WoW Cooking Guide - Cooking with Warchef

Ho ho ho! On this beautiful, cold, and snowy day, we would like to tell you a Christmas Story about Cooking in the World of Warcraft. Once upon a time, you see, when the snows have settled upon the lands of Azeroth, all the well-behaved Orcs gathered in their Warchief’s Tent to sit on a lap of their jolly master, and ask for presents, with each and every Orc bringing some kind of christmas dish. Those with perfect, distinguished cuisine with eggs, lots of orange mild spices from the villages and farms of pandaria, received Bloodaxes of their dreams, best-looking Transmogs, more green and Legendary drops. And those who were not so successful with pleasing the Warchief with their raw yellow dishes, received a Bloodaxe to the back of their necks in a furious rampage of their jolly masters, and their dishes were thrown out the imaginary window. Yeah... horde cooking is a harsh, brutal business. Many orcses learned not to water down their beverages.

So this year, to make your Warchief truly happy, and to keep your head intact, we would like to present you with, World of Warcraft Cooking Guide - Cooking with Warchef (Christmas Version)”. Right here you will learn how to cook, where to get your utensils, how to become a better War-Chef, and how to make valuable Cuisine that will not only be useful for Raids and Dungeons but will also let you make some good gold with your dishes. So learn cooking, there's no reason not to.

We will not mention all available foods, as you can find them in the game and on other websites. We will mainly focus on dishes that you can make to efficiently level Cooking up to a maximum level, and the best cuisine that will greatly improve your battle prowess. And of course - keep it fun. You don't know life if you've never fished in stranglethorn vale to learn expert recipes from Kelsey Yance. Today, you will be my apprentice on this cooking quest. Let's get started. We will toggle on your inner warchef. 

Why should you choose Cooking?

Cooking is one of the secondary professions that will be available for you when you start your World of Warcraft Journey. It’s an additional skill that can be leveled up by practising it - creating foods and learning new recipes. And this exact profession will be very important throughout the entire course of the game, from leveling through end-game dungeons, raids, to battlegrounds, and PvP scenarios. 

For leveling and grinding, you will treat food as your main healing tool, that you will use in between killing your enemies to keep yourself healthy. 

For anything beyond leveling - food will still heal you, but you will mostly focus on buffs that your cuisine provides. Additional Critical Strike for one hour, some Stamina or Versatility points, even debuffs for your enemies that attack you (Honey Potpie slows melee attackers’ movement speed by 30% after they hit you).

And if you are looking for some Gold - while there are other professions that are more lucrative than cooking dishes - cooking can be a reliable and efficient source of income, especially when new Raids come out. You will save some money by cooking cuisine instead of buying it from other players. You can provide buffs from food for yourself and your raid-pals through feasts without spending a dime on food.

Since Cooking is a secondary profession, you can choose your main profession early on, and choose cooking as your secondary without problems. However, keep in mind that secondary professions cannot be changed so choose wisely when picking them.

Is Cooking Worth It? 

There are lots of speculations about this idea of mastering cooking. Some people say that Cooking is trash as a profession, both when it comes to efficiency and gold-making. Some say that it’s a much-needed thing as there are some cool buffs that will be useful for everyone in a lot of scenarios. Truth is - there are massive downsides to cooking when it comes to efficiency, but without it, thing would’ve been much harder for everyone. 

First of all, buffs from food can’t be overlooked. Besides healing and regenerating mana there are multiple buffs that will last for up to an hour. And these buffs range from great to completely useless. Having about 100 bonus Critical Strike for 1 hour for example, can be absolutely huge in basically every scenario. And various other buffs that will be mandatory to do Raids without worrying for certain stats. Finishing Raids will be just much easier with proper buffs, you simply can’t have too many of them. 

However, those buffs can come from other people from the Raid. You can even purchase them on the market from other players, and feed a bunch of people with buffs with a simple click. So since there are foods on the market, it means that people are still doing it. Should you be one of them? Depends when.

In general Cooking is not very lucrative if you don’t know how to do it efficiently. It’s very common for inexperienced cooks that don’t know the market, to lose more money than they generate with cooking. Especially during a bad time for cooking.

