Cooking

The Cooking skill is used to prepare raw food materials for a number of reasons, including restoring Hitpoints and the temporary boosting of skill levels. There are many different types of food in RuneScape, each healing a different amount of Hitpoints. However, as with all skills, players must reach certain levels to cook certain foods. Cooking is also a very popular skill to raise, as many players like to sell food they have cooked to other players. This can give great profit, as many players are willing to purchase food already cooked. Cooking also has a larger variety of training options than any other skill. This is another reason Cooking is a very popular skill amongst players. As of 20 February 2010 there are 104,153 players with 99 cooking. This makes it the second most popular 99 skill, after Strength.

How to cook
Cooking is known as one of the fastest skills to train in RuneScape, as players can cook in different ways. Generally a player will cook their food items on a campfire created through the firemakeing skill, or a range, which can be easily located as they are labeled on the map as a cooking pan icon. There are other assorted things that a player can cook on, like sulpher vents, permanent campfires as seen in NPC camps, or on iron spits. It is important to note that only meat, fish, stew, and tea can be cooked on a fire. Things like bread, cake, and pie must be cooked on a proper range.

To cook, players have to use their food with a range or a fire. If they have more than one food item of the same kind in their inventory, a picture of the food item will appear. The player can right click on the picture to select options like 'make-all' and 'make-10.' Players aiming to achieve level 99 Cooking should note that this will be by no means cheep, likely costing from 3.5 to 10 million coins. Even though it is one of the fastest skills to train, it will also NOT happen overnight (litterally, even a solid 24 hour grinding session of cooking will not net 99 cooking.) As long as you don't give up on cooking, 99 cooking will come, and will come soon enough.

Items needed
As cooking is the skill of turning food from raw to edible, and there is a very wide range of avalible food types in runescape, there are many items that players need in order to cook food. Depending on what you are cooking you will need a variety of items such as water or flour. Listed below are the cardinal cooking items which are used to make the most common types of food.
 * Fish- (raw lobster, raw trout, etc.)
 * Flour - (Held in a pot)
 * Water - (Held in a bucket, bowl, vial or jug)
 * Milk - (Held in a bucket)
 * Meat - (Raw meat, Raw rat meat, Raw bear meat, Raw yak meat, Raw chicken)
 * Vegetables - (Potatoes, Cabbages, Grain)
 * Fruits - (Cooking apple, Grapes, Banana, Redberries, Tomatoes)
 * Cheese
 * Bowl
 * Bucket
 * Cake tin
 * Jug
 * Pie dish
 * Pot
 * Knife

Meat
Players can obtain basic meat from killing chickens, cows, bears, yaks, and giant rats. While raw chicken, which them becomes cooked chicken looks a little diffrent, the item uses are identical (eg, stew.) When a player cooks raw beef, raw bear meat, or raw rat meat, the all three become simply 'cooked meat.' If meat is used on the fire after it is already cooked, it will become burnt and a message will say, "You deliberately burn the nicely cooked meat." This yields no Cooking experience. Raw and cooked meat may also be purchased at the Grand Exchange in Varrock, certain shops, and other players.

Fish
Fish are the most common food to cook in RuneScape due to the ease of gathering them, resulting in huge surplus availability. They heal a great amount of Hitpoints and are the recommended food for surviving in an avarage combat situation. Fish can be easily obtained from fishing, or bought in large amounts from other players. Many players who are power-levelling use high-level fish to gain maximum experience per hour.


 * Numbers in parentheses indicate the level at which cooking no longer burns while wearing cooking gauntlets and which method of cooking you use (e.g., using the Lumbridge range while cooking lobsters will not burn at level 64. All other methods and ranges will not burn lobsters at level 68). This only affects lobster, swordfish, shark, cavefish, and rocktail.
 * Note that lobsters won't stop burning on the Lumbridge range at level 73 Cooking.
 * In a sample of 3,065 monkfish cooked at level 89 Cooking while using cooking gauntlets, a total of 20 were burnt.

Snails
A sub-type of meat, Members can cook snails. Raw snail meat is obtained by killing snails in the Mort Myre swamp and the neighboring Haunted Woods, Near the village of Canifis in Morytania. The Priest in Peril quest has to be finished to access Mortanya in general, so without this quest both areas are inaccesable. There are more snails in the eastern and southern parts of the swamp than in the Haunted Forest, especailly the area known as the winding path. Once a player has found a snail, simply kill it and take the meat for cooking. The first two kinds of snail have a variable heal rate, meaning they do not always heal the same exact amount, but instead have a specific range of hitpoints values that they will restore. There are other foods that have similar effects, such as cave eel.

