Cooking... What am I doing wrong?

[punknugget]

My skill is basic. I'm cooking meat skewers on a fire, chicken if it matters. I only had salt so i added it.

This is my 3rd attempt.

I'm watching the timer. 9 minutes. I go chop a tree. @6 Minutes I make planks and finish a cupboard. 1.30 minutes left ... getting hot so I back away. I could have counted to less than 10 seconds when I check again. -2.30 minutes and ruined. Again

Is this a mini game, do i have to watch the timer and pull off at exactly 0? Is there any grace period at all? Do i have to stand there getting hot?

I don't understand the timer, it goes a bit fast as it counts down but does it get progressively faster? The amount of time it took from 1 1/2 minutes to cook to over 2 minutes past seemed like it went much much faster.

I don't think cooking is supposed to be a mini-game, is it? or what am I doing wrong? D=

Thanks if anyone can help. On my way to find a grill to see if i can save the drumsticks. I wanna eat my own food. :3

[JonExx]

I don't have too much experience in cooking either, but so much I know:
The meal is quickly ruined if you don't take it off the heat source once the cooking time has passed.
The time it says for cooking is not real life time, but in-game time.
So, your 9 minutes may have been something around 3 real life minutes (or less).

To avoid ruining your food, you can set up an alarm.
Right click on the pan, or pot where you cook something in and you will see the option to set timer (30 sec, 1 min, 2 min....and so on. And again: that's in-game time!).

Select one and you'll hear a short alarm at the set time.
Then rush over to your food and watch the food and the cooking timer going down and take your food off the heat-source at 0 seconds.

Hope that helps a little.
But I'm sure we have some experts here that can tell you a lot more about the secrets of becoming the Island Chef :)

[Strayed]

Cooking is not a mini game. It is as simple as find ingredients, use a pot or pan, cooking source such as a fire pit with grill or a portable stove (with power/gas tank)

Just like normal cooking, set and forget is going to punish you. over cooking your food in scum reduces nutrition of the food and food repulsion (ie make you sick)

It seems that your issue is the server speed. Understanding your server speed will greatly assist you in your 'set and forget' way of play.

From memory, I think the official servers are about 3x time speed with body sim of 3.84.

A side tip: getting and using the 'optional' ingredients will increase the 'star rating' of your cooked food item ergo increase nutrition value.

Additional side tip: you will need to find recipe books and have them on you when you want to make more 'fancy' and 'hoity toity' food items like cakes and bread for burgers

Saying that, a base line zero skill in cooking red meat on a hot plate will still give you enough protein that you need so don't be too worried if you can't find salt (spoiler tip: grid Z2 has a salt mine/farm located in in the middle left of the grid square) to give you the 'maximum' star rating

[Beda]

I can confirm that officials server speed is 3.84 of normal time. So if it says it will take 20 minutes divide that number with 3.84 and you will see that it will take 5.2 minutes IRL. As other players have noted this can be changed by each private serve so check what the settings are. Other than that what Strayed and JonExx hinted is all correct. Good luck!

[Jolie Rouge]

Just watch the progress bar and when it turns green you can grab your food.

[serilium]

cooking and hunting are mini games that you can choose to play, but it is still possible to play scum and not bother with either at least in single player i can turn them off.

[NAOMI]

take it of around 10 seconds its cookt

[punknugget]

Hey everyone, thanks so much for all the feed back. I haven't gotten any more meat but I'll try again tonight with the added input. I have plenty of money to buy food and I've done well with foraging and cargo drops so i'm not too stressed about my failures here.

My server settings are mostly default but I did adjust times for dawn/dusk for more daylight. I had guessed about 3x speed, it feels good. Thanks for confirming that.

I was keeping the speed into account and kept checking the fire. When i listed my times (9, 6, etc), those times were from the camp fire cooking time and I tried to determine how much time I had. Maybe i just spaced out and didn't realize.. It happens lol. It's a beautiful game!

I do suck at cooking irl. Realism! I'll keep trying, I'm still very newbie. =)