Should we just throw away all the Rotten Flesh? Doesn’t seem to be very useful, and it doesn’t taste very good on top of that. So what should we do with all this brown looking meat that we accumulate when killing Zombies?
In Minecraft almost every item has its use, and Rotten Flesh is no exception. It can be used to obtain certain achievements, replenish hunger, as food for Wolves and to trade with Villagers. Let’s see it in details!
Achievements
This doesn’t make Rotten Flesh useful for the gameplay itself, but if you like to complete all games achievements you will surely be interested in this. Eating Rotten Flesh will be necessary to complete two achievements: A Balanced Diet and Iron Belly.
While Iron Belly will be completed as soon as you eat Rotten Flesh, you will need to eat a specific list of food items to complete A Balanced Diet. It’s actually a pretty long list:
- Apple
- Baked Potato
- Beetroot
- Beetroot Soup
- Bread
- Carrot
- Chorus Fruit (which is needed to craft an Endrod)
- Cooked Chicken
- Cooked Cod
- Cooked Mutton
- Cooked Porkchop
- Cooked Rabbit
- Cooked Salmon
- Cookie
- Dried Kelp
- Enchanted Golden Apple
- Golden Apple
- Golden Carrot
- Glow Berries
- Honey Bottle
- Melon Slice
- Mushroom Stew
- Poisonous Potato
- Potato
- Pufferfish (which you can use to brew the Water Breathing Potion)
- Pumpkin Pie
- Rabbit Stew
- Raw Beef
- Raw Chicken
- Raw Cod
- Raw Mutton
- Raw Porkchop
- Raw Rabbit
- Raw Salmon
- Rotten Flesh
- Spider Eye
- Steak
- Suspicious Stew
- Sweet Berries
- Tropical Fish
Food Source
Eating Rotten Flesh is actually useful. It restores 4 hunger (or 2 entire hunger icons on the hunger bar).
The problem is that it also has a 80% chance of giving you the Hunger status effect for 30 seconds, which will make your hunger bar deplenish much faster.
But the hunger bar deplenishes only if you move, jump or run. So the trick is to eat all the Rotten Flesh that you want and then stay still where you are until the Hunger effect ends. Eating more pieces of Rotten Flesh will not make the Hunger effect last more than 30 seconds, it will just reset the duration to 30 seconds.
Otherwise, if you don’t want to wait 30 seconds, you can also drink Milk to instantly remove the Hunger status effect. To get Milk you will need to right-click on a Cow while holding on your hand a Bucket.
All considered, Rotten Flesh could be a life saver if you don’t have better food, which can happen when you are trying to survive your first night for example.
Breeding and healing Wolves
Wolves don’t seem to be affected by the Rotten Flesh negative effect, to them it is just regular food. For this reason you can give it to tamed Wolves to breed and heal them. You can also give it to baby tamed Wolves to make them grow 10% faster.
Trading
For some reason, novice Cleric Villagers are more than happy to accept Rotten Flesh and trade it for Emeralds. One Emerald would cost you 32 Rotten Flesh. It is a lot, but considering the few other uses that Rotten Flesh has, it is a pretty good deal.
So if you happen to have built a Zombie Spawner farm, you should look for a Village where you can unload all your your stashes of Rotten Flesh (related: How to find ALL Mob Spawners in Minecraft).
If you find a Village without Clerics, you can turn one of them into being one. To see how to change Villagers profession, you can check here.
Conclusions
So these are all the Minecraft Rotten Flesh uses. You can use it to obtain the Iron Belly and A Balanced Diet achievements, replenish hunger, as food for Wolves, and to trade with Villagers. If you want to eat it, just remember to not move or jump while the Hunger status effect wears off. Thank you very much for reading the article this far and I hope I’ll see you again around here. See you and take care!
