Theory Crafting: Cooking efficiently

[TerribleSurvivor]

Hey community!

I saw some complaints about the new cooking mechanic (it takes too long, it makes no sense etc.). While i think that some complaints are undebatably valid (Same amount of time for different quantities of the same good doesn´t make sense!) it does not mean that this new cooking mechanic is in a complelty wrong spot. In the following script i want to share my approaches and solutions in terms dealing with the new cooking mechanics.

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The very first thing i noticed when i was first confronted with the new cooking mechanic is that it rewards players who plan ahead before cooking (or even better: before hunting). It´s not the "dumbed down" version anymore where you sit there for approximatly 20 minutes per piece of meat watching it frizzle on the fire until it´s done. Thus I would always think ahead before starting to cook/boil anything. (Honestly i really like the new depth in the cooking mechanics. It is a more logistical challenge that makes the game more interesting without making it straight out harder).

There are mainly four things to consider for cooking:

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1. Choose the right time! Don´t cook or boil anything reactively (When needs and supplies hit the bottom). It costs time, condition and advantageous situations (e.g. clear, "warm" weather) that you could and most likely also would want to use for more exciting activities (Hunting, Exploring, etc.). Wait for bad weather (heavy fog/snow & blizzards) to occur. That´s time you cannot use for the exciting stuff but indeed for producing cooked meat or new safe water to prepare for better weather and your outdoor activities.
2. Mind your capacities! Take into consideration how many cooking slots are available per fire source! How much fuel will it need to be done? How much time is it to be accounted for? Can i carry the newly created load? You want to have enough fuel before you even start cooking. Take it into account. For me personally, high quantities of sticks paired with some logs/pieces of coal proved to be one of the best and most reliable fuel sources so far. It is recommendable to always have a certain amount of fuel for a couple of hours at least available to be able to use bad weather to a good (at best full) extend for cooking/boiling.
3. Be flexible! Assign side tasks to your cooking sessions! You need approx. 1h for a piece of meat to be done. You can either choose to wait it out twiddling thumbs or alternativly do something actually productive in the meantime! Prepare freshly harvested reishi/rosehips or harvest quarters of your last kill. Mend worn out clothes! Read books to improve your survival skills. Use the time to gather additional fuel! You can use the cooking time for your low priority and optional tasks.
4. Consider cooking as a side task when you are forced to light a fire anyways! It´s basically the third point of this enumeration in an inverted manner. Imagine being at high risk of hypothermia or at low condition while freezing! Use the time needed to warm up for cooking something or boiling water! Applied to such situations even before last patch and with the current version even more.

Now that we have discussed the theoretical aspects of how to cook efficiently let´s get more practical. Let´s start with some basic strategies.

General rules:

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• Creating multiple fireplaces with the same amount of cooking slots each does not increase the effective fuel consumption. But stoves are the best cooking places!
• Campfires are more efficient than Pot Belly Stoves or Furnaces
• Cooking is most time-efficient if you can cook as much meat as you can harvest in the same period of time (If you need 1h to cook a piece of meat you want to cook as much meat as you can harvest in one hour at the same time)

1. Choosing the right gear:

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Recycled cans are the way to go for boiling/cooking in the outback away from home. Cooking Pots are just way too heavy to be efficiently carried with you while exploring. You can consider using them while hunting though.

2. Harvesting done right:

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The process of cooking meat starts by the time you are harvesting a carcass. Don´t harvest low quantities of meat! Always aim for the 1kg max size for a meat unit. This way you are minimizing the number of iterations in your cooking sessions.

3. Dealing with bunny kills:

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Dont cook one bunny at a time. Stockpile higher quanitites of bunny meat (at least 3 kg) and cook them all at once. Consider cooking a single bunny only when you have nothing else or better to do.

4. Dealing with low quantity carcasses (Wolf kills, wolf carcasses):

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They provide quite low quantities of fresh meat (max. 5kg). *Start a fire first if wolves are around* If the weather allows for it, the first thing you want to do is to harvest the first two kilograms of meat. Then, if not already done (as a counter-measure to wolves), light a fire. Make sure it burns long enough (approx. 70-80 minutes) to cook those two kilograms. Then continue with harvesting meat to make sure you can proceed with your cooking once a previous load finishes. Guts and hide should be harvested at the very last. This way you are not wasting time on your fire. If no meat is remaining to be cooked by that time consider boiling some water or heating up a cup of tea to make your body warmth last longer once you leave the fire.

