Meat and Rice Bowl
• 97 Cheesy Meat Bowl
• 98 Prime Cheesy Meat Bowl
• 99 Gourmet Cheesy Meat Bowl
• 105 Wheat Bread
• 108 Meat Pie
• 109 Fish Pie
• 113 Vegetable Omelet
• 114 Mushroom Omelet
• 115 Cheesy Omelet
• 134 Noble Pursuit
• 138 Monster Rice Balls
• 143 Dark Rice Ball

Who asks for Rock Salt?

• The Horse God. Malanya raises a horse’s traits for meals, and five of his 18 dishes take Rock Salt: Salt-Grilled Greens, Cream of Vegetable Soup, Veggie Cream Soup, Vegetable Omelet and Vegetable Risotto. Stock up before you start on the last stars; see Horse God recipes.
• The Lucky Clover Gazette. At Riverside Stable you cook Princess Zelda’s Meat and Rice Bowl. The game’s recipe card reads: “Combine plain raw meat, Hylian rice, and rock salt.” See The Lucky Clover Gazette.
• Lurelin Village. The inn offers a salt spa, and the owner asks you to bring the salt: “I’ll need five pieces of rock salt.” See Lurelin Village restoration.
• The Kochi Dye Shop. A dye takes five ingredients of one color, and Rock Salt counts as Peach, together with Wildberries and Hearty Radishes. Five Rock Salt cost 60 rupees at a shop, so Peach is an easy color to buy your way into.

Where do you get it?

Ore deposits are the main source. A traveler in the game puts it simply: break an ore deposit in a cave and there is “flint for starting fires, rock salt for seasoning your cooking”. Each deposit drops up to two items, and Rock Salt is 32 in 100 of them, second only to Amber’s 35. The game places 741 ore deposits, 500 of them in caves and wells and 188 on the slopes around Goron City, so you rarely need to go looking. Rare ore deposits do not drop it. Rates for every deposit are on gem farming.

Three merchants sell it, all at 12 rupees: Spera in Gerudo Town, Tanko in Goron City, and Cormus, who sets up at five spots around the bridges and ruins of central Hyrule. Some merchants appear only once the story has moved on, and a sold-out item comes back when the shop restocks.

Two chests hold a piece each, near Mount Gustaf and Tal Tal Peak; they do not refill. The treasure chest a Like Like leaves around Hyrule Field, Akkala and most of Lanayru contains Rock Salt one time in ten.

Should you ever sell it?

No. A shop pays 2 rupees and charges 12 to buy it back. Fused to a weapon it adds only 1 attack. Keep every piece in the pot.

See also

• Recipe finder
• All materials
• Amber, the other common ore deposit drop