Meat

**Meat** is a food item, that was added in update v0.11 to ***The Forest***.

## Gameplay

**Meat** is one of the products of killing deer, crocodiles, tortoises, turtles, boar or raccoons. It was previously known as *Generic Meat* though its name was changed in v1.0.
The meat can be placed on a drying rack, cooked over a fire, or added to a stew. Inventory can hold a maximum of 4.
Every animal that supplies **meat** contains a specific amount plus other items:

When cooking **meat** on a fire, it can become burnt. This dramatically lowers the benefits of the meat to about 10% of what it would be originally.

Using a drying rack is often the best option for **meat** as it prevents it from becoming spoiled. **meat** and all meats take 8 minutes and 20 seconds to dry on the drying rack. Mutants can steal **meat** and other meats off the drying rack, they can also destroy the rack which will cause all the meat to disappear.

## Storage

**Meat** can be stored and dried on drying racks:

## Meat mechanics

Meat can be dried, cooked, and stewed. They also have different states being fresh, edible, spoiled, and burnt. The meat can be selected from the inventory (except stews) or cycling through on the fire or drying rack, here is what each icon represents for each meat:

* **Meat** and Small Meat have the same icon
* Rabbit Meat
* Lizard Meat
* Fish Meat
* Arms
* Leg
* Head
* Ready to consume
* Fire needs to be rebuilt

### Cooking

* All **meats** can be cooked on basic fires and fire pits
* Meat on a fire will burn if it is left for 90 seconds or longer
* Burnt meat has only one state, regardless if it was spoiled or fresh it will have the same value. This can make spoiled meat more viable. However, burned meat will reduce hydration by 10 in normal and hard mode
* If a fire dies while cooking meat, the meat will respawn as fresh
* Legs and Arms won't burn, they will turn into bones instead
* Heads can be placed on a fire though it cannot be consumed and it will turn into a skull

### Drying

* All meats can be dried with the exception of small meat
* It takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds for meat to dry once placed. If it is removed, it will reset the timer
* Dried meat can be removed from the rack and placed in the inventory by pressing the `E` key
* Dried meat can be eaten from the rack by holding down the `E` key
* The meat can sometimes appear 'black' in color on the rack. If this is eaten from the rack, it will have very minimal benefit. This appears to be a bug. To prevent this, place it in your inventory first
* Dried meat can not be assigned to a quick select slot, this can catch players off guard and they can accidentally eat the meat instead
* Dried meat will reduce hydration by 5 in normal and hard mode. In hard survival it will reduce it by 20.

### Stewing

* All meats can be placed in stews
* Meats are classed as a meat ingredient, out of the three known ingredients for stews. Oysters aren't classed as meat
* All meats have their current state properties removed when stewing, this means that spoiled meat is exactly the same as fresh meat
* Calories of meat are exactly the same in stews as they are normally

## Known Bugs

* **Meat** that is placed on a Drying Rack will appear on top, and then disappear shortly after. [*citation needed*]
* **Meat** that is placed on a Drying Rack can also appear under the rack and will be edible seconds after. [*citation needed*]
* In Multiplayer mode, **Meat**, Fish, Rabbit Meat, and Lizard Meat that has spoiled can be dropped and picked up by another player to reset its spoil timer, allowing the meat to be cooked or dried once again. [*citation needed*]

## Gallery

* Old version of meat before v1.0, it was darker in color and had a different texture
* Cooking some Meat in a fire pit
* The player Holding some meat