Depending on the situation this strategy can be applied to fresh deer kills as well. 

5. Dealing with high quanitity carcasses (Deer, Moose, Bear):

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Definitly quarter them if they are further away from your base. Their carcasses are too large to cook all of the meat outdoors due to changing weather. For high quantity carcasses you need to prepare first to process them in (ideally) one session. Gather enough fuel worth of at least 12 hours of cooking time (depends though) and prepare sufficient amounts of safe water to not being forced to interrupt your cooking sessions too many times. This way you will be able to lazily go through the meat quantities (cooking obtained meat while in the meantime harvesting your kill).

Note that bases with stoves like Pleasant Valley Farmstead and Hunting Lodge are best suited to cook those large quantities of meat. Most bases do not offer more than two to three indoor cooking slots though. Consider using campfires in windproof locations (barns and shacks for example). At best you will cook as much meat as you can harvest in the same amount of time.

6. Cooking Sessions as your main side task:

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Cooking Sessions are always appropriate if you are forced to stay in your base for longer periods of time anyways. You can never have enough water and low priority goods like tea, coffee or bunny meat (<3kg) at best are made in these sessions. It also helps improving your cooking skill.

 

Well, this is it so far. Feel free to call me out on things i did wrong or forgot to mention. Bring in your own ideas. I hope i was able to help at last!

 

Edit:

Hotzn metioned that fires are a deterrant to wolves which since last patch are sped up in their movement too if you pass time quickly. I can confirm that. Always light a fire first when wolves are around. Take bears into account while harvesting. Check from time to time if a bear comes close!

[Hotzn]

Insightful. I would further suggest not to start harvesting a carcass and then lighting a fire - I read in another thread that as your personal time is sped up the game now speeds up general time as well (not officially confirmed, but it would make sense a change in game mechanics, so I presume it's true). If that is so, I would strongly suggest to FIRST light a fire and then start harvesting to have protection from fast-approaching wolves. And - another consequence of the aforementioned change - do not ever start harvesting on a bear wandering route.

Concerning the cooking pot, this will yield 2 litres of water per pot and therefore likely use a cooking slot much more efficiently than a recycled can. Might be worthwhile even with the additional weight.

Further insights to follow...

[TerribleSurvivor]

36 minutes ago, Hotzn said:

And - another consequence of the aforementioned change - do not ever start harvesting on a bear wandering route

I don´t know whether bears fear fire or not. I would definitly look out for bears from time to time.

36 minutes ago, Hotzn said:

Concerning the cooking pot, this will yield 2 litres of water per pot and therefore likely use a cooking slot much more efficiently than a recycled can. Might be worthwhile even with the additional weight.

Editted: Cans and pots melt and boil water at the same speed. The only advantage the pot has over the can is that it can boil more water at once thus needs less baby-sitting than a can. Not really enough to justify 1.6kg additional load on my shoulders to be honest. Unless we are talking about special cases like local hunting!

[Ruruwawa]

15 hours ago, TerribleSurvivor said:

I don´t know whether bears fear fire or not. I would definitly look out for bears from time to time.

Bears do not fear fire.  Moose do, however.

[TerribleSurvivor]

Yep i just learned it the hard way

[TerribleSurvivor]

6 minutes ago, greggbert said:

The other advantage, a huge one, is that a can uses 75% more fuel and time to boil the same amount of water.  That is enough to justify the extra load, for me.

I explained why it doesn´t really matter whether you are using a can or a pot. Melting snow takes 20 Minutes per 0.5 liters regardless whether you are using a pot or a can! Boiling uses the same amount of time as well based on the quanitity of water to be purified regardless whether you are using a can or a pot! The only real advantage a pot gives you is in terms of cooking.

Btw: Your math is completly wrong

[Ruruwawa]

2 hours ago, TerribleSurvivor said:

I explained why it doesn´t really matter whether you are using a can or a pot. Melting snow takes 20 Minutes per 0.5 liters regardless whether you are using a pot or a can! Boiling uses the same amount of time as well based on the quanitity of water to be purified regardless whether you are using a can or a pot! The only real advantage a pot gives you is in terms of cooking.

