A furnace is a block that cooks raw food and smelts ore into metal

You build a furnace by arranging eight cobblestone blocks in a square pattern, leaving the center empty. Place the cobblestone in your crafting grid so that every edge square has one block and the middle stays blank. The result is a furnace you can place anywhere in your world. Once placed, you put raw materials in the top slot, fuel in the bottom slot, and collect the finished product from the output slot on the right.

A furnace is one of the first major tools you'll want to make because it opens up cooking and smelting — two things that turn basic materials into useful ones. Without a furnace, you're limited to eating raw meat and raw potatoes, which restore less hunger than cooked versions. You also can't turn iron ore into iron ingots, which you need for almost every metal tool and weapon.

Key Takeaways

  • Cobblestone is the only material you need: eight blocks arranged in a square with the center empty in your crafting grid.
  • You can cook raw meat, raw fish, potatoes, and kelp in a furnace, and each cooked version restores more hunger than the raw version.
  • Any block that burns — wood, coal, charcoal, or wooden planks — works as fuel, and one piece of coal smelts up to eight items.
  • A furnace takes about ten seconds to cook one item, and you can speed this up by using a blast furnace for ores or a smoker for food.

Where to find or mine cobblestone for your furnace

Cobblestone is the most common stone block in Minecraft. You find it anywhere you dig down into the ground past the dirt and grass layer. Mine it with a wooden pickaxe or better — a stone pickaxe, iron pickaxe, or diamond pickaxe all work. If you hit cobblestone with your bare hand or a shovel, it breaks but doesn't drop anything.

You need eight blocks total. If you're just starting out, dig down about five blocks and you'll hit stone. Mine eight blocks of it and you have everything you need. Cobblestone also appears naturally in villages, in the walls of caves, and as the outer layer of mountains. If you're near water, you can also create cobblestone by letting lava flow into water — the two liquids touching create the block instantly.

The crafting recipe: eight blocks in a square

Open your crafting grid (the 3×3 square in your inventory). Place one cobblestone block in each of the eight outer squares: top-left, top-middle, top-right, middle-left, middle-right, bottom-left, bottom-middle, and bottom-right. Leave the center square empty. The furnace appears in the result slot on the right side of the grid.

If you place the blocks wrong — for example, filling the center square or leaving out a corner — the furnace won't appear. The pattern has to be a complete ring with nothing in the middle. Once you see the furnace in the result slot, click it to add it to your inventory. You can now place it anywhere by selecting it and right-clicking (or using the place button on mobile or console).

What fuel burns in a furnace and how long it lasts

Any block or item that catches fire works as fuel. The most common choices are coal, charcoal, wood blocks, and wooden planks. One piece of coal smelts up to eight items before it's used up. One wood block or wooden plank smelts only one or two items, so coal is more efficient if you have it. Charcoal, which you make by cooking wood in a furnace, works exactly like coal and lasts just as long.

Less common fuels include lava buckets (which smelt 100 items), blaze rods (which smelt 12 items), and dried kelp blocks (which smelt 20 items). Sticks, leaves, and other plant material burn very quickly and are almost worthless as fuel. If you're early in the game and don't have coal yet, collect wood, turn it into planks, and use those — it's slow but it works until you find coal underground.

What you can cook and smelt in a furnace

A furnace cooks food and smelts ore. For food, you can cook raw beef, raw pork, raw chicken, raw mutton, raw fish, potatoes, and kelp. Each cooked version restores more hunger than the raw version — for example, raw beef restores 1.5 hunger points, but cooked beef restores 4. This matters because hunger affects how fast you can run and whether you can jump high enough to climb.

For smelting, you put ore blocks in the top slot. Iron ore becomes iron ingots, gold ore becomes gold ingots, copper ore becomes copper ingots, and so on. You can also smelt sand into glass, cactus into green dye, and stone into smooth stone. A furnace is slower than a blast furnace (which smelts ore twice as fast) or a smoker (which cooks food twice as fast), but it's the only one that does both jobs, so it's useful early on.

How to use your furnace once it's placed

Right-click the furnace to open its interface. You'll see three slots: the top one for the item you want to cook or smelt, the bottom one for fuel, and the right one for the finished product. Put your raw material in the top slot and your fuel in the bottom slot. The furnace starts cooking immediately and shows a progress bar. When the bar fills, the cooked item appears in the right slot and you can take it.

You can put multiple items in the top slot and they'll cook one after another as long as you have fuel. If you run out of fuel mid-cook, the progress bar stops and the item stays raw until you add more fuel. The furnace remembers which item you were cooking, so you don't lose progress. You can also remove items from any slot at any time — there's no penalty for stopping early.

Blast furnaces and smokers: faster alternatives for specific jobs

Once you have iron ingots, you can build a blast furnace or a smoker. A blast furnace smelts ore twice as fast as a regular furnace but only works on ore, metal blocks, and a few other materials — it won't cook food. A smoker cooks food twice as fast but only works on food. If you're doing a lot of one job, these are worth building, but a regular furnace does both and is fine for most of the game.

A blast furnace needs five iron ingots, one furnace, and three smooth stone blocks. A smoker needs five logs and one furnace. Both are more complex than a furnace but not by much. If you're just starting out, stick with a regular furnace until you have iron and feel like upgrading.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I cook multiple items at once?

You can put multiple items in the top slot and they'll cook one at a time, but only one item cooks at a time. If you want to cook many items faster, build multiple furnaces side by side and run them all at once. This is much more efficient than waiting for one furnace to finish.

What happens if I break a furnace while it's cooking?

The furnace drops as a block you can pick up and place elsewhere. Any items inside it also drop. You don't lose the items or the furnace, so breaking it is safe — you just have to collect everything and set it up again.

Do I need a furnace to survive?

You can survive without one by eating raw food, but cooked food restores more hunger, which means you need to eat less often. A furnace also lets you smelt ore into ingots, which you need for metal tools and weapons. Most players build one within the first hour of a new world.

Can I use a furnace in the Nether or the End?

Yes, furnaces work the same way in every dimension. You can place one in the Nether or the End and cook or smelt just like you would in the Overworld. The only difference is what materials are available in each dimension.