grinding cooking exp?

[Xoyv]

so i've been trying to grind some exp after hitting the "still in early access" part, and, in all honestly

do soup kinda suck for getting exp? like, they take more time than frying, take more ingredients, AND give less exp? unless there's some secret third way of getting cooking exp that i don't know about

[Bonkers]

Soups are for filling your food and hydration first and foremost, though they should probably give more xp, just to make the level progression for cooking more natural.

The most efficient way of grinding cooking xp is stockpiling meat and anything you can fry on a pan, set up a whole bunch of stoves, eat human brains for a buff that gives extra xp (you can get them by salvaging human skulls) and then just get cooking.

This is the method I used to get the skill to level 10 and it wasn't too bad. Though the reduced spawns from the new dynamic difficulty may make collecting enough meat a slower and more annoying process if you're playing solo.

[ULTRA]

5 stoves, 10 frying pans, and a pile of corpses, that's how you do it

[Deagle Trainee]

@Bonkers @ULTRA appreciate both answers. Sounds like a super boring way to go about it. But maybe this will be less of an issue when the game is finished. Though I do think there should be more recipes using lettuce and things without requiring the oven.

[ULTRA]

If you take wrinkly brainmeat and hobbyist chef at the start and eat some brains then you'll max it out in no time

[Yaridovich]

Cook every single piece of meat that you're not using. Store them in a fridge if you need, but don't let anything go bad. Cook everything.

More than that, I'd suggest just cooking everything. If you need meat to make soup, go out and kill enemies to get it, rather than keep it stored in fridges waiting for the time when you need to make soup.

Once you have Cooking maxed (or at least level 10), then you can just store meat in the fridge instead of cooking everything.

Although, this also depends on the size of your group. If you're playing with a large group then you'll want to make soup as often as possible, so my suggestion in this case would be to just keep making soup, then cook any leftover meat, or any meat that's about to go bad.