Pokémon Quest: What Happens When You Cook 5 Rainbow Matter?

Cooking five slots of Rainbow Matter in Pokémon Quest always results in a Special Mulligan Stew à la Cube.

While this produces the highest possible quality tier for a dish, doing so is an inefficient use of resources. Because Rainbow Matter lacks a distinct color or ingredient classification, five slots of it fail the criteria for any specific recipe and trigger the default Mulligan Stew.

Why Five Rainbow Matter Makes Special Mulligan Stew

In Pokémon Quest, recipes check for specific colors, ingredient traits (such as soft, sweet, hard, or mushroom), and value thresholds:

• No Inherent Category: Rainbow Matter has no standalone color or physical trait. A pot filled entirely with Rainbow Matter meets zero specific recipe criteria, forcing the game to resolve the dish as a Mulligan Stew à la Cube.
• Precious Value Score: Rainbow Matter is classified as a "Precious" ingredient, sharing the highest value tier with rare ingredients like Honey, Balm Mushrooms, Big Roots, and Icy Rocks. Filling all five cooking slots with Precious-tier items pushes the dish's internal quality score to the maximum threshold, guaranteeing a Special-quality outcome.

Special Mulligan Stew takes the standard number of expeditions to cook for its tier (four expeditions, before cooking decoration reductions). While a Special stew can attract rare species like Dratini, Snorlax, Lapras, and Eevee, it draws randomly from nearly the entire roster of base-form Pokémon in the game.

The Cost of Cooking Five Rainbow Matter

Spending five slots of Rainbow Matter on a single dish consumes a massive quantity of rare ingredients for an untargeted pool. Ingredient requirements scale by cooking pot, making the loss severe in late-game cooking:

Spending 500 Rainbow Matter in a Gold Pot on an untargeted Mulligan Stew risks summoning common species like Pidgey or Zubat, squandering hours of expedition farming.

How to Use Rainbow Matter Efficiently

Rainbow Matter functions best as a flexible substitute to complete targeted high-tier recipes when you are missing specific Precious ingredients:

• Trait Mimicry: Rainbow Matter mirrors the traits of the other ingredients placed alongside it. For example, placing one Rainbow Matter into a pot with four Honey will adopt the sweet, yellow, precious traits of Honey, allowing you to complete a Special Honey Curry à la Cube without waiting for a fifth rare drop.
• Anchor Targeted Recipes: Maintain at least three primary ingredients that define your desired dish, using one or two Rainbow Matter purely to meet the "Precious" ingredient count for Very Good or Special qualities.
• Ambrosia Cooking: Rainbow Matter cannot replace a Mystic Shell. Cooking Ambrosia of Legends à la Cube to attract Legendary Pokémon requires at least one Mystic Shell. However, combining one Mystic Shell with four Rainbow Matter fulfills the high-value requirement for a Special or Very Good Ambrosia without consuming your other rare color-specific ingredients.

Reserve your Rainbow Matter strictly for Gold Pot recipes where the resulting Pokémon receive the stat and Power Stone bonuses necessary for late-game expeditions.