Interesting Cooking Choices - Sausage and Cured Sausage

[Jimmy]

Yes, yet another cooking suggestion!

This has been suggested before, but the following outline is for a discussion of the mechanical benefits of sausage making.

Each type of sausage would be crafted from an existing single type of meat. Creating one kilogram of raw sausage would be performed at a work bench and require one kilogram of raw meat, one fresh gut, and one cutting tool (hunting knife, improvised knife, hatchet, improvised hatchet). Crafting time for raw sausage would be a short duration, between 10 to 30 minutes depending on game balance decisions.

After being crafted, the sausage could either be cooked or cured.

Cooking raw sausages returns the same kcal of energy as the ingredients, but 0% dehydration due to the sausage skin sealing in the juices.

Curing raw sausages takes 5 days as per raw gut, retains the same kcal of energy, reduces item weight by half, and causes dehydration on consumption by an extra -5% compared to the same cooked meat.

This recipe adds an incentive for harvesting guts from animals, which personally I find I skip once I have more than half a dozen or so. Harvesting guts takes time and energy; this increases resource expenditure by remaining outside longer, increases risk of ambush by wolves whilst carried through higher scent footprint, and increases tool wear if used for harvesting. Requiring a workbench for crafting likewise increases travel time with raw meat and guts, adding risk against the benefit of higher quality food compared to cooking the meat fresh on site.

In exchange, the two options offer two different benefits for their investment. The first option reduces hydration needs, effectively reducing 0.03-0.09kg of water required when consumed. A minor benefit overall, but useful for short distance travel to avoid extra water weight, and is especially attractive for black bear meat with its high hydration loss. The second option requires a higher time investment, but offers a hefty weight savings with a minor water weight penalty increase, ideal for long distance travel rations. This would put cured moose sausage or cured bear sausage into the same kcal/kg as peanut butter, but with slightly more hydration loss in trade.

Could you see yourself spending the extra time and effort crafting sausages if these benefits existed?