Frontier Cooking, Ingredients into recipe-size portions, Pot recipes half-sized for skillets

[UTC-10]

I was thinking that Frontier Cooking could make use of a mechanic that allows meat and fish to be cut into recipe-sized portions which would typically be 0.5 kg. 

Although Frontier Cooking takes from the whole thing what the recipe needs that can be a problem when you catch a Rockfish that weighs 6 kg at a spot far away from where the rest of your ingredients were located and you only need 0.5 kg for the recipe.  You're options are lugging 6 kg to base or giving up on Frontier Cooking, or carrying around a bunch of ingredients like flour, cooking oil, salt, etc.,  or just cooking the fish to eat and get lamp oil. 

There never was a need to be able to cut up fish, in particular, into 0.5 kg pieces like you can do with meat when harvesting it from a carcass.  This suggestion would apply to meats even though 1 kg chunks by themselves would not be as problematic.  

Pot-based recipes might have the option of using a skillet and produce half the product.  Or maybe be able to use the skillet-sized recipe in a pot for a similar (half the product) result.  More flexibility. 

And I still want a generic meat or fish into a pot or skillet with water and cooked to make a hot meal.  🍜 😉

[Frantz70]

I really dont see this being a big thing ... you need to eat anyway all the rockfish sooner or later (even just to be able to prepare the recipe later) and if you are a bit into the game you have already the tools that makes carrying 6 kg more not a big deal. Moose satchel and tool belt (and well feed) ...

[UTC-10]

I see it only as an enhancement to recipe-based Frontier Cooking.  Hence something that the devs can implement if they decide they have the time to do so or adds enough to the FC mechanic.  Maybe as part of DLC II, if TLD survives DLC I.  It is certainly not critically or significantly important improvement because Frontier Cooking is entirely optional on the player's part.  As matters stand, I look at the recipes and think not worth the effort except in particular circumstances.  

I just realized that cutting a fish into smaller chunks would solve a different issue that most probably don't realize can happen - the game can forget the 25% calorie enhancement from Level 5 cooking and revert back to "normal" calories in a way that might puzzle a player (by hunger and the calories of that piece of cooked fish I should have  had something left).  This is getting too long so I"ll stop here but I have verified, to my satisfaction, that the effect does happen and so having a 2,000 calorie cooked multi-kilo fish is not so much of an advantage in my eyes. 

Of course cutting a fish into 0.5 kg chunks would be kind of silly if cooking and consuming them directly but as a work-around for losing calories it would mitigate it.  

 

Edited February 23 by UTC-10

[UTC-10]

How about Recipe Packs containing all the ingredients for a given recipe, except for water or broth, for which all prep work has already been done?  

You get the fire going, put the pot or skillet on the cooking surface, then then the cooking menu shows what you can cook and you select the appropriate Recipe Pack for what you want to cook.  All prep work has already been accomplished off-stage/at another time and you only need things like water or broth in inventory then *voila* you have a stew or pie cooking.  

The Pack might be kind of weighty depending on the included ingredients, and would be subject to normal or maybe extended decay time, but it might enhance a player's willingness to go through the actions to utilize it for Frontier Cooking.  A variant of this would be to have the other ingredients in the pack but not the meat or fish but that can, especially for fish, partially defeat the utility of the Recipe Pack unless a very sizeable fish could be cut into smaller pieces no more weighty than a kilo of meat.  

For instance.  There could be Venison Stew Recipe Pack that just needs broth added or there can be a generic Stew Recipe Pack that requires broth and where the choice of meat can depend on what's available.  

[Semple Fi]

Perhaps some of this will be addressed with Can Recipes?  It does appear to be pending.  And a fish soup would be easy in a can.