The best time to cook, is when the new raids or dungeons go live. Top raiding guilds will race for world’s first, people will only start to learn new raids, and any buffs will be much needed. Around this time, before raids come out, and some time after they go live - prices of the most important ingredients and recipes will skyrocket. This is your time to actually sell your stuff and make a lot of money in a few weeks or so. 

You will have to know, maybe even predict what is going to go big on the market food and ingredient-wise. So start out early, from Apprentice, Journeyman cooking, through Expert, right to the Artisan cooking.

How Cooking Works? 

Cooking is your standard secondary profession that you will be able to learn from special NPCs - Cooking Trainers. You will be able to find classic cooking NPCs all-over the world, in major cities, small compounds and towns. There are over 52 of them in World of Warcraft, and you will be able to learn some things from them. 

Of course you will need some place when you will be able to cook. Most inns in World of Warcraft will posses some sort of utensil like cooking fire, a brazier, and more, so you can cook your foods around them.

And if you are out in the wilderness, you will be able to use a special cooking skill - Camp Fire, co basically create a literal campfire, that will allow you to prepare food wherever you go. Quality of the foods doesn’t change, so you can deliver distinguished cuisine basically everywhere, as long as you keep your fire burning. 

You will also need recipes. There are three ways of obtaining and learning them. Wat's on the cooking menu today?

Cooking Trainers

Most recipes can be learned from your local Cooking Trainer. You will have to find them around towns (simply ask guards if you don’t know where they are) or major cities. Simply visit them, pay for learning a specific recipe that you would like to train, and you’ve got it. Keep in mind that there are Cooking level requirements, and you will have to reach certain level thresholds to learn recipes.

Vendors

Some standard Vendors also can hold some valuable recipes. So if you are interested in checking out some of them - you should just search for them on the web and see what recipes they’ve got to offer.

Rare Drops

Sometimes while grinding you will be presented with a special Recipe drop. Recipes dropped from enemies can range from terrible to pretty amazing, and it depends on which mobs you kill. Don’t throw away those, and don’t sell them to vendors. Check them out on a market, see the supply & demand, check the prices. If it’s worth it to learn and create it - claim it for yourself. But if the food seems weak buff-wise - you should probably get rid of it through market and get as much money as possible. 

Cooking Dailies

Cooking Daily Quests are always worth doing, especially when you are just starting out. There are some decent rewards that will allow you to level up nice and easy, get powerful recipes, and collect various ingredients.

Cooking WoW Dishes in Real Life? 

Have you ever wondered “How foods from World of Warcrafts would taste like when cooked in real life”? Well, time for wondering has ended, as it’s a reality that is not beyond your grasp.

We recommend purchasing a special ,,World of Warcraft the Official Cookbook” for an affordable price right now on Ebay! Surprise your friends and family with the best dish they’ve ever tasted with this simple book inspired by WoW’s cuisine. This simple cookbook will teach you how to conjure and materialize a range of fantastical, delicious foods, inspired by the magical world of your beloved massively multiplayer online role-playing game - World of Warcraft!

Create your own Pandarian Spice, prepare your own appetizers - ever wondered how Crispy Bat Wings taste like? Move over to bread section and master The Way Of The Loaf, Mulgore Spice Bread is in your reach. Nothing is better than a fresh, steaming loaf of bread. Pair it up with a delicious Dragonbreath Chilli, or Westfall Stew that will warm you up during cold, and snowy winter nights, and your taste buds will ascend straight to the gates of heaven.

And when you are ready for the main course - serve Forest Strider Drumsticks, or Graccu’s Homemade Meat Pie, so you can fill your belly up with something, that will melt in your mouth. And if you want to go big, do something truly incredible, the main dish from the cover of the cookbook - Slow-Roasted Turkey from Pilgrim’s Bounty. The depth of its flavor, the meltiness of the meat and a crunchy skin will absolutely transcend your soul to a better place. 

Every person that knows their value also knows that stomach always has some special place, that appears only when some kind of dessert is coming. It’s an additional pocket that materializes in person’s body, so even after a major feast - you can fit in a pie or ten. Desserts from this cookbook are otherworldly. Literally. 

