Camber Flight Porridge

[Gary Childress]

It's boasts 1150 calories and I have all the ingredients but I'm only at cooking level 3 and it requires level 4. Unfortunately some of my ingredients are approaching ruin and I'd like to use them while I still can. By the time I get to level 4 I'll have lost some of them.

It sort of seems like once a person gets to level 3 (over half way to expert) one ought to be able to at least follow cooking instructions for just about anything.

[Ylineuvos]

AFAIK ruined food can still be used as an ingredient for Frontier cooking recipes, and it doesn't detrimentally affect the food at all. Since ruined food can still be eaten, pre-level 5 cooking it just causes sickness.

[MadBone12]

You can still use ruined ingredients. I have made pies with ruined meat, dockworker's pie with ruined potatoes, and pancakes with ruined maple syrup.

[Bobywan]

Don't store your ingredient in container or they could dispawn, but they can wait for you to get to cooking level 4.
You can use the trick of cutting small pieces of meat (start harvesting meat and escape before it's completed) to have multiples pieces of meat to cook (still +1 for each piece of meat).