Preserving meat

[Sundance]

Has anyone else faced the same problem and overcome it?

    When you kill a moose you get way more meat than you can eat before it spoils, even once it’s cooked. So has anyone tried butchering as much as you can take and use before it spoils, leaving behind the rest to freeze on the carcass for later harvesting? Does this strategy work?

[MrWolf]

Don't leave meat on the carcass - once you touch a carcass it will lose condition quickly and disappear within a few days.

Cooking meat adds 50% to its condition, including ruined meat.  You can leave excess meat uncooked, come back to it later and cook it, and it will be at least 50% condition.  Don't leave the meat in a container (raw or cooked) because it will disappear upon becoming ruined.

 

Edited January 26, 2020 by MrWolf

[Sundance]

So leaving it in the cold, uncooked won’t do anything to preserve it, even if it’s harvested?

[MrWolf]

No.  Unfortunately, there is no way to preserve food that decays.  Meat will decay and raw meat decays much faster than cooked.  The best you can do is store meat outside, either on the ground or in containers (makes no difference).  Meat left indoors will decay faster.

Once you reach level 5 cooking, you can eat food at any condition, except raw meat which will still give you food poisoning and intestinal parasites (at certain game difficulties).  You can eat ruined cooked meat at level 5, so I guess that's kind of like a preservation of cooked meat.

 

Edited January 26, 2020 by MrWolf

[acada]

Meat is rotting. Thats unavoidable in the game. You can only change the speed. Quickest rotting is in the carcass. Second is meat placed indoor. Slowest rotting is for meat stored outside. So best way is to harvest all the meat from carcass. Then cook only what you can eat in 2-4 days. As written above: Dont worry about ruined meat. You add 50% to it when cooking. But you cannot refresh meat once it has been cooked.

[ManicManiac]

@Sundance

A couple of things (some have already been mentioned but I'll add to it).

• First you can leave your harvested meat in the snow (slowest decay for meat is outside in the cold).
• Once it gets down to low condition, you can cook it... (cooking raw meats will give it a 50% condition boost).
• You can leave your cooked meat in the snow (slowest decay for meat is outside in the cold).
• Even when the cooked meat gets to 0% - you can eat it with no issues provided you've made it to cooking level 5 (benefit of level 5 is that cooked food will no longer give you food poisoning).
• For those who are irritated by the ability to eat ruined cooked food (processed & canned food items are considered "cooked" for the purpose of benefit by the game)… I tend to just light a fire and place the food item by the fire.
  ***There is no gameplay effect in this, it's just a roll-play solution... "to thaw and re-heat frozen (ruined) food."   ***

Considering "ruined" food doesn't de-spawn and can be safely eaten anyway... I see no need for "preserving" meat. 

Edited January 26, 2020 by ManicManiac

[odizzido]

if anything frozen meat should last forever so I find it perfectly fine to eat 0% frozen meat. 

[acada]

@ManicManiac You sure that after reaching level 5 cooking you can eat rotten canned food? Because I had level 5 cooking and 7% energy bar gave me tummy ache.

[ManicManiac]

@acada

Yeah, I eat with impunity once I hit level 5...  I know folks have reported still getting food poisoning from certain things, but it's never happened to me yet.  I'm fairly sure the game considers "processed foods" as "cooked."  (I say fairly sure because I'm not on the development staff and I can't look at the coding or anything like that... it's just an observation from my experiences)

In all my time playing (since cooking skill bonuses became a thing), I've never had food poisoning after reaching level 5.  I mean never, and I would regularly eat 0% condition: meat, canned goods, energy bars, MRE's... literally anything I can get my hands on (with the obvious exception of raw meat).

For folks that hate the fact that we can eat "ruined" food...  I'd say just role play it and set it next to a fire for a little bit to "reheat" our "frozen foods."

Edited February 1, 2020 by ManicManiac

[turtle777]

On 2/1/2020 at 3:00 PM, acada said:

You sure that after reaching level 5 cooking you can eat rotten canned food? Because I had level 5 cooking and 7% energy bar gave me tummy ache.

Weird. I have never gotten food poisoning from any cooked or processed food after reaching level 5.

-t

Edited February 2, 2020 by turtle777

[acada]

OK maybe lets take my claim with pinch of salt (or how it is said in english). I clearly remember it was in my current run. It was in the DP Lighthouse. So it has to be around day 175 from my 285 days run. Now the question is whether I had level 5 cooking. I cannot read it from journal, but I think so because I trained it first. You know cooking small portion. Hmm I could test it in BI, there is ton of 0% sardines. If they are still there when I come back for more cartridges, I will test it for science.

[Jimmy]

By the way, wolves used to ignore dropped meat prior to Errant Pilgrim, correct?

I could have sworn they didn't eat bait items provided they were dropped from the inventory menu instead of using the decoy hotkey.

I've since noticed this behavior has changed, with a wolf stealing a piece of rabbit I'd dropped from my inventory, though I've not done exhaustive testing to confirm.