You no longer need to be a Mage to create your own Conjured Mana Buns, filled with cinnamon and glazed with a buttery, brown sugar sauce. Taste the classic Azerothian Pumpkin Pie, or bake your own Chocolate Celebration Cake, to simply amaze your guests when they sit at the table. 

Purchase the cookbook through our website to create something amazing in your kitchen, and support content creators from MMOAuctions.com!

WoW Cooking Leveling Guide

Now, back to the guide - leveling cooking is tedious. Anyone who levels up any profession, should always optimize their leveling speed. And by optimize, we mean - use as little resources as possible to efficiently level up and at the same time keep up a good pace. And since you need to actually cook to gain some cooking profession levels, you should know what you should craft, which ingredients you will need, how to actually get them, and how many of them you will have to use.

Level 1 - Level 35

34 x Mon’Dazi

10 Wild Flour

5 Foosaka

2 Aromatic Fish Oil

4 Powdered Sugar

Rank 1 dish. Quite easy to make. All it takes is some reagents that you can purchase off vendors, and Aromatic Fish Oil that you can get from any fish. You will have to need some kind of fish income, be it on the Auction House or by Fishing skill. Truth is, if you want to get into cooking seriously, Fishing will be a major addition to your professions. Aromatic Fish Oil can be extracted from any fish, simply right-click the fish in your inventory, and you will get it.

Ultimately, to level up to Level 35, you will need to cook about 34 x Mon’Dazi. For that you will need about 340 Wild Flour, 170 Foosaka, 68 Aromatic Wish Oil, and 136 Powdered Sugar. Create those up until Level 35 and you will be ready to proceed to the next step.

Level 35 - Level 50

15 x Kul Tiramisu 

10 Wild Flour

5 Foosaka

2 Aromatic Fish Oil

5 Major’s Frothy Coffee

This is a Rank 2 recipe, and you will be able to learn it from your Cooking Trainer. Same idea as the previous recipe, some reagents that can be purchased from NPCs, and some Aromatic Fish Oil. You don’t have to learn this exact dish, you can pick any Rank 2 Dessert from your training NPC and you’ll be good to go. 

Create about 15 of them. As long as you hit Level 50, you are good to go. Let’s proceed to the next step.

Level 50 - Level 75

25 x Seasoned Loins

10 Stringy Loins

5 Foosaka

Your standard “Rank 2 reagent + something you have to work for” combo. It’s the first leveling recipe that you will have to work for slightly harder if you don’t have the sufficient gold. This is because you will have to grind for them if they are not on the market. Thankfully, Stringy Loins drop from a multitude of mobs around the World of Warcraft, and you can easily purchase it off marketplace from other players.

In theory, you can keep doing a previous dish - Kul Tiramisu - up to a level 75. But your decision should be dependant on the market, prices of reagents that can’t be bought from NPC Vendors, and on the accessibility of ingredients. For example, if it’s easier for you (or cheaper) to get a large package of Aromatic Fish Oil, and Stringy Loins are simply too expensive, you should absolutely consider spamming Kul Tiramisu up to Level 75.

And if you would like to create something different, you might also consider cooking one of these dishes up to Level 75:

25 x Honey-Glazed Haunches

10 Meaty Haunch

5 Choral Honey

25 x Sailor’s Pie

10 Briny Flesh

5 Wild Flour

4 Foosaka

4 Fresh Potato

If these two Rank 2 recipes appear to be much cheaper than Seasoned Loins - craft these instead. The choice is yours.

Level 75 - Level 140

This one is the longest and possibly the most boring bracket, as you will cook the same three things that you’ve used to level up to Level 75 Cooking. You will craft Sailor’s Pie, Honey-Glazed Haunches, and Seasoned Loin all over again. You will need a lot of materials to get to level 140. It takes 120 of one of these recipes to hit 140, and sometimes - you will need even more as you can get really unlucky with leveling professions in WoW. Especially when you really want to reach it as fast as possible.

You can also to try and learn Rank 3 recipes of these 3 dishes. This way, you will be able to reliably reach level 150, and then - it will be just 25 more levels to go.

