My suggestion is to add a slow cooker to the cooking skill which would function similarly to the craftworks, though id probably suggest a higher gold cost, and higher gold cost increase. These would be buyable slots that automatically cook meals that you queue up by loading ingredients in, similar to the feed/flour mill. However due to being a *slow* cooker, i imagine something like a 10x multiplier on the cooking duration, so even a simple bone broth would take more than an hour, meaning there would still be plenty of need to manually cook for higher quantities or faster times.
I also believe due to the "set and forget" nature of slow cookers irl, any meals cooked this way should be unable to be stirred, tasted, or seasoned, providing another reason for manual cooking with ovens to remain relevant, being better for exp and mastery, with slow cookers mainly being used to keep up bone broth production for other meals, or to make small amounts of offline progress.
