This guide will show you the best way to leveling your Cooking skill from 1 – 600. Cooking is a lot of fun to have but keep in mind that if you plan on doing a lot of Cooking it’s really helpful and easier to also have Fishing. If you are interested in leveling up both at the same time or using your Fishing to get fish to cook check out my WoW Fishing and Cooking Guide.

If you are taking up Cooking to make extra gold I highly recommend that you look at this guide before you start because it will revolutionize the way you play and provide you with the knowledge you need to make more gold than you’ll ever really need.

This Cooking Leveling Guide is updated for patch 5.0.5 and Mists of Pandaria.

**With MOP they made it very easy to level from 1-520 if you are starting out from a skill of 1. You can find the how to right here MOP Cooking 1-600

For Cooking you’ll need either meat from mobs or fish from fishing for most recipes in order to level up. If you have the gold I recommend you buy your mats off the Auction House because it will save you a ton of time.

For easy of Cooking on the go you will use your Basic Campfire skill, found in your spellbook under the general tab, to create a fire to cook your recipes no matter where you are.

The first step for you now is to find a Cooking Trainer to train your first Cooking skills, if you haven’t already.

Cooking 1-70

Cooking 70-130

Cooking 130-225

Cooking 225-300

Cooking 300-350

Cooking 350-450

You’ll need to buy one recipe for this section that will require you to do Dalaran Cooking Dailies. You can pick whatever recipe you want to use but for the sake of simply leveling I’d suggest getting Spiced Mammoth Treats, Critter Bites, or Hearty Rhino.

Cooking 450-525

The only way to level from 450-525 is by purchasing recipes with Chef’s Awards (which are received from doing the Cooking Dailies in Stormwind and Orgrimmar). Luckily, these dailies are really simple to do. Keep in mind that you can buy any recipe you want, assuming you buy one that you can train at 450, one at 475, and one at 500. You could even buy recipes that require fish if you don’t have fishing, if you buy the fish off the Auction House. I’ll list the best recipes to get if you are planning to farm meat, but the choice is up to you.

Cooking in MOP 1-600

First if you are starting out with a skill of 1 you can do all your cooking within the Mists of Pandaria expansion. Below will give you the information you need to level cooking quickly and effectively.

First, go to the Halfhill Market in the Valley of the Four Winds and talk to Sungshin Ironpaw. Every recipe that you make that is orange will grant you 5 skill up. So follow the below steps to go 1-530. Of course you will need to learn the new ranks of cooking during this evolution from a cooking trainer. Keep in mind there are also recipes that contain fish in them where you may need to use in order to level up the only fished used in these recipes are Golden Carp which you can buy off the auction house or fish for them yourself in the waters of Pandaria.

a. Learn a cooking recipe
b. Purchase the ingredients from Sungshin Ironpaw
c. Cook the recipe until it is no longer orange
d. Learn a new recipe that is orange
e. Continue this until you have reached a skill of 530.

You will need to do 2 quests So You Want to Be a Chef and Ready for Greatness. At this point new quests will open up for each cooking specialization. 5 ways are connected to 1 primary stat and 1 with brew.

Way of the Wok-Agility
Way of the Grill-Strength
Way of the Pot-Intellect
Way of the Steamer-Spirit
Way of the Oven-Stamina
Way of the Brew-Drinking

You can learn all 6 Ways you do not need to pick any one specific. Before you begin cooking you will need to start the quest from Sunghin Ironpaw where all quests begin from for cooking a specific Way.

Now that your 600 skill enjoy!! The bonus is you can learn the ultimate recipe of a Way which increases a single stat by 300 congratulations!
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