Cooking

Intro

Cooking is an excellent tool for melee characters to reduce downtime and provide moderate duration buffs. While it might be overlooked by mana-centric classes, no one who stands on the front lines should fail to consider it. Hungry pets eating you out of house and home? Look no farther. As a secondary profession it won't interfere with your other trade skills, and is the perfect complement to fishing.

Fishing/Cooking Recipe Summary
List of cooking recipes

Apprentice

To start your career as a chef, talk to a cooking trainer located in any major city. Press "P", find your cooking icon, and if you have the ingredients you can cook at any fire. I never carry flint, tinder, or wood, as inventory space will always be at a premium - there are plenty of fires in any town, and even field cooking using fires in mobs' camps is highly feasible. You will learn a few recipes that use random drops from beasts near your level, but to really get started I recommend cooking in conjuction with fishing. Buy a recipe for brilliant smallfish and head to a noob fishing hole (as described here). I start all my horde cooks at Bloodhoof Village in Mulgore, which has a fishing trainer (west of town by the lake), cooking trainer, a vendor who sells the first several freshwater fish recipes, and a lake which provides lots of brillant smallfish and longjaw mud snappers.

Journeyman

Journeyman trainers are plentiful, so grab this tier (as well as any additional recipes you think may be useful) and press on. If you're fishing you should have a good supply of longjaw mud snappers to jump-start your skill through most of Journeyman. Mix in meat drops from mobs, and finish it off with some bristle whisker catfish(for horde, recipe is in ratchet and TB).

At level 30 if your cooking skill is stuck between 90 and 150 get the Murloc Fin Soup Recipe and massacre the murlocs in Baradin Bay ( Menethil Harbor ) for their fins. They spawn quickly and are not social like other murlocs, so they dont gang up on you.

Expert

An Expert Cookbook may be purchased from Wulan in Desolace or Shandrina in Ashenvale. Since you probably blew through apprentise and journeyman fairly quickly, this is where you'll slow down and decide your own path to culinary excellence. Many recipes start at 175 cooking skill, meaning 150-175 is about the slowest time in your career. For fishermen I recommend sticking with bristle whisker catfish which can be fished about 65% of the time from freshwater in Ashenvale. Horde characters should leave Orgrimmar via the barrens exit, cross the bridge then immediately turn right and follow the river up a bit. Also try to get your hands on some tangy clam meat (from sea fishing, Ratchet docks are a favorite for horde), which will power you to 175 as well as privide a nice stam/spirit buff. Once you've hit 175, a whole new world of recipes opens up, including several different kinds of fish. If you quest in Arathi, pick up all that raptor meat and turn it into roast raptor. Personally, once I hit 175 I made 225 about 10 mintues later from all the recipes and meats I had saved.

If you are at or around level 35 (Alliance), and have a cooking skill of 150, the easiest way to take it all the way to 200 is to get the tasty lion steak recipe A Costly Menace from Southshore, and then farm the lions at Gavins Naze (Alterac Mountains northwest of Southshore) for lion meat. You will need 100 pieces of lion meat to gain 50 points in cooking. I found it worth the while for the XP, and the bristly whiskers that drop sell for 7 silver each.

Artisan

At level 40 and 225 cooking, the cooking trainer in your major city will tell you to go to Gadgetzan to begin the artisan cooking quest. It's simply a treasure hunt for ingredients. Zesty clam meat comes from big-mouth clams, which drop readily from murlocs in Swamp of Sorrows and nagas in Feralas, all low 40's mobs (or the spitelashes in Azshara if you're a late bloomer, i.e. ~lvl 45). Giant eggs drop from the roc's in Tanaris, or the owlbeasts in Hinterlands (horde should pick up the Natural Materials quest in Feralas before heading there). Alterac Swiss is bought from NPCs (innkeeper in 1k needles for horde). Bon appetite!