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Cooking things, or smelting in some cases, is vital to Minecraft. Without food, players won't survive. Currently, there is no flame or fire related enchantment for a pickaxe, so the only way to turn raw resources into ingots is to smelt them in a furnace or blast furnace. This can be tricky without coal, the primary source of fuel in the game.
When coal is scarce, there are multiple other sources of fuel that can be found in the game. Charcoal is the primary replacement, which is obtained by smelting wood. However, there are plenty of other fuel sources.
Any wooden block, whether it's a log, a plank, a lectern, or a composter will serve as fuel. Interestingly, buckets of lava will also work as a strong source of fuel. It is also renewable if a player is near a lava pool or the Nether portal.
Lava bucket fuel in Minecraft
Lava buckets can be obtained by clicking a bucket in any pool of lava or the source block of flowing lava. Buckets are crafted with two iron ingots (which are smelted, ironically).
Once the player has the bucket, they can place it on the bottom of the furnace. As is common knowledge, the furnace will cook or smelt whatever item is inside.
Lava buckets are actually the best source of fuel in Minecraft. They're not as easy to come by as coal, but they last much longer.
Lava buckets will burn for 20,000 ticks, while a block of coal will burn for 16,000 ticks. For context, a nether brick is the lowest source of fuel as it burns for 20 ticks.
A stack of items, whether it's food or raw resources, will take 64% of the lava bucket's fuel capacity. Furthermore, the bucket will remain after the fuel is burned up so players won't even have to craft new buckets to continue this cycle.
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