Chef’s Hat
The Chef’s Hat is a Relic added by the Relics mod for Minecraft. This head Relic turns combat into a food source: every time you kill an enemy, there’s a chance the slain creature drops a meatball you can eat to restore hunger. As you rank the hat up, those meatballs also restore your health directly, and eventually drop pre-cooked, giving you steak-tier nourishment straight from the battlefield.
According to its lore, the hat once belonged to a legendary cook whose meals sustained both kings and warriors. The fabric has long absorbed the scent of smoke, spices, and blazing cauldrons, holding the memory of hundreds of meals prepared between clashes. Now in your possession, it honors that tradition by turning fallen enemies into hearty food.
This guide covers everything you need to know about the Chef’s Hat, including how to obtain it, its abilities, rank modifiers, leveling costs, and configuration options. For information on other items from this mod, visit our Relics Mod Wiki.
This article covers the Relics beta branch (v0.11.x). Stats, abilities, and mechanics may change between updates. The beta is incompatible with stable (v0.10.x) saves and most addons.
Obtaining
The Chef’s Hat is a head-slot Relic that rewards combat with food drops. This Relic is worn on the Head (a Curios accessory slot, which you can open by pressing G by default).
The Chef’s Hat can be found in Village chests. Look for it in any of the chest loot tables tied to villages, including all village types across Minecraft biomes. If your world has Plains, Savanna, Desert, Snowy, or Taiga villages, any of their chests are valid sources. The drop is random, so check multiple villages if you don’t find one right away.
Relic Quality & Rerolling
Every Relic you find has a quality rating between 0 and 5 stars, shown by the circles beneath its portrait. Half-star increments are possible, so you might see ratings like 1.5 or 3.5. This rating reflects how good the starting stats rolled when the Relic was generated – higher quality means better initial values.
Each stat on a Relic has a minimum and maximum possible value. When you first obtain a Relic, its stats are randomly rolled within this range. If you’re unhappy with the roll, you can reroll the stats by spending 150 Minecraft Experience. This gives you a fresh set of random values across all stats, targeting a different quality tier than your current one.
Usage
Equip the Chef’s Hat in your Head Curios slot and take it into combat. Every mob you kill has a chance to drop a Raw Meatball. You can eat these on the spot to restore 3 hunger points (filling 1.5 of the 10 hunger bars), or cook them in a furnace first to get Cooked Meatballs, which restore 8 hunger points (the same as a full steak). If you’re fighting in the middle of a dungeon run or a cave, those raw meatballs keep you fed without needing to carry separate food.
The drop chance starts at 10 – 15% per kill depending on your initial quality roll, and climbs to 21 – 32% at max ability level. At that rate, roughly one in three enemies you kill will drop a meatball. In a dense dungeon or during a raid, you’ll quickly accumulate more food than you can eat. Once you reach Rank 3, eating those meatballs also restores health directly (1.0 – 4.3 HP per meatball depending on level and quality), and cooked ones restore twice that amount. At Rank 5, every dropped meatball is automatically cooked, so you’re getting steak-quality food from every kill without needing a furnace.
The Chef’s Hat works best in combat-heavy playstyles where you’re constantly fighting mobs. In the early game, the raw food drops alone are enough to keep your hunger bar topped up through extended dungeon exploration. At Rank 1, the quick_meal modifier kicks in, letting you eat meatballs 3 times faster than normal food (the base eat animation takes about 1.6 seconds, quick_meal brings that down to around 0.55 seconds), which means you can quickly eat mid-combat without losing much fighting momentum. At Rank 3 with meatball_healing active, each meatball effectively becomes a potion, making the hat a strong sustain piece for boss fights and long combat sessions.
If you tend to struggle with food and healing during extended combat, especially in caves or the Nether where food sources are scarce, the Chef’s Hat is one of the most self-sufficient Relics available. It generates both hunger and health restoration from the act of fighting, which means you spend less time managing your inventory and more time playing aggressively. Once fully ranked, it largely removes food as a concern while you’re in combat.
Abilities
The Chef’s Hat has 1 ability: Meatball Harvest. This ability is available immediately when you equip the Relic, with no unlock level requirement.
Meatball Harvest
Killing a target has a [10 – 32%] chance to drop 1 meatball, identical in properties to raw beef, which can be eaten or cooked for greater nourishment.
Meatball Harvest is the Chef’s Hat’s only ability. Each time you kill a mob, the game rolls against the Drop Chance stat. If it succeeds, the killed entity drops a Raw Meatball at its location. That meatball functions exactly like Raw Beef: it restores 3 hunger points (1.5 drumstick icons) with 0.9 saturation, and you can toss it in a furnace to get a Cooked Meatball with the same stats as a Steak (8 hunger points, 6.4 saturation). Early on, this is simply a reliable passive food generator, but as you rank up the hat, those meatballs take on a secondary role as healing items.
Since this is the only ability on the hat, every Upgrade Point you earn goes directly into Meatball Harvest. Prioritize leveling the Drop Chance stat first, since more drops means more food and more Relic Experience from eating them. The Health Restored stat (unlocked at Rank 3 via the meatball_healing modifier) is also worth pushing high, especially once you reach Rank 5 and all drops are automatically cooked, doubling the heal from each meatball. With max levels and Rank 5 active, you’re looking at up to 8.6 HP (4.3 hearts) healed per cooked meatball drop.
Meatball Harvest unlocks at Relic level 0 and costs 1 Upgrade Point per level, with a base maximum ability level of 10 (increases with rank).
