Welsh cuisine encompasses the cooking styles, traditions and recipes associated with Wales. While there are many dishes that can be considered Welsh due to their ingredients and/or history, dishes such as cawl, Welsh rarebit, laverbread, Welsh cakes, bara brith, and Glamorgan sausage have all been regarded as symbols of Welsh food. Some variation in dishes exists across the country, with notable differences existing in the Gower Peninsula, a historically isolated rural area which developed self-sufficiency in food production (see Cuisine of Gower).

While some culinary practices and dishes have been imported from other parts of Britain, uniquely Welsh cuisine grew principally from the lives of Welsh working people, largely as a result of their isolation from outside culinary influences and the need to produce food based on the limited ingredients they could produce or afford. Due to the nature of the landscape, sheep farming in Wales is well-suited and extensive, with lamb and mutton being the meats most traditionally associated with the country. Beef and dairy cattle are also raised widely, and there is a strong fishing culture. Fisheries and commercial fishing are common and seafood features widely in Welsh cuisine.

Vegetables, beyond cabbages and leeks, were historically rare. The leek has been a national symbol of Wales for at least 400 years and Shakespeare refers to the Welsh custom of wearing a leek in Henry V.

Since the 1970s the number of restaurants and gastropubs in Wales has increased significantly and by 2024 there were six Michelin-starred restaurants located in the country.

"the effects of a self-denying Puritanical religion and much past hardship understandably colour Welsh attitudes to their native cookery. Even today a discussion of the subject is apt to generate a surprising amount of heat – I have been treated to more than one lecture on the frivolity of studying the history of Welsh food!'"

There are few written records of traditional Welsh foods; recipes were held within families and passed down orally between the women of the family. The lack of records was highlighted by Mati Thomas in 1928, who made a unique collection of 18th century "Welsh Culinary Recipes" as an award-winning Eisteddfod entry.

Those with the skills and inclination to write Welsh recipes, the upper classes, conformed to English styles and therefore would not have run their houses with traditional Welsh cuisine. The traditional cookery of Wales originates from the daily meals of peasant folk, unlike other cultures where meals often started in the kitchens of the gentry and would be adapted.

Historically, the King of the Welsh people would travel with his court, in a circuit, demanding tribute in the form of food from communities they visited as they went. The tribute was codified in the Laws of Hywel Dda, showing that people lived on beer, bread, meat, and dairy products, with few vegetables beyond cabbages and leeks. The laws show how much value was put on different parts of Welsh life at the time, for example that wealth was measured in cattle; they also show that the court included hunters, who would be restricted to seasonal hunting.