Skyrim finally has comprehensive cooking, as this incredible Skyrim mod for the Bethesda RPG game overhauls its food system with recipes, better effects, places to cook, more to buy from merchants, and an entirely new system incorporated into the base game of Skyrim. Hopefully, the Elder Scrolls 6 release date comes with better Tamriel cooking, too.
Gourmet – A Cooking Overhaul turns Tamriel’s treats and ingredients into much more than health regen items and skooma, as the Simonrim team has completely changed how food and ingredients work, alongside alcohol and drugs too. Combine this with the Skyrim mod that brings Fallout 4’s coolest feature to the game, and you’re on to a winner.
There are recipes, food crafting tables, cookbooks, and a whole lot more, but the long and short of it is that foods and cooking have seen improvements, extra features, and better immersive details across all of Skyrim.
To start, different foods provide buffs to your health, magicka, and stamina. “Meats and stews provide Health Regeneration; vegetables, soups, and bread provide Stamina Regeneration; and pastries, desserts, and cheeses provide Magicka Regeneration,” the Simonrim team explains. “All food buffs last for 20 minutes by default, and the player can benefit from all three buffs at once.”
There’s even a “Homecooked Meal” you can receive once a day that boosts the regeneration of all three stats by 50%, which sounds like a godly item for sure. The Gourmet Skyrim mod also adds many more cooking pots and baking ovens across Tamriel, to make sure that you can use your recipes, ingredients, and cookbooks in many more places.
You can also buy a slew of ingredients and meals from vendors across Skyrim with this mod, with three completely new cookbooks added to permanently improve the effects of food and help with recipes, which you can then take to the extra cooking spots to make your deliciously delicate delights.
This Skyrim mod isn’t just for food though, as it also impacts alcohol and drugs across Tamriel too.
“In Gourmet, alcohol provides a long-lasting buff to either Stamina or Magicka, in exchange for an equal debuff to the opposite stat,” the Simonrim team says. “Ales and meads increase Stamina in exchange for reducing Magicka; wines and brandies increase Magicka in exchange for reducing Stamina. Alcohol comes in two tiers, common and rare. Common alcohol increases one stat (and reduces the other) by 25. Rare alcohol increases one stat (and reduces the other) by 50. All alcohol buffs last for ten minutes.”
Drugs have also been edited to be sold by caravan merchants and Thieves Guild fences, with Sleeping Tree Sap, Skooma, and Eversnow impacting your health, magicka, and stamina in a variety of ways. There’s also a Bethesda-style overhaul to addiction in here too.
In fact, the Gourmet Skyrim mod even has some survival mode changes too:
- Alcohol no longer restores hunger
- Hot Soups (soups, specifically) no longer exist
- Several new Hot Stews have been added
- At least one Hot Stew will be sold by every food vendor
- Hot Stews increase your Warmth by 50 instead of 25
I absolutely adore how comprehensive some modders get when taking to Skyrim, and this Gourmet mod is no exception. Just like the Skyrim mod that overhauls dogs, this should feel right at home in Skyrim, and help enhance the 12-year-old game in a relatively small, but incredibly impactful, way.
The Simonrim team has a lot of Skyrim mod overhauls for different aspects of Bethesda’s RPG, with cooking being just the latest, but I encourage you to check it out.
While we all wait for the Starfield release date to take us on our next Bethesda adventure you’ll want to check out the best PC games like Skyrim available now, and the best dragon games too.
