Hello!

Long time no see as I haven't been home in a couple of months lol, I'm back again with another WCIF post.

For TS3 there's a mod that allows sims to learn recipes from the cooking channel. I was wondering if there's anything like that for TS2? Googling just brought me to The Sims 3 mod, so I'm guessing not. Or maybe I'm just not digging as deep as I should lol

It's not so much learning recipes but your sim can learn cooking skills from the Yummy channel on TV.
That's what all I've ever heard of. The recipes you learn are for the witches brews/spells which are a different thing altogether.

There are no recipes in Sims 2, they're exclusively tied to the cooking skill. Cooking level 5 means your sim knows all the recipes that require cooking skill 5 or less.

That's a good point. Though some Sims 3 recipes are tied to specific skill levels too, but I get that Sims 2 is a very different game by code. So I don't know if a mod like that would be even possible for Sims 2 in the first place. Then again the modding community can be full of surprises, so I suppose we won't know until we know.

So even if your sim has the required skill level you don't want them to be able to cook a specific meal until they've found a recipe for it?

There are a few items sims can't cook without certain ingredients or tools - the fish dishes from Seasons and the Juicer recipes require ingredients. Ribs, burgers and hot dogs require grills. Some items can only be made with an oven available. There's also the cuisine hobby, which unlocks the cheese and appetizer platters. I think that's as close as you get in (vanilla) TS2.

I'd just pretend they were learning recipes from watching cooking shows, since they're gaining cooking skills (and hobby enthusiasm)...

Farming could be a roundabout way to do something like recipes - not being able to cook a certain dish without having the ingredient.

I think the Sun&Moon project has more harvestable ingredients, possibly with recipes that require them or something like that.

I think that the Holiday Roast also requires the Cornucopia of uh something. XD

I know this post is old, but for people coming across this there's a beta version of the sims 3 recipe here: https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=656656

Unfortunately it has not been updated in years and I don't know if the original modder will comeback or if a new modder will take over.