Btw: Your math is completly wrong

For me the less-babysitting aspect of the pot is compelling because it increases the range of tasks I can do while making water.  Reading books, breaking down large furniture and even sleeping in short stretches.  I don't carry a cookpot around with me during the day, of course.  But if I'm moving bases, I might bring a pot.

[Hotzn]

On 18.6.2018 at 12:59 AM, TerribleSurvivor said:

Cans and pots melt and boil water at the same speed.

Hm, you are right. I just presumed the pot to be more efficient, because I found it difficult to guess why one would suffer the additional weight. But looking more closely, I confirm that the pot is not more eficient. But as @Ruruwawasaid - it frees up more time to potentially leave the fire or perform longer-lasting tasks. I now carry around one pot and one recycled can all of the time. 

[TerribleSurvivor]

I think that we can leave that to the players preference at last!

[TerribleSurvivor]

*Addition to the "Theory Crafting: Cooking Efficiently" OP*

7. Unattended timed Cooking:

You can leave a meal or a pot of water unattended if you create a fire that burns just long enough to get the job done but then extinguishes shortly afterwards.

Example: You need 2:40 h to melt and boil a pot full of water (2 Liters). It will however boil away roughly 0:30 h after the boiling process finished. Thus you could setup a fire that burns for somewhat between 2:45 h and 3:00 h to proceed through the whole melting and boiling process. The fire extinguishes shortly after the process is completed which will prevent the water from boiling away. Thus you can safely go to bed, rest for 12h and let the fire do its job. When you wake up, you (normally) have 2x 2L of water ready for use without wasting active time on boiling and attending it!

This technique obviously can be applied to any cooking process as long as the fire extinguishes in time!

[Gazbeard]

Cooking example of multi-tasking ... assumes you have pre-collected the wood.

Venison 1kg steaks need 1hr 20 minutes to cook ... slap a pair on the fire, sleep an hour then prep a set of reishi, rosehips or old mans beard - you'll finish just as the meat cooks.
Or, wolf takes 1hr 40 minutes to cook ... slap a pair of 1kg on the fire, read an hour then do a 30-40 minutes clothes repair.  Again you'll finish just as the meat finishes cooking.

0.5 litre of water needs 25 minutes in a can to melt and boil - ideal for 2 x 15 minute crafting tasks, or a 30 minutes clothes repair, or 3 x 10 minute clothes harvesting.

Edit to add - cooking times vary (get shorter) as your cooking skill increases ... keep an eye on cooking times as your run progresses so you don't end up burning the food.

 

[TerribleSurvivor]

@Gazbeard Assuming you are talking about cooking in your base: Are you aware that meat can be cooked in pots too (Given that you have pots available)?

Cooking meat in pots speeds up the process by ~15-20 minutes.

[TerribleSurvivor]

*Retrospective comment*

On 18.6.2018 at 12:30 AM, TerribleSurvivor said:

2. Harvesting done right:

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The process of cooking meat starts by the time you are harvesting a carcass. Don´t harvest low quantities of meat! Always aim for the 1kg max size for a meat unit. This way you are minimizing the number of iterations in your cooking sessions.

One little comment to this point:

Hinterland has updated the cooking mechanics so that low quantities of meat naturally take less time to be cooked than a full 1.0kg chunk. Thus you may not be forced to aim for 1.0kg chunks of meat to be time and fuel efficient but still, you will need less iterations which allows for longer tasks in the meantime.

[Gazbeard]

On 13/07/2018 at 2:15 PM, TerribleSurvivor said:

*Retrospective comment*

One little comment to this point:

Hinterland has updated the cooking mechanics so that low quantities of meat naturally take less time to be cooked than a full 1.0kg chunk. Thus you may not be forced to aim for 1.0kg chunks of meat to be time and fuel efficient but still, you will need less iterations which allows for longer tasks in the meantime.

This.
It's why I rarely cook meat in the pot - I'm usually multi-tasking and need the longer interval between swapovers.

[Gazbeard]

On 13/07/2018 at 9:59 AM, TerribleSurvivor said:

@Gazbeard Assuming you are talking about cooking in your base: Are you aware that meat can be cooked in pots too (Given that you have pots available)?

Cooking meat in pots speeds up the process by ~15-20 minutes.

Doesn't have to be in base - those times apply to tier 1 & 2 cooking and/or firestarting indoors and outdoors ... for level 3 skills upwards, check the bonuses in your journal for how they get shorter.

[TerribleSurvivor]

@Gazbeard Yup. No further discussion needed since this is clarified!