Level 140 - Level 175

Final bracket of your cooking journey and the beginning of cooking some serious cuisine that will be used by many people during raids and other more demanding parts of WoW’s content. Road to 175 is simple, as you will most likely cook one dish.

40 x Abyssal-Fried Rissole 

8 Moist Fillet

3 Foosaka

5 Wild Flour

While you will need to create only about 40 of them, there’s a slight catch. First, you will need to create a bunch of Rank 1: Abyssal-Fried Rissole, to then switch to Rank 2 of this dish when you reach Level 155. And then - it’s a straight road towards max level 175.

To create these dishes you will also need to meet a special NPC from Nazjatar. Depending on your faction, you will have to meet Instructor Ulooaka (Alliance), or Rolm (Horde). And to get to meet them properly and learn the recipes, you will have to do some entry quests in Nazjatar. 

BONUS TIP

If you want to create some feasts for your own use, or to sell them on the market - don’t sell or vendor your foods that you’ve cooked during the leveling process. Especially when it comes to Kul Tiramisu, and Mon’Dazi. Quite a few Feasts that you will use during raids with your team members use those dishes as ingredients. Foods created with these two dishes will give you 100 points to your primary stat for example, and it’s not something that you should ignore.

Best Foods For Your Use

There are a lot of foods that you can cook in World of Warcraft. But in truth, in the endgame you will cycle through only a few foods that will complement your class and your build. This is why you will stick to a few recipes. 

Boralus Blood Sausage

5x Thick Paleo Steak

3x Foosaka

2x Aromatic Fish Oil

5x Sanguicell

You’ll be given a 85 point increase to your primary stat based on your Specialization for 1 hour. It’s a great food if you want to add that extra, consistent “oomph” to your character. This cuisine will increase your Strength, Agility, or Intellect. It’s a great buff that should not be ignored, in basically any scenario.

Seasoned Steak and Potatoes

6x Thick Paleo Steak

5x Fresh Potato

2x Foosaka

2x Aromatic Fish Oil

Stamina gets increased by 150 points for 1 hour. If you need some extra Health Points, this is the dish to go for. 150 Stamina is a mig deal, and when you survive with that 5 points of HP - you know why you did.

Honey-Glazed Haunches

10x Meaty Haunch

5x Choral Honey

70 Critical Strike for 1 hour for the eater. Additional Crit chance is always a good addition to your character, but it’s not your priority. It’s a pue RNG stat that brings you some extra power, but only when it manages to trigger itself. Useful for everyone, DPS - more damage, Tank - generate more Threat cuz damage, Healers - even more powerful heals. There are definitely better buffs to use, but if you feel like it’s your lucky day, go for additional crits.

Sailor’s Pie

10x Briny Flesh

5x Wild Flour

4x Foosaka

4x Frash Potato

Your Mastery stat is increased by 70 for 1 hour. This one is really interesting. Mastery grants you some nice buffs based on your chosen specialization. Additional points of Mastery will increase the stats of those useful addons, making your speciality way stronger. Very good thing to invest in.

Spiced Snapper

10x Lane Snapper

5x Foosaka

Versatility stat will be increased by 70 for 1 hour. It’s a very nice statistic to have as it increases the damage dealt to your targets, while decreasing the amount of damage received from all sources. Great buff to have, 70 Versatility is something that should not be overlooked.

Swamp Fish ’n Chips

10x Slimy Mackerel

3x Wild Flour

2x Fresh Potato

Haste will be increased by 70 points for 1 hour. Haste will be a must for DPS characters that can dish out some good damage with their normal attacks, with the addition of skills that have on-hit capabilities. Haste decreases the amount of time that has to pass before you can attack again with your right-click. It also affects Damage over Time, and Heal over Time, as it reduces the time between the ticks. 

These foods will be great for you if you want to just feed yourself. However, those will be inefficient when you are going for a Raid with your people. For master cooks interested in Raids, you all should probably focus on

Feasts - Everyone, Get In Here

Cuisine from this section is the real deal. This is the point where your Guild will respect you even more for taking cooking and spending some time with it. Nothing is better than a giant Feast before the raid. There are lots of feasts that you can prepare, but there’s only one feast that will be worth your time. It requires 110 Skill Level in Cooking, and if you are not quite there yet, you should let someone else organize the feast for your raid. 

