Simple patches I made for myself to modify Gourmet's recipes to require less salt so you don't starve to death in the wilds of Chanterelle while your food rots away uneaten, all for the lack of salt, triggering a compulsive need to hoard salt at all costs and never waste it on silly things like potions or fancy recipes. And then you find that one recipe without salt that you can spam and then your diet becomes even more monotonous than levelling via smithing daggers. Note: I hadn't slept for thirty two hours when I wrote the original description for this page. I think it shows... 

These herbal seasoning patches switch the salt out for a plant ingredient instead. 

Also my first mod, I assume there will be mistakes in it somewhere, so install with a pinch of salt ;)


The FOMOD adds the re-seasoned recipes as new, or updated (your choice), cooking recipes to Gourmet. If you just wanted to patch out the salt, the Unsalted Gourmet files have been updated and included in version 3.0. 


Re-seasoning options:

• Standalone: These install all new recipes and cooked meal items compatible with Gourmet and/or Gourmet Fishing.
• Renamed:  These just patch the original Gourmet/Gourmet Fishing recipes to change the ingredients. 
• Patched but not renamed: Same as above, but without any weird new names. Choose this if you also want to install extra recipes and don't want duplicate names showing up.
  

Standalone: Basically a separate mod, but it uses Gourmet's effects and keywords. Exactly the same recipes, just off on their own with separate added foods. No overwriting or conflicts with other food mods, but also will need its own patches.

Reseasoned/Renamed Patches: These will replace the original recipes, rather than adding a variant, and would go well alongside something that  adds a lot of new meat types, which can lead to a ridiculous number of salt + meat recipes when used alongside the original Gourmet.

• Reseasoned Meat: Only changes Gourmet recipes, one or two meats per plant, no garlic, elves ear or frost mirriam (because you can't find these normally in the wild). 
  

• Reseasoned Fish: modifies the Gourmet Fishing recipes, each plant shows up in two or three different fish recipes. Does include the common kitchen herbs, because there are so many different fish recipes that you won't starve and it makes sense that those herbs gets used for some specific dishes.
  

• Reasoned and Renamed: Bonus Fancy Seasoning Version: The same recipes as above, but with the different dishes renamed to reflect their new tasty herbal ingredients, which means they also overwrite the records for the cooked food itself. This means that if you have something else modifying Cooked Beef, this will overwrite it, and change the stats back to the Gourmet version. Completely compatible with anything that requires the original Cooked Beef (e.g. Sandwiches of Skyrim). 
  

You can safely overwrite the combined patch with any of the individual patches. Or vice versa, although that would be a bit pointless. You can also mix and match with the herbed dishes and Absolutely No Salt versions by overwriting the file from this mod with one of the files from that mod if you only want herbs for meat, or herbs for fish.  So you can have herb seasoned tripod fish with a side of garlic staked vampire fish, and plain unsalted roast goat, or vice versa with some delicious Prickled Goat and plain salmon.

Seasoning Plants: Hanging Moss, Red Mountain Flower, Lavender, Jazbay Grapes, Snowberries, Garlic, Frost Mirriam, Red Mountain Flower, Elves Ear, Grass Pod, Thistle Branch, Purple Mountain Flower, Blue Mountain Flower, Canis Root.

The 'Extra Recipes' in the Optional Downloads provides additional recipes for both versions. You can mix and match, if you want to overwrite Gourmet (with or without name changes) and have new standalone food items, but bear in mind all the FOMOD files (currently) have identical recipes, and so do the extra optional files, so you probably want to pick one of each rather than two of the same. Note: I was a bit more relaxed with the additional recipes, so some of them will use non-forageable plants, the idea is to give you more realistic but still not overwhelming options at the cookpot.






Requirements

• Gourmet and any of its requirements.
• Gourmet - A Fishing Patch for the fish recipes.
• Gourmet Survival only changes a single recipe for just meat, a tiny patch is included in the FOMOD to fix it.
  

• Simple Hunting Overhaul: for the patch. Patches the cooked meat, uncooked skeever meat, and cooked meat recipe for Gourmet and Gourmet Reseasoned, load anywhere after SHO. Doesn't conflict with anything that patches Gourmet food. No EAS support added for the cooked meat, might do that later. 
• I left the original SHO skeever meat in this Gourmet Reseasoned patch in case people still need it patched, but it's a bit silly having two mods adding skeever meat separately to dead skeevers. So I recommend also grabbing the 'SHO Skeevers drop Gourmet meat' patch from my Restarter's Random Patches page. You can use both patches together, you just won't get SHO skeever meat in loot drops anymore. 
• Note: the Meat Meals & More SHO patch replaces the cooked meat recipe entirely. Use my patch or the MM&M version for SHO, as you won't see any cooked meat to patch with MM&M (one keeps a single cooked meat recipe, one patches the meat to be multiple types of animal meat with their own individual recipes, which will all require salt). 
  

Compatibility Patches

These patches just update the new cooked meals with EAS support and Sunhelm/Gourmet/Survival keywords, as well as the new names. They can be installed alone, they just won't add any recipes.

• Eating Animations & Sounds: Not really required, but the downloads are already patched to be compatible to avoid the changes being overwritten by another patch. Load after any other patches for EAS. Also load EAS after anything else that adds eating and drinking animations, including for potions.
  

