Overview
Dried Kelp restores only 1 hunger point, and it is still one of the most useful foods in the game, because it is eaten in roughly half the time of anything else. Most food takes 1.6 seconds to consume; dried kelp takes about 0.86, which means you can top up mid-fight or mid-sprint without standing still long enough to be hit. Combine that with a kelp farm — kelp grows on its own underwater, needs no bone meal and no tending, and a single automated column produces stacks an hour — and it becomes the cheapest renewable food there is. Its second life is fuel: nine dried kelp craft into a Dried Kelp Block, which burns for 200 seconds and smelts 20 items, making it the best renewable furnace fuel that is not lava. Many players run a kelp farm purely for the fuel and eat the surplus. Smelt raw kelp in a furnace or smoker to dry it, and stack the results to 64 like any ordinary food. Few items pay for their farm as quickly, and none of them are this dull to look at.
Eating fast enough to matter in a fight, and — crafted into blocks — the best renewable furnace fuel in the game short of a lava bucket.
Dried Kelp is edible, and how much it is worth depends on its saturation as much as its hunger value. Eating it restores 1 hunger points and 0.6 saturation. Sixty-four fit in one inventory slot.
The recipe calls for Dried Kelp Block. It is smelted from Kelp. Nothing on the crafting grid is made from it.
How to get it
Smelt kelp in a furnace or smoker to get 1 dried kelp each. Craft 9 of them into a Dried Kelp Block, which burns for 200 seconds — enough fuel to smelt 20 items.
Tips
- It eats in about half the time of any other food, which is why speedrunners and PvP players carry it.
- Nine dried kelp make a block worth 200 seconds of burn time; a kelp farm is a self-fuelling smelter.
- Kelp grows on its own in any ocean, so the farm needs no bone meal and almost no maintenance.
- Smelting kelp with kelp blocks is self-sustaining once the farm is producing more than the furnace consumes.
Properties
Eating it restores 1 hunger and 0.6 saturation — a ratio of 0.6, which is what decides how long you stay full rather than how fast the bar refills. One inventory slot holds 64, so a double chest holds 3,456.
- Stack size
- 64
- Hunger restored
- 1
- Saturation
- 0.6
- Saturation ratio
- 0.6
- Category
- Food
How to get it
Crafting Table
Shapeless recipe
Dried Kelp ×9
Furnace · 10s · 0.1 XP
Dried Kelp
Also works in: Smoker, Campfire
Used to craft
Dried Kelp is an ingredient in 1 recipes, producing Dried Kelp Block.
How it compares to other foods
Sorted by saturation ratio, Dried Kelp is 30 of 41 foods in the game. Ratio is saturation divided by hunger restored: it is what decides how long the hunger bar stays still, not how fast it refills.
Golden Carrot leads the list at a ratio of 2.4, and anything at or above 1.6 is worth carrying on a long trip.
| Item | Hunger restored | Saturation | Saturation ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poisonous Potato | 2 | 1.2 | 0.6 |
| Raw Mutton | 2 | 1.2 | 0.6 |
| Dried Kelp ← | 1 | 0.6 | 0.6 |
| Potato | 1 | 0.6 | 0.6 |
| Honey Bottle | 6 | 1.2 | 0.2 |
| Rotten Flesh | 4 | 0.8 | 0.2 |
Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
How do you make Dried Kelp in Minecraft?
Dried Kelp is crafted from Dried Kelp Block.
What is the stack size of Dried Kelp?
Dried Kelp stacks to 64.
Is Dried Kelp worth eating?
It restores 1 hunger and 0.6 saturation, a ratio of 0.6. Anything above a ratio of 1.6 keeps you full longer per slot, so treat this as a stopgap rather than a staple.
