A magical meal takes 1 hour to cook and 10 minutes to consume and digest. A magical meal must be fully consumed within 1 hour of being cooked; if it is eaten after this hour, it imparts no magical effects. The effects last 8 hours, or until dispelled by dispel magic or similar magic. A creature that eats a magical meal while already under the effects of another loses the effects of the previous meal at the end of the 10 minutes required to consume the new meal.
Dispelling Magical Meals
For the purposes of the dispel magic spell, all of a meal’s effects count as one single spell of a level based on the meal’s rarity: uncommon, 2nd-level; rare, 4th-level; very rare, 6th-level; legendary, 8th level.
Portions. A magical meal is typically large enough to feed one Large creature or up to four Medium or smaller creatures. If you have more than four players at your table, consider allowing a single meal to have enough portions to feed the entire party; it can be more fun that way.
Checks. Making a magical meal requires five things:
A recipe
Monster components
Essence
Cook’s utensils
A source of heat
A creature with all these in their possession can spend 1 hour cooking. At the conclusion of the hour, the creature makes a Constitution (cook’s utensils) check against the DC of the recipe (see Ingredients and Recipe DC table). Depending on the difference between the DC and the result of the check, a magical meal can have quirks.
Helping Hands. Too many cooks spoil the broth, but a decent sous chef can pay dividends. For this reason, in place of using the Help action to grant advantage (a mechanic avoided in harvesting and crafting), one creature can help with the meal if it spends the entire hour helping the cook. If the creature has proficiency with cook’s utensils, it adds its proficiency bonus to the result of the Constitution (cook’s utensils) check. If it doesn’t have this proficiency, it adds half of its proficiency bonus to the result of the check instead.