• This EAS patch for Gourmet adds a single animation, for cooked dog meat. Optional.
• Eating Animations - Fishing Patch adds custom animations for the CC Fishing fishes, but seems to be broken (for me and other people in the comments). It breaks all my EAS animations when installed, but I might just have a mod conflict or something irritating and nitpicky stopping it from working. I've included optional patches for this version anyway, but the default version will be more reliable.
  

If you have any mods that patch the same recipes, like StarRiseShine's Gourmet Patches, install the included compatibility patch(es) from the FOMOD for your chosen version and load it after every other patch. The patches in this mod only touch the simple meat and fish meals, so you'll probably still want the other fixes, but as far as I can tell, my patch is the most up to date, working, version. This week, anyway.


Installation:

Should be very straightforward, just install after Gourmet and any other mods that you want to overwrite with the modified recipes. 

All plugins are esp flagged esl and should be safe to install or uninstall during an ongoing game

Note: the standalone version adds new food items. These shouldn't cause any problems, but I recommend cleaning your save after uninstalling, just to be safe.



Don't Like Flavour In Your Food? I Have Other Mods on the Menu!


If you prefer completely plain, unsalted, meals:

If you just wanted to get rid of salt and don't want any fancy floral flavourings, go to Gourmet No Salt For Simple Food instead (I moved it over onto its own page, the downloads section was getting a bit confusing).  download the FOMOD here for Gourmet Reseasoned, I added it as an extra menu item! You can still get random unsalting patches there, but the most up to date Gourmet ones are here for now.

Ugh, even that is too complicated.

If you absolutely hate gathering ingredients, get stressed figuring out recipes, and really bored of all the menus and options involved in cooking, but still want to have a survival playthrough, then why not let your spoilt noble character just... buy their meals? Directly at the cooking pot? With my other mod Chocolate Money - Eat Your Gold Survival Cheat? At last, a use for all that useless heavy coinage!



Why I Made This Mod

Why Plants Instead of Salt?

Simply stripping out salt leaves a very plain meal - and more importantly, an unbalanced game. While I hate having to chase after salt right from the start, I found that just removing it entirely from recipes was a little too easy, especially with some of Gourmet's more useful food effects. In this version, salt has been substituted for various common plants (all found fairly freely in the world although some are regional or easier to purchase than forage), so you can actually find all the ingredients in the wild yourself, but aren't forced to sadly choke down plain salmon for every meal.

This mod only changes very simple cooking recipes that you could realistically cook without salt. I didn't alter any of the stews, bisques, survival foods, or fancy baking recipes, or pretty much any recipe that required at least three ingredients, as salt actually makes sense for most of them. And I really just wanted to fix the 'MUST HOARD ALL THE SALT FOR OPTIMUM CRAFTING' issue, not put salt out of a job entirely.

I really enjoyed the 'forage for random berries and edible weeds' aspect of Hunterborn and miss it since I started using Simple Hunting Overhaul. This mod ensures that even the most random plants that I never ended up using for alchemy will still have some practical value. Now I can save thistles for food, and actually benefit from some of the most unloved ingredients! Now your custom homes can have useful, charming, and diverse kitchen gardens, and not just be surrounded by a deadly monoculture of poisons.

I tried to vary and complement the rarity and regionality of the plants and the raw meats and fish (and sometimes just paired stuff that struck my fancy) a bit, so you will always be able to make some kind of food easily, but there shouldn't be too many obvious winners either and vendors and lootable food supplies will still be worth checking out.

And I can finally seriously start making some headway on that literal pillar of salt I'm trying to build without having to worry about constantly eating my own building supplies.

Possible future updates may happen to adjust the recipes slightly as I playtest it, but I'm aware that everyone will be using different mods and have different common plants, values, and harvesting options, so I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible. Also I picked my username with a great deal of self awareness.


Recommended Mods that should work even more nicely with this mod installed:

Add harvestable garlic, elves ear, and frost mirriam, into the wild with any of the following mods:

• Chanterelle (in its own region)
• 'Don't Leave Me Hanging - Plants' from Nature's Bounty
•  Harvestable Elves Ear and Frost Mirriam 
  

Make plants actually seasonable and foraging a bit more interesting with Seasonal Alchemy. Cook much more easily as you travel with Simple Portable Cooking (and Campfire, of course). Add more fruit in the bushes with Tundra Berries. And grow your own kitchen gardens with the improved functionality of Simplicity of Seeding.

Mix your food options up with my other mod, Baked In Mud Crabs - clay baking recipes for Campfire as well as Sandwiches of Skyrim and Meat Meals & More, so you actually have more standard grilled meat recipes and interesting combined foods along with my fancy herbal forage dishes. And never remember to eat again with Gourmet Auto Eat or the Sunhelm only version. And of course, you'll need to Turn Cast Iron Pots into Campfire Cooking Pots (and Vice Versa). 







Some of my other mods:

Hide Those Ears
Gourmet No Salt For Simple Food
Baked In Mud Crabs - clay baking recipes for Campfire
Chocolate Money - Eat Your Gold Survival Cheat
Outfit Presets for Skyrim Outfit System SE Revived
Restarter's Random Patches  so many patches it's ridiculous
Random Patches for Chanterelle - slightly less random patches. These ones have a theme!
Soft Footed Mammoths - Quieter Mammoth Footsteps