They said that cooking makes (cook-able) food items better/safer. I'm guessing it takes away rads. I believe it was said that you can boil water to purify it. At any rate, I'm pumped!
I hope we can make our own campfires. There was a mod like this for New Vegas, where you could slap down a campfire and a bedroll anywhere you want in the world. It was much more natural to set up camp at the end of the day and tan your gecko hides at the side of the fire, or brew up the poisons for your blade. And this mod also had some awesome dynamic lighting to it, the orange glow from the campfire was bright and lit up everything around me. It was great when using Fellout or Nevada Skies that made the nights actually dark.
I'm hoping that there are pre-fabricated player homes like in past games, but this time they have full crafting stations. It pissed me off when I wanted to tan some Gecko hides, I had to travel a long ways to find a campfire. Would have been nice if the Lucky 38 Presidential suite had a Hotplate.