Cooking
Cooks raw fish and meat on fires and bakes bread, pies, pizzas and salads in smokers, with a burn chance that shrinks as the level rises.
Cooking is what makes food worth eating. A raw shark restores 150 health, a cooked one 225, and the gap widens the further up the ladder you go. It is also the only source of buff food: pies, pizzas and salads that speed up your gathering, sharpen your critical hits or nudge your luck for a run of actions. Every raw fish you cook is worth exactly the XP it gave you to catch.
Level 1 to 120
Two tracks run side by side. The first is cooking what you catch on a fire: chicken and shrimp, then trout, lobster, swordfish, monkfish and shark as your Fishing allows, three seconds an item and no ingredients but the food itself. The second is the smoker menu, which turns farmed crops into dough, pies, pizzas and salads at a second each. Fish carry the middle levels, recipes carry the last stretch to 120.
- Meat and shrimp on a fire 1 to 20
Light a fire with any logs, then click it holding raw food and the whole stack goes on. Chicken, duck and shrimp start at level 1, rat, rabbit and sheep at 3, beef at 8 (9 XP), herring at 10 (12 XP) and anchovies at 15 (17 XP).
- Cook what you catch 20 to 75
Follow your Fishing ladder exactly: trout (22 XP) at 20, salmon (32) at 30, tuna (37) at 35, lobster (44) at 40, bass (53) at 45, swordfish (62) at 50, tench (71) at 55, monkfish (80) at 60, karambwan (89) at 65 and sturgeon (100) at 70. Bear meat at 25 is worth 17 XP if you are hunting anyway.
- Pies and baked potatoes 45 to 60
Dough from wheat unlocks at 10 for 6 XP and is the base of every baked recipe, with redberry pie at 10, meat pie at 12 and pumpkin pie at 14 coming early. The band that matters is baked potato and fish pie at 45 (21 and 24 XP) and apple pie at 50 (27 XP). A fish pie wants dough and any raw fish. Each takes a second against the fire's three, so with crops banked they beat the fish of the same level.
- Pizzas and salads 70 to 120
Plain pizza at 70 (30 XP) is dough and a tomato, and the rest are built on it: meat pizza at 72 (32 XP), anchovies pizza at 78 (61 XP) and corn pizza at 92 (100 XP). Fruit salad at 84 (80 XP), tuna potato at 96 (120 XP) and salad at 98 (145 XP) fill the gaps. The first two barely keep pace with the fish, but from anchovies pizza upward these are the fastest XP in the skill, limited only by what your farming can supply.
- Sharks to eels 75 to 120
The top of the fish ladder: shark (111 XP) at 75, sea turtle (122) at 80, manta ray (135) at 85, dark crab (148) at 90 and eel (161) at 95. Three seconds an item against the recipes' one, so the XP an hour is lower, but the only limit is how fast you can fish, which makes it the dependable route to 120.
Buff food
Eight meals carry a buff that lasts 40 actions, or 60 with the Cooking cape. Apple pie speeds up farming, fruit salad woodcutting, meat pizza mining, anchovies pizza fishing, and tuna potato all four gathering skills at once. Plain pizza makes your fires burn longer, corn pizza sharpens critical hits and salad improves your luck.
You can eat a buff meal on full health and still get the effect. Dying wipes every buff you are carrying, so eat them at the start of a session, not before a fight.
Burning
Nearly everything carries the same fixed chance to burn, and that chance does not shrink as you level. Shrimp are the safest thing in the skill, with rat close behind. A burnt item costs you the raw food and the XP, nothing else. The Cooking cape removes burning outright, which is the single strongest reason to finish the skill.
Where to cook
Raw fish and meat go on a fire. Any fire you light yourself works, so a stack of logs turns a bank into a cooking spot.
The recipe menu is a separate thing and it opens on a smoker, so every dough, pie, pizza and salad has to be made at one. There are around forty permanent smokers about the world, including Varrock, Falador, Port Sarim, Al Kharid, Catherby, Yanille, Brimhaven, Entrana and Piscatoris, and one sits beside the Cooking Guild, which opens at Cooking 50.
Worth knowing
- Crouch as you click the fire to be asked how many to cook. Otherwise the entire stack goes on at once.
- Cooking a fish pays the same XP as catching it, so a full inventory is worth its value twice.
- Cook's Assistant hands out 300 Cooking XP with no requirements at all, and Gertrude's Cat another 1425.
- Keep plain pizzas banked. They are the base for meat, anchovies and corn pizza, and on their own they make your fires last longer.
The full table
XP is shown wherever it is fixed.
