Jerky!

[Loupoops]

Not sure if this had been said before, but the ability to make jerky. Jerky would give meat a much longer shelf life and it could make use of spare time, as it would take prolonged hours to make. Plus, to kind of balance it, the jerky could lose a bunch of the calories it would have had as meat to begin with. Just a thought as a maker of real life jerky.

[Wastelander]

Food preservation is a popular demand on these forums, and I can see why - in fact, I'm fully with you here. The question of 'how' remains nonetheless. I, personally, don't really know in-depth how jerky is made since I'm a city dweller. What methods did you have in mind?

[Wormer]

It's  always good if there is something to do for more variety, but in the first place I can't understand why (oh why?) the frozen meat deteriorates at -10 C and lower? when often even house temperatures are below zero. I wish this was fixed, because it does break an immersion (along with the fact that character has to eat like 10kg of meat daily to keep good, really?). The frozen meat should preserve for long time, but it should also require effort and time to unfreeze it. It's where jerky may come in useful to keep meat in a ready to eat form longer.

[Tbone555]

1 hour ago, Wastelander said:

Food preservation is a popular demand on these forums, and I can see why - in fact, I'm fully with you here. The question of 'how' remains nonetheless. I, personally, don't really know in-depth how jerky is made since I'm a city dweller. What methods did you have in mind?

so you wanna know how to make jerky, hm?

first you take a perfectly good piece of meat, then you let a new york city cab driver sit on it for the next 24 hours.

[vancopower]

I think I can provide some solid idea on how to approach this:

First a new mechanic should be introduced, collecting water from  open water sources like the fishing holes or the sea.

Second new items should be introduced seawater and salt.

Third new bench should be introduced alcohol distiller  or in this case water distiller because you will be using it to distill sea water, thus at the end of this process you'll get filtered water and salt and that is it.

Then you can use the salt to make jerky, and off course you'll have to beat up the meat or as @Tbone555 posted give it to a new york city cab driver nice one by the way

[FQuenot]

Like Wormer, I don't understand how food can deteriorate in negative temperatures.

But jerky must be fully possible since we can to dry (not sure of this expression) the skins and guts, and that, without a cab driver  (or perhaps -the great revelation- our survivor IS a cab driver).

[vancopower]

12 hours ago, FQuenot said:

Like Wormer, I don't understand how food can deteriorate in negative temperatures.

But jerky must be fully possible since we can to dry (not sure of this expression) the skins and guts, and that, without a cab driver  (or perhaps -the great revelation- our survivor IS a cab driver).

Well the other way is to smoke the meat but leaving it by itself will definitely spoil, it might get parasites like worms, or rott some kind of fungal attack or simply and probably most of the times get Salmonella which is really bad news. However you could aviod all these things if you froze it outside in minus degrees but if you take it to a warmer temp and then try to freeze it again it could develop some of the above symptoms. Meat spoils fast unless the industry puts some artificial preservatives we will not have so much food variety. Proteins are like finding gold for the microorganisms they tend to thrive in it. 

[FQuenot]

Sure, smoke the meat is probably the best way, but we need in this case to maintain our fire for a long time in a secured place, I mean without the risk of attracting wolves and bears. An other challenge

[Loupoops]

There's two big ways to make jerky. You can smoke it or dehydrate it. Basically same principle get the meat to about 160F and then let the water come out of the meat over time. Thicker pieces take more time. Real life for proper cuts takes about 5 to 6 hours (depending) of dehydrating to finish. That's the real bottom line of making it, as it can get a lot more complicated, but you can mess around with flavors, cutting styles, meats, the possibilities are endless!! 

In the game the easiest and best mechanic for it would be to get the fire to max, about 144F for outside temp from what I've seen, and then leave the meat near it for 5 or 6 hours. That way it can just be a proximity thing kinda like the pelts that FQuenot was talking about. Not to much coding needed for this either. This would also allow for cooking and making water at the same time as jerking the meat. 

The salt vancopower was talking about is really useful in preserving real life jerky, making it taste good, but not completely necessary for bottom line survival jerky. With salt it could make it so it takes more water out of you when the you eat it though. But without salt it could make the calories like 1/3 of what they would originally be with the cooked meat to balance it.  

[ChillPlayer]

I wish for the possibility to build a smoker since I've first harvested 30KG from a bear It could be as simple as a (so called) Hobo smoker:

 

Or repurpose the barrels we already can use to make fire:

 

[vancopower]

Wow I would love the idea or turning the barrels in to smokers, it would give the locations with barrels advantage when deciding on permanent bases. Yea this idea is great +1 from me. Although having a distiller too will offer even more variety which is in the spirit of TLD so I do hope that these two things get added in a single update, which could be called "food preserver".

[Loupoops]

4 hours ago, vancopower said:

Wow I would love the idea or turning the barrels in to smokers, it would give the locations with barrels advantage when deciding on permanent bases. Yea this idea is great +1 from me. Although having a distiller too will offer even more variety which is in the spirit of TLD so I do hope that these two things get added in a single update, which could be called "food preserver".

Couldn't agree more vancopower! The barrels would be perfect for limiting the creation of the jerky, kinda like the arrowheads in the wreck. It would be perfect for the game!