I kinda like the charm of the cooking animation. I feel like it's more fun than other games that turns crafting into "just press the button in the menu". Especially with the environmental cooking methods, why shouldn't I be able to cook my meat on the ground with a flaming sword?
If I was designing the Zelda cooking system:
- definitely some sort of bookmarkable known recipes book that gets brought up from the cooking pot instead of paging through the inventory
- asynchronous cooking; I don't mind the cooking animation, just give me multiple cooking pots and let me move around while it (quickly) cooks
- holding more than 5 items at a time, like hold 50 drumsticks to throw all at once onto a firepit to sear
- big batches (upgradable cooking pot sizes), why not throw 100 apples into the pot for 20 servings made at once?
TOTK added a recipe system where once you cook a meal, you can select an ingredient to view all meals containing it and automatically select all the ingredients for a specific meal. Which is at least part of what you want.
I would definitely agree that things like cooking 100 hearty durians gets really painful after a while though.
If I was designing the Zelda cooking system:
- definitely some sort of bookmarkable known recipes book that gets brought up from the cooking pot instead of paging through the inventory
- asynchronous cooking; I don't mind the cooking animation, just give me multiple cooking pots and let me move around while it (quickly) cooks
- holding more than 5 items at a time, like hold 50 drumsticks to throw all at once onto a firepit to sear
- big batches (upgradable cooking pot sizes), why not throw 100 apples into the pot for 20 servings made at once?