[Hotzn]

On 12.7.2018 at 8:01 PM, Gazbeard said:

Venison 1kg steaks need 1hr 20 minutes to cook ... slap a pair on the fire, sleep an hour then prep a set of reishi, rosehips or old mans beard - you'll finish just as the meat cooks.
Or, wolf takes 1hr 40 minutes to cook ... slap a pair of 1kg on the fire, read an hour then do a 30-40 minutes clothes repair.  Again you'll finish just as the meat finishes cooking.

Keep in mind that cooking times diminish as your cooking skill increases. 

[Luciën]

Since this is not yet talked about in this thread:
You can boil / warm up cans and cups within the heat range of the campfire or stove. I'd say it takes about twice as long to finish compared to putting it in the 'cooking slots'.

[TerribleSurvivor]

*Useful knowledge*

14 hours ago, Luciën said:

Since this is not yet talked about in this thread:
You can boil / warm up cans and cups within the heat range of the campfire or stove. I'd say it takes about twice as long to finish compared to putting it in the 'cooking slots'.

[ang3ldev1l]

This game transformed into a gigantic boding cooking symulator. If in past I was spending most of my time outside searching and looking for stuff, now half of the time I spend in this game is cooking and defending my steak's not to burn out while in this process i'm staring at the monitor literaly for minutes...There is no fun in this game anymore with this new stupid cooking system 

[s7mar7in]

On ‎7‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 2:01 PM, Gazbeard said:

Or, wolf takes 1hr 40 minutes to cook ... slap a pair of 1kg on the fire, read an hour then do a 30-40 minutes clothes repair.  Again you'll finish just as the meat finishes cooking.

This is great advice @Gazbeard.
An easy trap for accidentally burning food is the urge to retry upon a failed clothing repair...don't be fooled. 
The failed repair only takes a few seconds but uses all the repair time; so if you pull the trigger on a second attempt to repair you food is ruined.
Best of luck my friends.

[Blankshield]

I find the advice to start cooking immediately after harvesting to be a little odd.  I will (if I have stockpiles built up; obv. doesn't apply for the first stretch while you're in panic mode) not cook meat until it hits 50% condition.

What is the benefit to cooking immediately after/while harvesting?

 

[s7mar7in]

10 hours ago, Blankshield said:

What is the benefit to cooking immediately after/while harvesting?

Good morning everyone,

 This thread includes some great advice; "...use fire wisely...always be cooking something...multi-task"

• While harvesting in cold conditions a fire is often needed to avoid condition loss.
• The campfire is often recommended as a protection from wolf attack during harvesting.
• Never waste fire by always doing some cooking / boiling while harvesting.
• Harvest some steaks in a size large enough to allow time for harvesting hide / guts.
• Whenever ice fishing requires a fire, strive to also cook / boil while fishing.
• Cooking immediately will reduce risk of attack while traveling by reducing "scent-bars".
• Carry small pieces of cooked meat for use as wolf decoys, (less risk of food poisoning / less scent).
• May be better to cook while the sun is high rather than waiting till bedtime, (to conserve matches).

Similar to you @Blankshield, it did enter my thoughts that it may be better to cook only for the length of stay in that particular location, (stocked temporary outpost / camp), and leave any abandoned food as raw for use upon return.

• So to avoid ruined food, a good practice is to cook for a few days at a time.
• Store all extra meat and fish in deep-freeze as raw, (not cooked).
• Leave huts / camps better than as found, (drop a raw fish/steak, water bottle, firewood, recycled can).

Optimal actions are a benefit in all game experience levels, (higher levels may be more survival and less optimal).

Best of luck my friends.

[Mroz4k]

Not a bad guide, but for someone with a lot of experience it brings nothing new, in fact, re-visits some poor routines you might not want.

First, let me start by saying that my comments contribute to my personal gameplay and it is up to anyone to figure out their preferred way. So I don't mean my comments as a critique of this decent guide.

I will try to keep my comments short.

1. Choose the right time! - It is important to mention this relates to "base indoor" cooking completely. If you are in the wilds and are cooking yourself a lunch from a fresh kill, you might wanna make a campfire and start cooking during nice weather, while you go out and do something productive in the meantime. Cooking is a good use of time when weather is bad, then again so is sleeping, reading and a bunch of other things. Might be worth to cook while you sleep - sleeping in 1-hour intervals while swapping out meat, or cooking 1.5 l of water on a pot while taking 2-hour naps. Mind that with a higher level in cooking, the times shorten.

