The current state of the game is, the moment crockpot is up, everyone will be eating meatballs for the rest of their lives. You need heal? Make a cheap pierogi that both sates your hunger and heals a large portion of your health. And then there's meaty stew that doubles the value of your meat.
There are so many recipes in the game, we even have a character that excels in cooking, but he's not that popular because why would he? When you can just eat meatballs.
My suggestion is to nerf these 3 food items, so that other foods get a chance of being discovered and used. Right now u can put a monster meat + 3 pieces of ice for a meatball that is just too broken. I would suggest one of these:
- Invalidate monster meat as ingredient for these recipes.
- Reduce the hunger and heal value. Meatballs should have the same hunger value as Kabobs, which is ~37. Pierogi also should have the same value as Trailmix, 12.5 hunger + 30 HP. Finally the meaty stew could sate a total of 120 hunger.
I just wish for this amazing aspect of the game to be valued more, not to be lost in the shadow of some OP recipes.