Seriously, I don't know what it is but I can't stop cooking in this game. I have massacred many huts, farms and villages just to raid their livestock and cabinets and then proceed to cook with the former owner's cooking utensils. My inventory is in current possession of many powerful soups and stews. Mainly just venison, cabbage and potatoe brews though. Those 5 (of many) stews come in very handy in the middle of an intense battle when you're all outta potions!

Who else loves cooking!?

Must be mainlining Elsweyr fondue...

Wow, I think you just role-played a psychotic serial killer. Haha

Do you throw their heads in the cooking pots too?

Oh, the hunt for salt, never enough, never enough. Yes, cooking fiend here, too.

I cook whatever I kill . . . quickly . . . with my Daedric Bow Of The Inferno.

Better than any microwave.

I would if I could, haha! Breton brain soup anyone?


I never understood why Skyrim is lacking in salt. It's so annoying to kill an entire inn or farm, just to find out you're [censored] outta SALT.

Cooking is something I haven't tried yet but I think I will now. Massacring huts, farms and villages sounds like a lot of fun.

Inns and taverns all seem to sell it. One thing I'm going to do when I make my needs mod though will be to distinguish between the salt pile alchemy ingredient and salt used in cooking - the alchemy ingredient is 0.2 pounds, which is like 18 teaspoons of salt or something, kind of a lot for a single dish. So rather than using it directly, there'll be a recipe for dividing it up into 18 or so individual teaspoons, which you'll then use for cooking.

You won't regret it. Not only is it fun, but cooking is actually useful. Like I said, making stews and soups can prove to be vital when you need it. Take for example, Horker Stew. Restore 15 Stamina and Health, Restore 1pt of Health for 720 seconds. Neat or what?

Just make sure to stack up on a [censored] load of salt!


Yes, but they only seem to sell 1 portion of salt, which is useless, seeing as how most meals require 1 salt pile, and I like making LOTS of meals.

Indeed, I get much delight from finding ebony weapons, garlic, and leeks. I can't say I've murdered anyone for their salt, though. At least not yet.

vegetable soup + Bash = stunlock to death

I said this once before, but anyway Riften is full of salt which they use to preserve their fish.

Now I involuntarily go "ooh leeks" when I am in the produce section of my supermarket.

I just became a cook!

Do you get bounties when you do this on a farm or if it's near a city?

Not to bash You or anything, you do what you like but I don't think cooking does anything for this game. It would've made sense if they added in the ability to set up your own camp site and you could cook dinner or breakfast or if your character simply needed food to survive like in Fallout New Vegas. The way they implemented cooking in Skyrim just doesn't make any sense and is a waist of space that they could have used for something more practical like spellmaking.

I am avoiding cooking until my 3rd character which will be a hunter in the southern part of Skyrim living off the land and avoiding the big cities. Will be my 1st character I ever played that avoided the MQ,faction quests, and major cities. That is how much fun this game is.

i didnt even know you could cook in this game?!

I am not addicted to cooking in this game for me its alchemy. I have to pick most of everything in my path and I make lots and lots of potions like crazy.

after reading this i might try cooking and stop selling all my salt D:!

Anyone else disappointed that there's no recipes for the human hearts and flesh I keep finding?

I haven't paid much attention to cooking for a while, used to on my first playthrough, but I still collect every single salt pile I find. I just can't leave them be.

Lack of Salt? I have so much salt, if I would dump it into the Sea of Ghosts it would be renamed to the Dead Seas!

I wish we could expand the cooking menu. Oh and what the heck is Dog meat for? I can't cook it (not that I want to...) LOL I have various stews in my inventory that I've cooked when I was lvl 20 (I'm lvl 56 now lol) I only eat, after a long day of adventuring, for immersion/role play purposes! LOL

@ Yuerai - LOL I do the same, I try to stop myself, but when I see a Salt Pile in a sack, I MUST TAKE IT! LOL

@ Otheral - Yes, I have so many potions, I need to get the Speechcraft perk to invest in stores, so that I can actually sell all those potions! I also have to harvest everything I come across!

Cooking was fun at first. Now after doing it 50+ times it's down right monotonous. Cooking really doesn't do anything but waste time. The cooked product doesn't do nearly enough to make me WANT to waste time to cook.

Maybe if I could cook up something that added 50 health points, one time of course, than that would be better. Even if you couldn't stack them I could add 50 health points each time my health gets below my normal health.

Cooking something that only heals 10 points is just as useless as eating the raw meat that only heals 5 points.

The recipe mechanic was already there, it was added for Fallout New Vegas. It's the exact same system used for smithing - in the GECK you'd put together a recipe by selecting ingredients and outputs, which could be anything, then you'd set the recipe's type to determine where the player would be able to craft it (reloading bench, campfire, etc.) And even though food is of little use in the default game, it would have been weird to see no food whatsoever. As it is the game is set up very well for the inevitable hunger/thirst/sleep mods.

I've found cooking to be almost completely pointless. I don't need them to boost my health because I'm finding enough potions so what is it good for? There are a couple of soups that give you a small boost to health and stamin over a period of time and they're fairly useful, but that's about it as far as I can see.