2. Capacities! - If this is your main base, you should have ample capacities. If you are on a trip, you should pick up enough firewood to have at least 4-hour burn time if you plan to do the cooking, and 12-hour burn time if you plan to go to sleep outside. Preferably the other one because you never know...
The best way to use ffirewood materials is to create short fires out of sticks, wait till 20 minute periods went through and use coal for the long-term fires. Cherish cedars and firs for they make good firewood for trips, and to gather more you need to damage your tools to collect more. Coal and sticks can be all found on the ground, and visiting coal mines once in a while is something that should be a part of your routine.

3. Flexible - This is mostly true. Word of advice - only mend your clothes if you are cooking while well rested. It is known that how tired you are affecting the chance of failing at repair. Harvesting is a better use of your time while cooking tired. Sharpening tools, cleaning guns or just reorganizing containers and doing inventory check are all good choices for when cooking while tired. I fully recommend doing most of the cooking while tired. Mend your clothes in the morning while its light outside, but the weather is still too cold to move about. Or if bad weather comes around and you are stuck inside with full fatigue bar.

4. Side task - you haven't really given us anything new here, it was properly explained in 3. point. But, there are some tips here you haven't mentioned. If you intend to warm up, putting on a 0,5 l of water in cans is a good use of the burning campfire. Or, you can use FRESH ingredients to make a cup of tea. Additionally, take your cold teas that you want to heat up and drop them NEXT to the campfire. You can heat them up WHILE cooking more water to use for other teas, or cooking fresh teas from the teabags/prepared natural teas. This goes for canned food, too - you can drop it next to the fire, the player will automatically open it and it will be heated up in roughly 20 minutes. If you placed it on the campfire, it would be heated in 15 minutes. Therefore, it is better to use the campfire slots to create new teas while placing the old tea around the campfire, because it only slows you down by 5 minutes, and 20 minutes is also the time necessary to cook a new cup of tea.

General rules:
- creating multiple fireplaces - It is true that it consumes fire faster - but it is NOT TRUE that this would not be worth doing it. For several reasons - heat bonus of multiple campfires combines. If you place them in different places, you are also lowering the risk of one bigger campfire getting blown out by a change in the wind. You use more firewood, but you can also increase the number of your cooking places. Great if you want to move out fast. Also, since you can use one campfire, take a torch out of it, and use that torch to fire the rest of the campfires, you are not using up precious matches. Finally, you are working on your firestarting skill. So there are drawbacks to multiple campfires (firewood consumption) but there are also benefits.

Not really true. The benefit of using pot bellies and furnace is that it is a windproof fire. Additionally, the furnace can reach much higher temperatures, which makes for a wonderful fire that restores your temp very fast. You only get 1 piece of food preparation, but you also get a benefit of having a windproof fire. Pot bellies and furnaces are also there for different reasons than cooking - to fish while warming up in cold weather, or to forge tools. The cooking slot is there for convenience - while you do other tasks, you can be boiling water to replenish your stock. I don't recommend cooking while smithing - you would burn it - while fishing it may be worth it, if you only fish for a short period of time.

1. Choosing the right gear - this is a matter entirely based on each person opinion. For examle.Best gear to take for trips, in my opinion, is 1 pot and 1 can, or 1 pot and 2 cans. Cans are useful for creating beverages, and heating up canned food (though not necessary for canned goods). Pots rule for food preparation because of the shorter time spent, or for boiling bigger amounts of water while you take short sleep sessions (very useful if you get cut off by bad weather mid-day and use this opportunity to get some shut eye). For actual cooking, if you find a carcass with 1,8 kg of meat, you can harvest it as is and cook the 1kg in a pot to reach roughly similar cooking times. I think it is worth taking a pot with you on your travels, despite the added weight.

2. This is entirely incorrect. I take it that the OP is not fully aware of the game mechanics so I don't mean to come off rude.
Whenever you find a carcass with 1.3-1,9 kg of meat and you want to make the best possible use of it, you can split it in between two EQUALLY sized meat portions. You can do so this way: Select to harvest all the meat that is left on the carcass, and watch the circle closely. When the circle reaches the half, hit Escape. This will stop the animal harvesting process and you will end up with roughly half of the meat that was initially left on the carcass. Now you can resume harvesting the rest. 

