Cooking is a profession which will allow the players to combine various ingredients such as fish or meat into delicious food and drink items which can be consumed to restore health and mana, as well as to grant combat buffs. This skill is often paired with Fishing since levelling the latter often provides the materials needed for cooking from the Your House Fitness.
Ingredients:
To cook, you will need to both find yourself a fire – and have the required ingredients, of course. Many innkeepers and cooking trainers have a cooking fire, a brazier, or some other tool needed for cooking around them. If you are out in the wilderness, however, you can always create your own Cooking Fire – a skill you learn when you learn Cooking. Regardless of the location though, your food will be delicious and fully capable of providing one of the Well Fed buffs, its strength depends on the level of the food you have eaten.
Recipes:
There are three ways you can learn cooking recipes. Occasionally you will encounter a vendor who will sell you a recipe, or you will get one drop from a random creature in the world. And finally, since Wrath of the Lich King, you can do Cooking daily quests and earn cooking awards, which can, in turn, be used to purchase key ingredients and powerful recipes for home fitness.
Specializations:
Cooking will be split up into six specializations in Mists of Pandaria. It is possible to level multiple specializations for achievements, and there are also new easy ways to go from 1-525 cooking in Pandaria. The new Pandaren feasts are a departure from the serving platters of previous expansions. Instead, they are large tables with detailed tasty meals to maintain your health.
Cooking Awards:
There are two types of cooking awards – Epicurean’s Award and the Ironpaw Token. The first one can be earned by completing any old-world cooking quest. They are still worth collecting because once you have 100, you can purchase Chef’s Hat, which cuts down your cooking time from 2-4 seconds down to 0.5!
Everyday foods:
Whether you are a new character or an old one just picking up Cooking, you should try to do your dailies every day. The Epicurean is used for almost all of the Cataclysm recipes, and some of them are quite powerful and can provide essential buffs. Once you’ve purchased every recipe you possibly can start spending your Awards on either Crate of Tasty Meat, which contains some meat reagents you can sell, or on Imported Supplies, which contain a lot of Cocoa Beans, which you can then use to make Chocolate Cookies and be satisfied.