Cooking Guide 1-525
If you are taking up Cooking to make extra gold I highly recommend that you check out our X-Elerated Gold Making Guide 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 the most recent patch and Cataclysm.
Cooking is a great secondary profession to have for a character that can greatly enhance a character's ability to get specific stats higher for leveling, grouping, or raiding.
You'll need either meat from mobs or fish from fishing for most recipes in order to level up. If you have the money feel free to buy what you need from the auction house. If you are looking to leveling cooking and fishing at the same time check out our Cooking & Fishing guide.
You will need to be able to make a cooking fire (found in your spellbook under the general tab) so you do not have to run back to a camp or city to do your combines.
Now find a cooking trainer/supplier to get started. Train as needed so you can keep progressing.
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.
You'll have to make these while they are green but it's simpler to do it this way than the other options available.
For this next step you will need to do Dalaran Cooking Dailies to gain Dalaran Cooking Awards in order to buy a recipe with Dalaran Cooking Awards.
Check out Dalaran Daily Cooking Guide for a walkthrough of the quests.
Cooking 450-525
Unfortunately 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.