Bountiful Captain’s Feast

20x Redtail Loach

20x Frenzied Fangtooth

20x Stringy Loins

20x Meaty Haunch

12x Kul Tiramisu

12x Mon’Dazi

3x Midnight Salmon

The list is long, and it seems quite scary. However, this is a Rank 1 recipe. There are also Rank 2 and Rank 3 versions. Next ranks don’t increase the stats that this dish provides. Instead, they reduce the amount of ingredients needed to create this dish. Meaning - going for Rank 3 as soon as possible is the smartest idea, even smarter than leveling up cooking as your secondary profession. 

Rank 3: Bountiful Captain’s Feast

15x Redtail Loach

15x Frenzied Fangtooth

15x Stringy Loins

15x Meaty Haunch

10x Kul Tiramisu

10x Mon’Dazi

2x Midnight Salmon

Here's a cheaper Rank 3 alternative. As you can see, the difference between Rank 1, and Rank 3 is quite severe. Therefore reaching Rank 3 as soon as possible will be one of the best investments that you can make. It will work long-term, as you will use less money and time (which are the two pillars of na MMORPG) to create the best dishes for your raiding group. There are quite a few feasts that you can make, but if you want to be serious, and provide as much additional stats as possible - Bountiful Captain’s Feast will be your appetizer, main course, and dessert.

Bountiful Captain’s Feast will grant 100 points to a primary stat based on specialization. Such a feast will easily feed over 35 people, so you can easily finish your raid.

Make Money with Cooking

Ok, now you know how to level up, and how to create good dishes. But how can you exactly make money with Cooking? Preparing dishes for your own use to gain some stats and also grant them to your raid group only goes so far. Any excess should be sold, so you can finally get something out of cooking. Let’s learn how to minimize your input and maximize your profits.

Step I - Analyze the Marketplace (TSM ADDON)

It’s impossible to stress this enough. Cooking is not where you start. This is because Marketplace is your main place of activity and money-making in World of Warcraft. Not knowing it will be a major hindrance that will not only lower your income, you might actually spend more money than you make. It’s a pithole that is very easy to fall into, it’s a very common thing to gradually lose everything with not so smart marketplace decisions.

Basically - check what’s happening on the Marketplace of your server. An addon known as TradeSkillMaster will be very helpful here, as it will allow you to check the prices of items, check their statistics on the time-scale, you will be able to see your previous purchases and costs. 

Now, about TSM - don’t believe in everything that this addon shows you. It’s a software that doesn’t really take everything into consideration, when determining what investment will be the most profitable for you. Especially when it comes to calculating Vendor prices, as those will be quite tricky. In fact, no software will be better than your own understanding of marketplace and pure logic strats. But it will take some additional time to analyze it. 

You will have to notice some things by yourself. For example, you are in the middle of the expansion, the next expansion is not even announced, and all new raids are known to the general public, and feasts are not in a high demand. Naturally, prices will drop, as those foods and ingredients will sit on the market, with close to nobody purchasing it in large quantities. When new expansion gets announced, cost of ingredients, foods, and feasts will slowly begin to increase, as they will be in a much higher demand. It will be your time to make some money.

Predicting is also very important. The general rule of thumb, is to buy low and sell high. Get your ingredients when they are at the lowest, make feasts at Rank 3 out of them, and sell them when they are at their peak. That’s the hard part, you don’t know when food is at its lowest and highest parts. If for example, one ingredient has been constantly falling in price

for a long time, and it hits a stalemate, you can expect, that it won’t go down any further. The possibility is still there, but generally it won’t fall in price. If that one thing is a part of a feast recipe - it might be a good idea to stock up on this item at that moment. Then you can either sell it for profit in a few months, or make it into a feast if it’s more profitable. That’s a very common strategy used by traders. 

