OK
Fairly minor issue but it is still irritating me.
In Gothic One you could fry meat at high speed by pressing the action key and then the up arrow down arrow up down up down really fast and that would cycle through the meat in your inventory.
In Gothic 2 I press the action key, fry the meat, press it again and hero stands up, press it again and he kneels down to use the frying pan. Very slow tedious way to cook the meat.
I have tried pressing the alt key which is mass inventory transfer to no avail.
So if anyone has cracked the secret to speed cooking then let me know.

There is no secret. The scripts and animations for Gothic II Gold were made that way: you can only fry one piece of a raw meat at a time. You can only "change" that by installing a mod that expands upon said elements, because there is no other way.

Luckily for you, I modded Gothic II Gold and made a big "unofficial patch" for it that addresses this issue (and allows you to fry many other raw foods, like fish, insect flesh, mushrooms, or clam meat, among many others, while staying lore-friendly to the original game.

If you're interested, visit the thread on this German forum; don't worry, my thread is fully in English.

LINK: https://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/threads/1500856-PUBLICATION-Yet-Another-Unofficial-Patch-%28for-Gothic-II-NotR-Gold%29?p=25575513#post25575513