Better Cooking Menu - V2.0

Updates
25th September 2025 (v2.0)
- I've added a version of the new interaction to all other appliances (stove, microwave, food processor, grill)
- Like the original EA functionality, Sims can grill on community lots with no fridge - here, only the grillable recipes will show up (but under the cooking menu UI) and Sims will start grilling straight away
- There's an error in ani's No Fridge Shopping mod where the overrided grill interaction doesn't take on the tuning of the original, so it wasn't being hidden for user-directed with this mod. I fixed this so it's now hidden correctly
- The reward fridge for reaching Level 10 in the Culinary career didn't have the new interaction added until the save was reloaded, but this is fixed now. Same with the food processor you get from one of the career levels. (Thanks to Twinsimming for the code snippet)



The Mod
This mod is a replacement for the EA cooking interaction(s) (they are actually one interaction made to look like many) to have them under one interaction which displays a dialogue window rather than the pie menu.

With this mod, the fridge's pie menu is much less cluttered: Have [meal], Serve [meal], Serve Dessert, Have Quick Meal, and Make Gourmet Pet Food are replaced with just one "Cook From Menu" button.

From the menu, you can cook a meal (regardless of the time of day, single or group serving), serve dessert, have a quick meal, and make gourmet pet food. You can filter by meal type, and choose to show or hide recipes you don't have the ingredients for.

Other than getting rid of the time of day limitation, recipes should be available (or not available) just the same as without the mod, and there's no other functionality. If you have mods that add new recipes, adjust ingredients, add ingredients to Quick Meals etc, they should work the same. The selected recipe should be cooked as normal by the sim

No Fridge Shopping
This mod also takes into consideration whether or not you have ani's NoFridgeShopping mod installed, and if so, you need to have the required ingredients in order to cook the recipe.

Strings & Translations
I tried to use EA strings wherever possible, but there are a few added with the mod. There's a text file provided for translators as usual.

Portuguese PT & BR - David Mtv
German - Norn
Spanish ES & MX - CMaxi
Russian - Sonya Kas
Polish - sandra_vu
Chinese TW - yupai1019
French - Symbolism

Conflicts and Notes
No strict conflicts as this mod adds a new interaction and only edits the tuning of the original cooking interaction. However, you won't be able to use icarus_allsorts' Cook With Any Ingredient mod as normal with it, because this mod will hide that one when you click on the fridge. I think sims will technically be able to use CWAI autonomously, but that's probably not what you want. This mod is really for people who want the cooking menu but not the extra functionality of CWAI anyway

Other cooking mods which add new interactions (such as my Homebaked Bread mod) will appear on the fridge as normal in pie-menu form, and won't appear in this mod's cooking menu. This is also the case for the Store's Baker's Station and similar objects.
Basically, if a recipe won't show up in the EA fridge cooking interactions, it won't show in this menu.

The mod doesn't work with TheSweetSimmer's Kitchen Tweaks mod, but only the version that replaces the cooking interaction to make sims wash their hands first. You can use the version that doesn't do this with this mod just fine. I'm honestly not sure why it doesn't work because it seems like it should but I'll consider looking into fix for a later update

One issue is that the cooking interactions from other appliances such as the stove don't work anymore (the sim will just do nothing when you select a recipe). This is because the real cooking interaction isn't allowed for user-directed, but when selecting the interaction from an appliance, it's set to that, so it fails. Hopefully this doesn't bother you too much as the cooking menu is better anyway!
Update v1.1: Now those interactions are hidden, just like the ones on the fridge.
Update v2.0: Now there is a Cook From Menu interaction for these appliances too

If for some reason you want the original cooking interactions to be visible again, you can use NRaas Retuner to change the tuning of the original cooking interaction (will be called something like Have Breakfast / Pancakes in the NRaas menu) to reset Disallow User-Directed back to False - then the original cooking interactions will appear on the fridge again alongside "Cook From Menu", and will allow you to use the old cooking interactions on other appliances, if you unhide them too.

Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy! Any issues, let me know.