[UpUpAway95]

Best solution, IMO... cook everything you can early in the game and get to level 5 cooking.  Then eat cooked meat regardless of its condition with impunity.  For all intents and purposes, it is preserved even though the tag says it is ruined (it would be "nice" if the game changed the label on all your meat when you hit level 5 from whatever condition to "preserved").  I view the getting to level 5 cooking as the equivalent of learning how to preserve your meat.

You can speed up the process by cooking any deer or moose as smaller steaks, as well as cooking up all of the coffee and teas (all varieties) you can find.  Even without resorting to smaller steaks, it is relatively easy to get to level 5 cooking skill.  That is, I personally have never needed to use the smaller-steak trick to get to level 5.  As a further bonus, with lots of Reshi teas stored, you can also eat ruined processed foods (unheated).  You have a slight chance of getting food poisoning, so eat them when you want to get a long night's sleep without being tired enough... just drink a tea after  and settle in for 10 hours of sleep.

Edited February 3, 2020 by UpUpAway95

[MrWolf]

3 hours ago, Jimmy said:

By the way, wolves used to ignore dropped meat prior to Errant Pilgrim, correct?

I could have sworn they didn't eat bait items provided they were dropped from the inventory menu instead of using the decoy hotkey.

I've since noticed this behavior has changed, with a wolf stealing a piece of rabbit I'd dropped from my inventory, though I've not done exhaustive testing to confirm.

The decoy key has never been exclusive.  Wolves have always treated a dropped item as a decoy even if it was dropped from inventory.  I've used that many times to drop something I wanted to use as a decoy instead of letting the decoy key make the decision.

[JMK]

On my first game, I had no clue about anything, so I stored meat in fridges lol 🙄

[acada]

8 hours ago, Jimmy said:

By the way, wolves used to ignore dropped meat prior to Errant Pilgrim, correct?

I could have sworn they didn't eat bait items provided they were dropped from the inventory menu instead of using the decoy hotkey.

I've since noticed this behavior has changed, with a wolf stealing a piece of rabbit I'd dropped from my inventory, though I've not done exhaustive testing to confirm.

I think there is rule the wolf must see the bait dropped. It means if there is no vision line between the wolf and bait, the bait is ignored.

[jhickie]

I always thought it was odd that deer carcasses can be perfectly preserved by the cold, lasting forever on 100% frozen status. But, if you harvest that meat and drop it right back in the snow that preserved it so well, it now decays and will reach 0%. Frozen is frozen. As long as temps are below 0ºC, your harvest should be preserved indefinitely as a meatsicle.

But then again, I remember to suspend disbelief to maximize enjoyment.. this is a game. They have to keep us moving somehow. 

[EjectedCasings]

I was thinking along the lines of smoking. You could find a smoker somewhere in the world and smoke up some meat into little travel size portions. Also maybe something to do with the cannery?

[acada]

Hmm home-made jerky. I would like to have that. First you would need salt (not sure if it is required condition for smoking meat). Then time for meat preparation because you cannot put there whole kilogram of meat. Then few hours of fuel. And after that hmmmmm.

[Gracia_WolfSlayer]

On 2/3/2020 at 1:50 AM, acada said:

 I will test it for science.

FOR SCIENCE! (Salutes)

[Jimmy]

The image below is a great visual aid to understanding the risk of each food when eating low condition items.

[jhickie]

14 hours ago, Jimmy said:

The image below is a great visual aid to understanding the risk of each food when eating low condition items.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

This is incredible! Shout out to @stmSantana for putting this together!

Thanks for posting this, @Jimmy. This data is very helpful. 

[GothSkunk]

On 2/5/2020 at 2:22 PM, acada said:

Hmm home-made jerky. I would like to have that. First you would need salt (not sure if it is required condition for smoking meat). Then time for meat preparation because you cannot put there whole kilogram of meat. Then few hours of fuel. And after that hmmmmm.

Homemade jerky is delicious. I would know, I make it.

 

However, the process involved in making jerky is extensive. Even in ideal conditions, you're easily looking at cooking time of 3-6 hours, depending on the meats fat content.

At the difficulty level I play, I have absolutely no problem going through an entire moose or bear's worth of meat well before any of the cooked meat gets mouldy, so meat preservation is entirely unnecessary.

[acada]

On 2/13/2020 at 12:43 AM, Gracia_WolfSlayer said:

FOR SCIENCE! (Salutes)

Performed my test. Voyager difficulty. Now I have for sure level 5 cooking. I found another 0% energy bar, again on the Desolation Point so even the location is same. I ate it and no food poisoning. The question now is. Does always 0% fabric food give you food poisoning?

Test continues when I find another 0% canned food. I have one sardines at 28% laying on the ground inside the lighthouse. I hope it will not be placed to container and destroyed this way.

FOR SCIENCE 42!

[ManicManiac]

@acada

Sardines will degrade faster if you leave them outside.

 

Edited February 25, 2020 by ManicManiac