Food Preservation

[NorseRaven99]

I've been playing the game for a while now, but I still have little to no idea how to preserve meat from animals. Putting it in the fridges helps a little it seems, but I need to know more. I'm having problems specifically with the sheer amount of meat you get from bears, as I barely have enough time to eat it all (and only bear meat) over a short amount of time before it spoils. Any tips?

[cullam]

Storing meats indoors is your trouble. They keep for significantly longer, when left outside in the cold. Even just dropping them on the ground outside is fine. I can't remember if they last even longer when stored outdoors in a container. Small note - the hatch in the mountaineering hut is considered "outdoors", for this purpose. 

[nicko]

 v.393 I find a good place to store food is in the boot of a car, plenty of room and it stays fresher much longer than placing inside your cabin.

Also just dropping it on the ground outside your cabin seems to preserve it much longer.

At present it does not get scavenged but I hope one day the devs will add a fix for that. I.E if you store food outside on the ground(unprotected), you will lose a random percentage every 24hours. that would make it more real.

[palbi]

Well, the food degradation varies on the game modes too. I play in Interloper, and went a longer journey, 4-5 days. Upon returning I found that the 98% meat I left outside in the snow, degraded to 79%. (In Interloper the outside temperature never goes above -10C, as I experienced.)

[elloco999]

You can't really preserve meat. Not yet at least, but it is a much requested feature.

The only things you can do are storing the meat outside and cooking your meat (cooked meat spoils slower). If you want to keep your meat for as long as possible, do not cook it but store it outside. Keep an eye on the condition, when it reaches 50%, cook it and again store it outside. Cooking adds 50% to the condition so after cooking your meat will be at 100% again. I'm not sure if the same numbers apply on interloper.

[Jolan]

As mentioned by others store it outside.  Check out the thread 1000 days in the dam - one of the last things done was a final posting of degredation values.  The whole thread makes for interesting reading though.