🍳 Better Cooking

📖 Short Description

Better Cooking expands and improves the existing cooking mechanics in the game.
This mod lays the foundation for a deeper and more balanced cooking system with improved recipes, better resource management, and future progression features.

⚠️ Important Note:
This mod is only the beginning. More recipes, new meals, and additional cooking mechanics will be added in future updates.

🍖 Updated Recipe Changes (v2.5)

🧪 Biome Survival Drinks:

• 🧪 Black Lung Serum

• 🌞 Sunstroke Tonic

• ❄️ Scorcher Stew

• ☢️ Fallout Flush

📦 Utility Items:

• 🫙 Empty Drink Jar

• 📦 Raw Meat Bundle

🥤 Drinks:

• 💧 Boiled Water

• 🍺 Beer

• 🧪 Pure Mineral Water

• ☕ Coffee

• ☕ Black Strap Coffee

• 🌼 Goldenrod Tea

• 🍯 Honey Tea

• 🧴 Grandpa’s Awesome Sauce

• 🧪 Grandpa’s Learning Elixir

• 🥃 Grandpa’s Moonshine

• 🌸 Red Tea

• 🌵 Yucca Juice

• 🧊 Yucca Juice Smoothie

🍖 Food:

• 🥓 Bacon & Eggs

• 🥔 Baked Potato

• 🥧 Blueberry Pie

• 🥧 Pumpkin Pie

• 🍰 Pumpkin Cheesecake

• 🍞 Pumpkin Bread

• 🍲 Boiled Meat

• 🥫 Sham in a Can

• 🔥 Charred Meat

• 🌭 Chili Dog

• 🍞 Cornbread

• 🌽 Corn Meal

• 🌽 Corn on the Cob

• 🥚 Boiled Egg

• 🌮 Fish Tacos

• 🔥 Grilled Meat

• 🍲 Hobo Stew

• 🍲 Meat Stew

• 🍖 Honey Glazed Sham

• 🍖 Honey Brisket

• 🍲 Gumbo Stew

• 🥧 Shepherd’s Pie

• 🍝 Spaghetti

• 🍞 Tuna Fish Gravy Toast

• 🍲 Sham Chowder

• 🥩 Steak & Potato

• 🥕 Vegetable Stew

🔄 Differences & Advantages Compared to Vanilla

Better Cooking rebalances cooking to be more realistic, logical, and rewarding compared to the vanilla system.

🥩 Realistic Meat Usage

In vanilla, cooking often requires unrealistic amounts of meat (e.g. 5 raw meat for one meal).
Better Cooking follows a more realistic approach:
- One piece of raw meat results in one cooked meal.
- This better reflects real-life cooking and survival logic.

🧂 Meaningful Use of Salt (Nitrate)

Salt is no longer just a flat requirement.
It represents preservation, curing, and preparation.
With higher cooking skill:
- Less salt is required
- Cooking becomes more efficient
This makes salt a strategic ingredient, not just a tax.

⏱️ Skill-Based Cooking Time

In vanilla, cooking time is static and ignores player progression.
With Better Cooking:
- Cooking time scales with cooking level
- Experienced cooks prepare food faster
This creates a natural and logical progression system.

📈 Better Progression & Balance

Early game: Cooking takes longer and uses more resources
Mid to late game:
- Faster cooking
- Reduced ingredient usage
- More efficient survival gameplay

🔥 Overall Benefits

More immersive survival experience
Better balance between realism and gameplay
Cooking feels like a skill, not a chore
Strong foundation for future recipes and systems

Better Cooking turns cooking into a logical survival mechanic, not a resource sink.

🔥 Features are complete - (Planned features v2.6 are listed below)

Reworked cooking recipes foods and drinks
Improved balance for ingredients like nitrate and water
More efficient cooking for survival-focused gameplay
Prepared for an extended cooking and leveling system

🔮 Planned Features

Additional recipes
Expanded cooking progression
More advanced food preservation mechanics