cooking skill!

[Radrunner]

We have a repair skill. ... fire starting skill.... why not a cooking skill? The more you cook the more calories, quicker cooking time, or lower chance of dysentery?

[AmericanSteel]

There is an old motto in computing that applies: Garbage In, Garbage. Same sort of rule in cooking: your dish is only as good as your ingredients. I don't care how much you cook rotted and/or diseased meat. The chance of purging all the bad material is Slim to none, and Slim just left town. Also, water boils at a certain rate... cooking is no different. The only way to reduce the cooking time is to reduce the batch size.

The easiest meal to produce that has the most possible caloric load is a soup. You put the meat in water and cook it. You do not lose any left over fat, you don't have to toss out the bone, you just boil down a chunk of fat, meat, skin and bone until the meat falls off the bone. Ding, done. No cooking skill required. You eat the meat, let the remainder of the stuff cook down some more. Fish out the hard bits and drink/chew the rest.

Now if you want to put in cooking so it tastes better, which adds morale... then knock yourself out. However, I have never seen a starving soul in America, Bosnia, Haiti or Kuwait complain the food tasted bad. Full belly = happy camper. Better tasting food equating to happiness is a mindset of people who don't have to worry about where the next meal comes from.

[Boston123]

There is an old motto in computing that applies: Garbage In, Garbage. Same sort of rule in cooking: your dish is only as good as your ingredients. I don't care how much you cook rotted and/or diseased meat. The chance of purging all the bad material is Slim to none, and Slim just left town. Also, water boils at a certain rate... cooking is no different. The only way to reduce the cooking time is to reduce the batch size.

The easiest meal to produce that has the most possible caloric load is a soup. You put the meat in water and cook it. You do not lose any left over fat, you don't have to toss out the bone, you just boil down a chunk of fat, meat, skin and bone until the meat falls off the bone. Ding, done. No cooking skill required. You eat the meat, let the remainder of the stuff cook down some more. Fish out the hard bits and drink/chew the rest.

Now if you want to put in cooking so it tastes better, which adds morale... then knock yourself out. However, I have never seen a starving soul in America, Bosnia, Haiti or Kuwait complain the food tasted bad. Full belly = happy camper. Better tasting food equating to happiness is a mindset of people who don't have to worry about where the next meal comes from.

Damn straight. Boiling, or by proxy, making soup, is the easiest, safest, and "most effective" (in terms of "calories/fat lost due to heat") form of cooking there is. Boil some meat and fat with the bones, then eat the meat and drink the broth. Boom, next-to no calories or fat lost! I almost always make soup as opposed to cooking with other methods.

Roasting meat, like we do in-game, is actually very "inefficient" (in terms of calories/fat lost due to heating). Easy, yes, and doesn't require a container to boil water in, but it is so inefficient that 9 times out of 10, I would MAKE a container to boil in instead of roasting. The 10th time would be when it would be literally impossible to make a container.

Asides from soups, the only other form of cooking we really need (and is really possible in this environment" is bread-making. Now, without yeast, this won't be like a store-bought bread, but instead more of a flatbread or bannock. Take flour (which should be found in houses), or any vegetable with starch (AKA cattail.) Mix the "flour" with some water, then spread it onto a hot rock/pan, or drop it right into the soup. Boom, carbohydrates with your proteins and fats!

[AmericanSteel]

We could make hardtack with flour and water. You want to umph up a bit add fat. A bit more, add salt. We could take the cambium layer off trees and/or use a cat tail. Get you a good grinding rock, a surface to grind against and go to town. Use that carb flour for your base in making hardtack. We could then use it as is, for on the go food, or drop them into a bowl and pour your hot stock over it. Ding, soup with dumpling.

You can even take existing materials, like crackers, and pound them out as your flour. I made MRE Hardtack in Bosnia while on half rations. I cooked it in my canteen cup placed on the engine of my hummer. It was not fantastic, but it did fill your stomach. I made mine from MRE cracker, water, salt and instant coffee. My driver made his out of MRE cracker, water and Tabasco. He cut his ground coffee with his Skoal, so he would have more snuff AND stay up on the long nights.