And it might not always work. I will give you an example. Let’s say that new expansion gets announced, multiple brand new raids for every top guild to try out, master it, and reach the title of World’s First. So what do you do? You purchase the ingredients for the lowest price possible almost immediately, as you can expect that it will go up in price tremendously. And suddenly, with new raids - comes new food, which is far better than previous one, that you were going to make. And while it will take some time for the new food to set in, you have a very important choice to make. Should you sell the ingredients before the price goes down, so you can purchase ingredients for the new food. Or should you instead continue with your food, that will be way more accessible? It’s a tricky business, each decision can be the wrong one, so you not only have to know the market, but you also have to count on pure luck.

Step II - Pick your Dish…

...but don’t get too attached to it. Market changes, and so have you. Being adaptable will allow you to progress further no matter what happens. But first you have to choose what cooking recipe you are going to fulfill.

Choosing your food to make some profit is already a very complicated thing to do. You have to really focus to make a good favorable decision, that will bring you some good money in the end. Choose wrong and you will lose money. It’s a scary business.

But you will learn on your mistakes, or from guides such as this. In general - look for sales first. There’s no point in creating something that has close to no demand on the market. Of course, materials for this kind of food might be plentiful and quite cheap, but you might never actually sell what you’ve crafted. So look at the amount of ingredients required, see what you can make out of them, check prices of everything and determine if you can make some profit. And it will be very complicated, as you can’t just calculate something, purchase your goods, crete something and make some profit. It takes time.

And I’m not talking about time needed for people to purchase your goods. I’m talking about time needed between crafting and actually putting your thing on the market. And this is why predicting and picking your dishes carefully is very important. You have to predict (by analyzing the market and item’s history) which final item will eventually sky-rocket in price in the near future. Which means, that you will have to purchase ingredients for a dish, a long time before you can make some profit by putting it on the market. At least if you want to have the best possible gains. Patience is key here. Not every cooking guide wow, will tell you about it, as most guides are going for that fake instant gratification and satisfaction. Let's be real - it's not easy to make money by expert cooking, or artisan cooking in WoW. But with the right mindset you may actually make it to the finish line.

Step III - Spend as Little as Possible

Investing is a very important step, as only investing money will allow you to get huge profits. With that being said - you should invest smart. You can look at the price and think that you can invest in this and make some money, which is completely wrong. Instead - look at the sales using TSM. When expansions come out you should see some spikes in popularity and the rate of sales happening on the marketplace. Market will always follow the rules of Supply & Demand, and you should capitalize on that. When people are not buying a certain item, its price will drop, and if something sees a rise in popularity - price will gradually rise. 

Sometimes you can see that some servers have a broken economy. Items for level 20 can cost even 200 Gold just like that. Which is caused by inflation. Gold is an unlimited resource in the game. It’s a natural occurrence, which is even more common since there are players who base their gameplay solely on the purpose of grinding gold and selling it for real money. This generates so much gold, that the prices of items naturally rise up. It will be up to you to recognize, whether the price will drop again, or if it will sky-rocket.

There’s one great way to spend less money on vendor cooking. But it will require some time investment. You will have to reach Revered reputation with a faction known as Tortollans. This way all profession materials will be at a 20% discount as long as you purchase them off Turtle Vendors. It might not seem like much, but if you are not going to do it, you will jinx yourself. It’s not much, but it’s honest work, and it surely adds up to a larger sum.

Summary

This is the end of our World of Warcraft BfA Cooking Guide. We hope that your Warchief is happy with your meals as well as your gold gains secured through the market. In fact, not being murdered by your Warchief is a reward by itself. Anyway - we hope that we've done something that brings you closer to learning the WoW cooking recipes. Sing up to our site, proceed to our offers to support content creatoers, and leave a note for us in the comments. Joining this community will provide you with some bonuses and benefits, so you can enter your Tanaris, Lake Elrendar, Thunder Bluff, Undercity, Gadgetzan, Barrens, Felwood, or Stormwind City, and many other zones on the map, in each faction, as a more complete, and content cook. If you liked out guide, please sing up, give us some feedback about our content, so we can reply with better and better guides, as we will improve greatly after every piece of criticizm.