Food is ubiquitous in Skyrim. Salmon hang drying from racks in hunters' camps, platters stacked with sugary pastries sit inside the homes of nobles, starving bandits roast mangy skeevers over fires inside caves. You will see evidence of the Nords' diets wherever you travel.
It can also be of help to a would-be adventurer. Food can heal, and grant buffs that can rival far more expensive potions. If you're into suffering and like playing in survival mode, it's downright necessary. With so much on offer and your carrying capacity limited, it's important to know what lunch to take into the dungeon, and what's going to be dead weight.
10 Cheese
Sheogorath's favorite, It's hard to imagine what might go through the heads of the villains of Skyrim as they watch the Dragonborn scarf down an entire wheel of goat's cheese mid-fight. But with a complete wheel yielding fifteen points of health restored, it can be a viable strategy.
The only thing that makes it often more trouble than its worth is the weight. A wheel of cheese has two weight, making carrying them around in huge quantities a literal burden.
9 Mammoth Cheese Bowl
The giants of the tundra are often seen alongside herds of mammoths. The combination has led to the untimely death of many Dragonborn, but it also highlights the livestock relationship the two species have. A unique creation of the giants is mammoth cheese, which can restore ten health and 15 stamina when consumed. It is a lot lighter than its human-made cousin at 0.5 weight a serving.
The downside to this is that you have to steal it from a giant camp. The cost of picking up this forbidden snack might be watching your hero's corpse soaring up over the mountains after a club strike. Be warned.
8 Salmon Steak
An extremely abundant foodstuff, these can be found scattered around at dining tables all over Skyrim. They can also be cooked by combining a salt pile with any of the abundant whole fish found in camps, kitchens, or snatched up out of the water.
While individually they only heal a fairly modest five health points, their weight makes them easy to carry in large amounts. At only 0.1 per steak, it's considerably more efficient than hauling around wheels of cheese. As long as you can keep a supply of salt to hand, it's easy to bulk cook a large number of these to take on the road.
7 Horker Stew
Horkers. They're big, wrinkly, and hilarious - until five start trying to murder you at once. They're also apparently delicious. Horker stew is prepared in a cooking pot and requires horker meat, tomato, garlic, and lavender. This blubbery stew, when consumed, restores 15 health and stamina immediately, and will continue to restore one health point per second for a massive 12 minutes afterward.
Horkers can be a bit of a hazard, though they're slow enough that anyone with a ranged option can easily avoid being encircled by a group.
6 Venison Stew
Venison stew is a hearty dish and helpful that can be cooked in most cooking pots. It needs venison meat, one salt pile, potato, and a leek, all fairly easily and cheaply acquired. When eaten, the cheap meal confers some very useful and long-lasting benefits. It grants an immediate 15 points of stamina, and will continue to regenerate one point of health and one point of stamina for 12 minutes after eating.
The only challenge with reliably acquiring this foodstuff is that it usually involves going hunting, though any accomplished archer should not struggle with bagging some elk to stock up.
5 Elsweyr Fondue
It feels quite appropriate that a land populated by the cat people known as Khajiit would be exporting dairy-based recipes. Elsweyr fondue is made by melting goat's cheese with ale and moon sugar. It's a must-have for the average mage. Not only does this cheesy snack increase magicka regeneration by 25 percent, but it also adds an impressive 100 magicka to your total.
The only downside is this is technically an illegal fondue. One of the ingredients, moon sugar, is not legitimately permitted in Skyrim, and so is often a little difficult to reliably find.
4 Dumplings
Only craftable using an oven, dumplings were a new addition with the Hearthfire DLC, and confer a few bonuses that make taking up baking worth the effort. These small pastries weigh next to nothing at 0.1 weight each, and restore a good amount of health.
A chicken dumpling will restore 15 points of health immediately, and one per second for the next two minutes, healing a very respectable 135 points in total. Apple dumplings will restore five points of health, and give a five percent damage boost to bows. Lavender gives the same small healing as apple, but instead of bow damage, gives ten extra points of magicka, and adds ten percent magic resistance.
3 Crostatas
A dish made from flour, butter, and several types of berry, you'll need a homestead kitchen with an oven to make these fruit tarts. They come in three varieties, all of which come with their own bonuses.
Snowberry crostatas heal ten points of health and give you a four percent boost to fire resistance for one minute. One made from jazbay grapes will heal for the same, but give you four extra points of magicka for a minute. Juniper berry crostata has the strongest healing power, restoring four points of health on contact and two points per second for the next minute, twice as fast as most restorative foods.
2 Garlic Bread
Beloved in the real world, there are compelling reasons to appreciate this savory treat in the land of Skyrim as well. Made using bread, butter, and garlic in your homestead's oven, the recipe will yield two pieces of the dish. Consuming one is enough to cure any disease you happen to be suffering from.
With the ingredient to make it available to purchase at most taverns, this bread serves as a far cheaper and more convenient alternative to Potions of Cure Disease. It's worth stocking up if you're dealing with anything likely to bite you, from skeevers to vampires.
1 Homecooked Meal
This could be considered either an extremely easy, or extremely difficult food to acquire, depending on the state of your Dragonborn's love life. The homecooked meal is a food that you cannot cook for yourself. It can only be given to you once a day by the Dovahkiin's spouse, by asking them to cook their beloved a meal.
There's apparently a big advantage to something being made with love, as eating it will increase health, stamina, and magicka regeneration by 25 percent for a whole ten minutes. Remember you can only get one of these a day, your spouse has other things to do than make extra meals all day.