I pretty much just let them have anything edible I get my hands on. I mainly cook fish, meat, eggs.

@bobthedragon

Aw glad it helped!

After poking around a little more I've realized there is some value in cooking the 3-ingredient common one (turnip salad etc). You do get more stamina from just cooking three meats--but those aren't made of meat, they're made of 5-stamina foods that can't really be made into anything else with more stamina. It's probably kind of a wash all around, but this means it's not completely pointless to use those lower level recipes, since it lets you get more out of your materials. VariantLoki's guide hasn't updated with all of the new recipes but has found that the yogurt recipes are actually the best in the game for stamina if you look at it as stamina/minute instead of stamina/slot. Link.

The nutty feast is also on par with bacon in terms of slot/experience. (It gives 16 exp and takes four slots; bacon gives 4 exp in one slot. It does take a lot longer than four bacons do to cook though.) All of the feasts also sell to the vendor for 625, which is on par with the tooth pendant trinkets. Maybe worth it if you're setting them up right before walking away from the game for a while? IMO the nutty feast is the only one it makes sense to do this with though, unless you have a very big cooking pot.