One surprising mechanic from The Legend Of Zelda: Breathe Of The Wild was the appearance of Dubious Food. Created from a bad attempt at cooking, this pixelated pile of food was a sure winner with fans. Enough so that Tears Of The Kingdom has this food mistake return, but with an added purpose.
Find this little area in the swamps of Hyrule, and you'll never have to throw away or sell your Dubious Food ever again. All thanks to a side quest from a strange chef.
Updated By Wyatt Grondin on June 13th, 2023: This quest unlocks a recipe most players will not discover before completion, but they can cook it for themselves before or after the quest if they know the ingredients. A section has been added discussing how to do this and the benefits of doing so.
Rikoka Hills Well
You're looking for a hole in the ground called Rikoka Hills Well, and believe it or not, this is found in Rikoka Hills. Rikoka Hills is part of the Lanayru region, a wetland just above West Necluda and to the East of Central Hyrule. The coordinates for Rikoka Hills Well are 1712, -0652, and 0013.
The area is grassy with a rundown shack; you need to find the well itself. To help, smoke is coming out of it, and you'll even see a dialogue window the first time you pass it. Jump or climb down the well to find the NPC who starts this quest.
Moza
The well's inhabitant is an aspiring chef named Moza. Judging by the smoke and Link's possible reactions, she's not as talented as she claims. Her claims are a bit wild in the first place; she will tell you that if you give her any meal that you messed up, she can make it delicious. She'll ask for a sample to prove it, which will start the quest.
Dubious Food will work, but you can also give her the equally failed attempt called Rock-Hard Food. For those curious, this batch of Rock-Hard Food was created by attempting to cook a Hylian Pine Cone as a meal.
Dubious Food is created when a monster part or other inedible item is cooked with regular food, and even sometimes from using too many incompatible materials. You'll gain a recipe every time you make these failures, so you can go and read them if you don't already have a Dubious or Rock-Hard Food in your inventory.
After you give Moza the Food, she'll then ask you to cough up 5 Rupees. She claims this is a discount for first-time customers, and the discount is half-off as returning to Moza with meals after the quest will cost 10 Rupees each. The price is worth it.
Moza really can turn the Food edible, and not just that, but the hearts her food can restore are sometimes excellent. This meal is Monster Stew, and the recipe card for it only shows raw meat, a Hyrule bass, and a mysterious container of purple liquid. Moza will mention these 3 ingredients many of the times she makes Monster Stew for you, congratulating herself on getting that mystery ingredient from someplace in the North East of Hyrule.
Any time you get Dubious Food, be sure to hold onto it to bring it to Moza. Being able to recycle bad recipes may be the key to your survival in many encounters.
Making Monster Stew From Scratch
As stated, you always get a recipe when you make or receive a meal for the first time, and that includes Moza's, Monster Stew. Using the clues from the recipe car,d you will know you need a bottle of something purple, and with Moza's mention of the town she learned the recipe, you can discover she was talking about Tarrey Town, where you can buy Monster Extract. Monster Extract is the mysterious purple ingredient, so if you have that, meat, and a Hyrule Bass, you can make Monster Stew for yourself. You can also use this Extract to make a warm bowl of Monster Curry.
However, making Monster Stew without Moza is not recommended. Look at the recipe card and notice it claims to only heal a quarter of a heart, and when you make the recipe, this will always be true. But, for whatever reason, when Moza makes Monster Stew from a Dubious or Rock-Hard Food, it can heal multiple hearts. It's fun in theory to make this meal without the master chef behind it, but this is a mystery dish best left to the closest thing to a professional it has.