Cooking? suggestions

[Baalk]

which one should i use to cook? i don't think velvet is a good option lol. are everybody the same or it depend on the recipe?

[Apathy]

Basically, the different characters all boost seperate things. For example, Velvet at level 3 you can have all her food boost the parties health by 10% in addition to whatever the foods effect is.

Level 1 - Basic effect reduction. (reduces stun chance, etc).
Level 2 - Basic stat increase (HP+10%, attack +10%, etc)
Level 3 - High level damage reduction. (non-elemental -5% damage, wind -5% damage, 1000+ damage -40%).

EDIT:

Here's a link to my current characters and their cooking levels (I have 6 of the characters, all with level 12 minus velvet who's at 25)

http://imgur.com/a/N4Ieh

Basically:
1 / 3 / 12 Unlocks new cooking affix.
8/ 17 / 20 Increases cooking affix.
2 / 5 / 10 / 14 Unlocks the ability to save materials when cooking a recipe with 1/2/3/4 stars.

Higher cooking increases the chance to save materials.

[Fel]

Well, stuns can come from the vast majority of enemies, while the other status only come from monsters using that element, so it depends on where you are I guess.

Without spoilers (mostly because I'm not far enough to know the areas anyway)
If you were in a fire-based area like a volcano, it's likely that most enemies would heavily use fire-based attacks and that quite a few would have a chance of inflicting burn instead of the "neutral" stun, so you would pick the cook that greatly reduces burns, as well as matching equipments (or equipment that boost damage against them).

Velvet's protection against stuns might seem weak sourced compared to the others, but just for fun, check the enemy book entries of the monsters in the area you are in (hit B/cancel when holding the target button to see the entries of all the enemies in the fight), and check the second page (it shows you the different attacks that the enemies have, complete with the base chance for status effects).
Unless you are in a very special area, you will notice that stun is the most present status effect in the attacks (just like with your characters for the most part).

Ad Diddles said, you will unlock more effects as you level them up, so it might be worthwhile to actually grind cooking if you can.
Cook now doesn't stack, but you can cook directly over and over again.
Recipes from "exploration" rather than ones you can buy ingredients for give significantly more experience per time cooked, so if you explore the same zone a few times, you will most likely be able to gain a few levels in cooking from its recipe.

[Apathy]

Also, if you want an idea on how to level it up relatively fast...

The XP gained for food doesn't really care about what you cook, as much as it cares about how many you cook.

The rarest food in the game is the food from the Expedition mini-game/time gate that you can do. ALL the items that you can only get from this part of the game will award you with 12xp/cook.
Pickleboar Sausage will give you 3 xp/cook. 3-19 it'll cost around ~70 pickleboar sausages/level; after that it costs slightly more.

[Baalk]

wow thanks. ill try to lvl it up :)

[Apathy]

I'd honestly reccomend just maxing Laphicet's cooking for your first playthrough. For no other reason than his 10/20% attack boost will make it easier for you to farm up XP when needed.

[blackhawk01x]

One question from my side about cooking:
- Is only the character that cooks effected by the food?

I searched for it in the internet but couldn't find any real answer about it, and in the german version you get a "<character> has eaten"-message when you use the ability to auto-cook after every battle. (not sure if that's a translation error).
From my own experience, I usually only see the message about the food (so the healing and what it does) when Velvet - who is cooking for me at the moment - does get effected from the healing-effect, but at the same time I pretty much always play her, so not sure if that's why I only see it with her.

Or is it pretty much one-time-per-battle and whichever character activates it first gets the bonus?

[monoestate]

Well you should at least get Velvet ot lvl 10 cooking which will bring up a skit about Celica after which it will grant you Velvet's jacketless outfit.