So, our menu for today is salted beef and sea biscuits.

[thl111]

Greetings folks,
I was butchering a deer the other day and thought: "Why, storing meat in containers like this takes so much space." And realistically speaking, meat will go bad when you put it like that. In light of that, I suggest salt curing meat and store in barrels. The whole process will go like this: you make barrel(s), then gather salt and water. Boil water then put salt in. After pour the lot in barrel(s) then put meat in . Wait for some time then take it out and dry the content on drying racks. Also, with this, fresh meat will go bad after 7 hours and can have maggots, which can be used for fishing.

[Munjarak]

As a butcher's son I can tell you that you don't need to boil the water....
and it would be cool if you had to keep the fire going on low levels with dry wood so that it smokes a lot

[loftar]

Yes, I have strongly considered something like this, not least because it would, indeed, make salted and smoked food meaningful, and it would also mean that fresh food would be something more special. However, I'm just not sure if general item decay is fun. I dunno.

[Potjeh]

Losing prepared food to decay would be quite frustrating, yeah. I normally stock up a big pile of food before I feast, because feasting for just one point at a time would be too tedious. I think it could work for raw ingredients, though, as long as it's done in bulk.

Oh, and I was reading up on spam just the other day, and to my surprise it's a very old recipe, so can we has potted meat too?

[Procne]

I would like some way to store meat in bulk. I'm not really fond of decaying items, but smoking / salting meat and storing it on some rack or barrels sounds fun to me.

[Mahkia]

I think having prepared food decay would be a drag, for the aforementioned reason of wanting to stockpile foods before gorging for stats. But I do think having raw meat go bad would be nice, and would encourage drying/salting meat, or cooking meals.

Wyrm Online, if I remember the mechanics correctly, has hot food and cold food, and you gain more sustenance from hot food, so you need to eat stuff right after you cook it for maximum benefit. But food can also be reheated, so it's best to have a fire going before you eat so you can reheat everything.

I'm not saying I think Salem should go the same route, I'm just throwing it out there for potential ideas to work with. I also agree with Procne that having more efficient ways to store meat in bulk would be great.

Personally, I'm hoping we'll see a lot more uses for drying racks: more meat that can be dried, more benefits to drying meat, and maybe herbs and/or crops that need to be dried for varying reasons, like the herbalist table in H&H.

[thl111]

Pardon for misleading you in my post. What I mean is only meat, raw meat you get from butchering animals will decay without proper preservation, e.g salt curing. Other prepared food will be as it is and won't decay if you leave it for decades . Though canned food did come to mind but I doubt it suitable for this period.