Base Value
Max Value
Rank 1 — Quick Meal: Meatballs are consumed 3 times faster. The standard eating animation in Minecraft takes about 1.6 seconds (32 ticks). With Quick Meal active, that drops to roughly 0.55 seconds, meaning you can eat during or immediately after a fight without leaving yourself vulnerable for long. This modifier alone makes the meatballs viable as mid-combat food.
Rank 3 — Meatball Healing: Consuming meatballs now restores health in addition to hunger. The amount restored is equal to the Health Restored stat (1.0 – 4.3 HP at base through max level). Cooked Meatballs restore twice the listed value, so a cooked meatball at max level can restore up to 8.6 HP (4.3 hearts of health). A new Relic Experience source also becomes visible at this rank: you earn 1 Relic Experience per HP of health restored, which can add up quickly in extended combat.
Rank 5 — Cooked Meatball: All meatballs dropped by enemies are automatically cooked. You no longer need to visit a furnace to get the higher food value or the doubled healing from Meatball Healing. Every kill that triggers a drop now gives you a Cooked Meatball (8 hunger, 6.4 saturation) with full double healing included. This is the strongest form of the ability and makes the Chef’s Hat a top-tier sustain Relic for combat-heavy scenarios.
Constellations
Before you can use an ability, it must first be researched. Each ability has a constellation puzzle that you need to solve by connecting stars hidden beneath fog. When the constellation matches the background pattern, the ability unlocks automatically.
The Chef’s Hat has one constellation to solve for its Meatball Harvest ability. The pattern features 6 stars connected by 6 links, forming a roughly angular shape that traces across the puzzle grid. Stars are spread from upper-left to lower-right, with a central top star acting as a hub connecting to both the left and right clusters. The left cluster and right cluster each branch downward and meet at a central bottom star. Work outward from the top-center star to map the shape efficiently.
If you’re stuck on a puzzle, you can purchase hints for 50 Minecraft Experience each. Hold Shift to reveal the entire constellation at once for 300 Experience (6 stars x 50 each).
Experience Sources
Relic Experience is required to level up a Relic, gain Upgrade Points, and spend those points on upgrading abilities. The Chef’s Hat offers 3 different ways to earn Relic Experience.
Meatball Drop: Each time a meatball drops from a killed enemy, you earn 1 Relic Experience. This is your primary XP source early on, and it scales naturally with how often you fight. At a 32% max drop chance, you’ll average roughly 1 XP every 3 kills. During active combat sessions, this adds up steadily.
Meatball Consumed: Each meatball you eat grants 1 Relic Experience. This pairs directly with the drop source: picking up and eating every meatball you drop doubles your effective XP income. Don’t leave meatballs on the ground. Even when your hunger bar is full, eating them still grants XP and (at Rank 3) restores health.
Health Restored (unlocked at Rank 3): Once the Meatball Healing rank modifier is unlocked, you earn 1 Relic Experience per HP of health restored by consuming meatballs. At max ability level, a single Cooked Meatball can restore up to 8.6 HP, which means up to 8 additional XP per meatball eaten. This source is hidden and shown as obfuscated until you unlock the meatball_healing modifier at Rank 3.
Ranking
Once the Chef’s Hat reaches its maximum level, you can increase its rank. Each rank increases the maximum ability level for all abilities by 25%, allowing you to push stats further. The maximum rank is 5.
Ranking up also unlocks rank modifiers on abilities, which provide entirely new effects beyond simple stat improvements. Check each ability section above for its rank modifier details.
Leveling
The Chef’s Hat has a base maximum level of 10 (before ranking), providing Upgrade Points to distribute across abilities. Each level requires progressively more Relic Experience, as shown in the table below.
XP Cost
Total XP
Reaching level 10 requires a total of 5,500 Relic Experience. Since you earn 1 XP per meatball dropped and 1 XP per meatball eaten, you’re effectively earning 2 XP per successful drop trigger (assuming you eat each one). At a 21% drop chance with consistent combat, expect level 10 to take several solid play sessions of active fighting, so stay aggressive and eat everything you drop.
Since Meatball Harvest is the only ability, all 10 Upgrade Points automatically go to it. Focus on ranking up as quickly as possible: Rank 1 at level 13 gives you Quick Meal, which speeds up your eating and helps you consume meatballs mid-combat without a long pause. Rank 3 at level 22 unlocks Meatball Healing and a third XP source (health restored), which dramatically increases your XP income from eating cooked meatballs. Prioritize farming in areas with high mob density like dungeons, mob spawners, or the Nether to generate drops as fast as possible.
Related Relics
The Chef’s Hat fills a niche as a combat-sustain Relic that handles both food and healing passively during fights. If you’re looking for relics with a similar on-kill trigger mechanic, explore other Relics that activate when you defeat enemies, as they can complement the farming playstyle the Chef’s Hat encourages.
For head slot alternatives, other head Relics offer different playstyle focuses ranging from magic-casting bonuses to stealth and exploration. The Chef’s Hat is the strongest choice specifically for players who want passive combat sustainability without dedicating inventory slots to food.
Config
Server operators and modpack creators can customize the Chef’s Hat through configuration files. To enable per-Relic configuration, first set enabledExtendedConfigs: true in the main relics.yaml file located in your Minecraft config folder.
After restarting the game, a Relics folder will appear in the config directory. The Chef’s Hat can be configured by editing chef_hat.yaml.
leveling:
initialCost: 100.0
step: 100.0
maxRank: 5
abilities:
satiety:
requiredLevel: 0
requiredPoints: 1
initialMaxLevel: 10
maxLevelRankModifier: 0.25
stats:
chance:
initialValue:
min: 0.1
max: 0.15
upgradeModifier: 0.1143
healing:
initialValue:
min: 1.0
max: 2.0
upgradeModifier: 0.1143