Doing it this way, you will be left with two pieces of food of roughly the same size, this means that on campfire, they will take almost the same amount of cooking time. This is the best way to fully utilize carcasses with the uneven amounts of meats. Very useful for big rabbits or wolf-kills and found carcasses. For carcasses with 1,1 -1,3KG I recommend taking the 1kg and use the rest (using the same method) to carve it up for small efficient decoys.

3. Using the method I described above, it may be worth it to cook 1 rabbit, if you are only stopping for a brief time. You can split the rabbit in two same-sized steaks, cook it while warming up and then move on after a nice rabbit snack. But generally, I agree that it is better to cook more rabbits at the same time - viz the 6th point - Cooking sessions.

4. Use the method above in 2nd point to harvest efficiently the entire carcass. If there is only a left-over of 1.4 or so meat, you can split it into two same sized steaks that can be cooked at the same speed.
The fire method is individual. I would recommend to instead clear the area of all predators before attempting to harvest. All it takes is to hit them and make them flee - then you can worry about harvesting in peace, while the predators run around the area, bleeding out. You should be aware of bear possibility in the area - and before you start harvesting, check for its presence. If there is one, be careful, if not, don't worry.

5. I highly disagree with this part, but this is also individual. I will describe my method.
Patented (not really) batch meat harvesting method designed for big animals, by Mroz4k
Because meat quality is the biggest concern with animal harvesting, you should never use quartering to harvest meat, unless you are in desperate hurry (like blizzard). First you do after securing the area is you pick the size of your batches. I recommend this method for bears and moose, deer, if big, can also be split into batches. Select the size of a batch (if your home has 6 spot cooking stove, I recommend a batch of 6, otherwise pick a bigger amount). I prefer 8 kg batches. Harvest 8 kg batch of meat, then drop them on the ground. Select another batch. Repeat for 3 batches. This way, you will create a batch of 8 kg portions of meat of 95%, 86% and 82 % (percentages differ based on your settings) - but this is the best meat to be stored outside for low degradation stockpiling. If you harvest it all at once, it will all have the lowest condition. If you harvest it in 1kg, it will be the best meat, but it is a tedious process and with each time spent, the carcass freezes, and that increases the time spent on harvesting. Also, I think it damages the tools the most. Therefore, 3 batch system is the most efficient way to process big animals. Another benefit of these batches - you can literally leave them in the area of the carcass and they will spoil slowly, so that you can come back later for them when the situation allows it. Wolves will not eat them because they have no interest in meat unless they see you drop it - as in, they are stalking you, and you drop it, when it acts as a decoy.

For the rest of the meat, you can use quartering. The meat will be crappy so it is the best meat to use for consumption soon - however, quartering is a great way to gather the other materials from the animals. Taking the skin and guts takes significantly longer than quartering, but quartering leads to the same result. Therefore, this is the best way to gather those materials.

Using this method makes the processing of big animals very simple and effective. This method is not best suited for the hardest modes, but asssuming you have strong clothes, you can usually process the animal this way in one session - takes some 5 hours, I believe - to get the three batches, drop them and then quarter the rest of the big animal. 

Final warning: Be careful not to harvest too much of the meat - sometimes you may want to lower the amount of your 3rd batch so that the resulting amount of meat on the carcass is not too low - because if it is, the quartering option will not be there anymore.
From now on, you can process your big game carcasses just like professionals do! 

6. Cooking in sessions. I would use these to stockpile ready-to-use steaks for your base, rather than create a bunch of teas, but again, this is individual. You can cook small cuts of meat to increase your cooking skill faster. You can also use this in combination with my method for big game harvesting, and use these sessions to cook the batches of meat that were reaching the 50% raw meat condition threshold when you should cook them to restore the cooked meat to the 100% condition for best quality meat efficacy. 

All in all, pretty good guide - but was missing a lot of important points, and most of the high-end mechanic help. Very useful for intermediate players for sure.

[BareSkin]

Well, theorycrafting is debatable once you have fixed the difficulty level we're speaking of. The "best" way is different in Pilgrim, Interloper, Deadman... and depends on the main problem you have to fight.

On Interloper every time I can I delay cooking to dawn: it's when you can't travel due to cold, it's when you get the more bonus, and it's the best way to fight cabin fever. That's when you actually find food to cook, obviously