What’s the Best Food in OSRS?

Food in OSRS is a crucial part of the game, allowing players to heal their hitpoints in varying amounts. Of course, this becomes necessary for these players to sustain themselves when engaging in content for prolonged periods. 

While the Cooking skill has a huge influence on the foods players can create themselves, most kinds of food in Old School RuneScape can also be bought at shops, from NPCs, or at the Grand Exchange. 

Additionally, there is a huge variety of food in the game. In this guide, I will look at the cost, effort to obtain, and healing amount of various foods to answer the question, what’s the best food in OSRS? 

Karambwans

The best food in Old School RuneScape question cannot be answered without mentioning the karambwans. These octopus-like sea creatures heal 18 hitpoints, and have a special property very few other food items in the game have: they can be eaten instantly after another food. 

Using this mechanic, called ‘combo eating’ you can heal yourself for significantly more hitpoints than you would with just the single piece of food. You can even take it a step further with a normal piece of food, a karambwan, and a sip of Saradomin Brew. Using all three can allow you to heal 50+ hitpoints in a single game tick.  

Additionally, since the karambwans take less time to eat than every other food in the game, you can resume attacking your targets faster, meaning you can maintain a higher damage output using karambwans instead of other foods. 

Raw karambwans can be caught on Karamja, with a stack of raw karambwanji and a karambwan vessel, at 65 Fishing and after completing the quest ‘Tai Bwo Wannai Trio.’ You can start this quest by speaking to Timfraku in his house, in the Tai Bwo Wannai village. 

The area where you can fish raw karambwans is relatively close to the Shilo Village, near Fairy Ring code DKP.

You also need 30 Cooking to cook the raw karambwans. When attempting to cook one, you will be given two cooking options. Make sure to choose the white one, NOT the green one. The green one results in a poorly cooked, poisoned karambwan. 

Anglerfish

When asking ‘what’s the best food in OSRS,’ the anglerfish must also be mentioned, since it also has a special property that sets it above most other food items in the game. The amount of hitpoints they heal depends on your hitpoints level, but they are capable of overhealing you. 

This means you can eat an anglerfish at full health, and it will give you extra hitpoints above your hitpoints level. For example, my hitpoints level is 92, and if I were to eat an anglerfish at full health, it would grant me 17 hitpoints, for a total of 109. 

You can leverage this property by eating an anglerfish before engaging in combat, such as right before a Raid or boss encounter. Many players eat an anglerfish at the bank, then withdraw another piece of normal food before starting their encounters. 

Anglerfish can be obtained by cooking a raw anglerfish at 84 Cooking. Note that anglerfish will always have a chance to burn, unlike other foods. Raw anglerfish can be caught with 82 Fishing and 100% Piscarilius favor, using a fishing rod and the nearby sandworms as bait. 

Anchovy Pizza (Best for Free Players)

Free players asking themselves ‘what’s the best food in OSRS,’ should look no further than the anchovy pizza. These pizzas will heal 18 hitpoints, which is the most healing out of any free to play food items. 

That being said, pizzas in Old School RuneScape are two-bite food items, meaning if you click on them once, you will eat half, for 9 hit points. This mechanic can also be leveraged for a less effective version of combo eating, since the first bites are also on a shorter eat timer. 

Anchovy pizzas can be made at 55 Cooking, by combining anchovies with a plain pizza. Plain pizzas can be made yourself with 35 Cooking, or bought from the Warriors’ Guild shop. Alternatively, anchovy pizzas are a somewhat common drop from various Wilderness bosses.

These bosses include Scorpia, the Crazy Archaeologist, Chaos Fanatic, and Chaos Elemental. They are also a guaranteed drop from the Muddy Chest in the middle of the Lava Maze. Free players will have to stick to making their own or the Muddy Chest. 

Tuna Potatoes

Another contender for best food in Old School RuneScape is the tuna potato, which does not have any special properties, but heals for 22 hitpoints, which ties it with dark crabs and manta rays as the highest healing foods in the game. 

The reason tuna potatoes are in this OSRS food guide is due to their cost efficiency, especially when compared to dark crabs or manta rays. This is largely due to the methods for obtaining dark crabs and manta rays being more complicated than gathering the ingredients for tuna potatoes. 

Tuna potatoes can be made with 68 Cooking by combining a bowl of tuna and corn, with a potato with butter. These items are interim Cooking ingredients that must also be made (or bought from the Grand Exchange). I would recommend checking out the best places to cook.

First, a potato must be cooked, then a pat of butter added to it for a potato with butter. A tuna must also be cooked, then chopped with a knife into a bowl. Then, sweetcorn must also be cooked and chopped into the tuna bowl. Combine the two ingredients, and you will make a tuna potato. 

Alternatively, tuna potatoes can be dropped by the minions of the Zamorak in the God Wars Dungeon, Balfrug Kreeyath, Tstanon Karlak, and Zalk’n Gritch, at a rate of 1 in 15.87. They can also be dropped by the Corporeal Beast, Thermonuclear Smoke Devil, and Elite Clue scrolls. 

Final Thoughts

Asking the question ‘what’s the best food in OSRS’ can yield several results, depending on who you ask. For example, many players will say the karambwan is the best food, since it can be eaten in one game tick, enabling combo eating. 

Other players might say it’s the anglerfish due to its overhealing abilities, and its ability to heal 22 hitpoints, the most in the game, at its full potential (93 Hitpoints). Free players undoubtedly would choose the anchovy pizza, since it heals the most for them (18), and can also be combo eaten. 

Finally, the tuna potato is a no frills, no special property food item, one that can also heal for the most hitpoints of any food in the game, at 22. Many players prefer tuna potatoes due to the ease of obtaining them compared to other 22-healing foods.