Bread
Bread making is done by simply combining a pot of flour with either a jug of water or a bucket of water. When the someone does this, they will be prompted with the option to make several different types of dough. Select the desired type, then quantity, to make the actual dough. Not all types of dough are directly cookable, but those that are can only be cooked on a range, not on a fire made via the firemaking skill. Once cooked on the range, regular bread is complete. Other types of dough, such as pitta bread and pastry dough have further steps until completion.

Pies
Pies are a two serving food. Similar to pizzas, a player will eat only half of the pie at once, and garner the full benefits related to the pie; a player does not need to eat the whole pie to gain relevant stat boosts. After eating the first half of the pie, the player will obtain the aptly named 'half-pie,' which, once consumed, will revert back to an empty pie dish. As this allows more hp replenishing power to be crammed into less invantory space, pies are often used to give players a bit more health per capita. For example, when a player eats the first half a redberry pie they will gain 5 hp and the other half will stay in the dish which can be consumed later, for an additional 5 hp. Stat boosting pies work the same way, however, the seperate boosts do not stack. To make pie, players need to mix a Pot of flour and Water together then select and make Pastry Dough. Players then simply use the Pastry Dough with an empty Pie Dish, to create a 'pie shell.' it should be noted that as is, pie shells are fairly valuable and well sought after. Once the player has obtained the pie shell, the player just needs to add the appropriate ingredients to make the uncooked pie they are after. Obviously, the pie must then be cooked. Burnt pies need not be discarded as they can be emptied, and the pie dish can be reused. Once cooked the pie is complete, but players should be awair that if they accidentally eat half of it, there is a very low chance of selling the resulting half-pie.

Stew
To make stew, players will need a bowl and some cooked meat or cooked chicken. The bowl has to be filled with Water, from any watersource other than a well. The Potatoes or Cooked Meat can be added next, in any order. Gathering and cooking meat is discussed above. Potatos are found in various locations, generally in the fields around lumbrige and draynor where they grow. Members have a greater variety of meant with which to obtain potatos, including the farming skill and various shops, especially the grocery shops in the grand tree and yanille. If the a Member is attempting to make curry, the curry leaves or spice must be added before cooking the stew. Once all the ingrediants have been added to the bowl, cook the stew on either a range or fire. It is unconfermed, but it seems that stew does not burn.

Pizza
Pizza is a very popular food choice for players who regularly enguage in combat, as they heal large amounts of Hitpoints. Pizzas are a very famous choice for players training the Slayer skill not only because of the amount of hitpoint they heal but because, like pies they are consumed in two bites. Players can eat one half and save the other half for when it's needed, essentially stacking two food items in one invantory spot. To make a pizza, mix flour and water then select the pizza base dough type. Once you have the pizza base, add a Tomato and a Piece of Cheese to make a Plain Pizza. Both a tomato and a slice of cheese can be taken from Aggie the Witch's house in Draynor Village north of the bank however this method is very time comsuming and frankly boreing. It can also be obtained in the Bandit Camp (Wilderness). They can also be bought from the food store in Port Sarim and the Culinaromancer's Chest. After obtaining a plain pizza, the pizza must be baked. After bakeing, It is possible to add various toppings to the pizza, which is a popular money-making method dispite offering relatively low experience for simply topping the pizza. Pizzas are very useful for skills such as agilty where the player takes a constant beating.

Cake
Cakes are mildly complicated to make, and use several items at once makeing theyre assembly rather slow. Although one might innitally think them better than Pies and Pizzas, they are far less popular in reality. Mostly due to the fact that they can be time consuming to eat, as one slice of cake does not generate an especailly large restoration on its own. In a high pressure situation, the last thing a player needs is this kind of difficutly. Once complete, cakes are eaten in three bites. Eating one or two pieces of a cake will result in either a 2/3 cake or 1/3 cake, which are very difficult to sell if accidentally eaten. The 1/3 and 2/3 cake items cannot be used on one another to reassemble a full cake. The total value of the hp they restore is devided equilly amoung the 3 parts. To actually make a cake, players need a pot of flour, an egg, a bucket of milk, and a cake tin. Eggs are found near the chicken coops around Lumbridge, while milk can be obtained by milking dairy cows into buckets. Dairy cows are found near the combat level 2 cows around Lumbridge, and also on a farm south of Falador, which also houses a churn. When all four items are presant, using one on one of the others will combind all four into the cake tin at once. This must then be cooked on a range, and cannot be cooked on a fire. Please note that unlike pies the cake becomes separated from the cake tin when cooked, therefore players cannot cook a full invantory of 28 at once. 14 uncooked cakes will result in 14 cakes as well as 14 cake tins in your invantory. After being cooked, a Cake can be embellished with chocolate by using a Chocolate Bar, or Chocolate Dust to the cake.

Potato Toppings
Potato Toppings are members only.

Baked Potato
Baking potatoes are members only.

Dairy
Dairy products can only be made on Members' worlds with a Dairy churn. A Dairy churn is found on the farm south of Falador, the cooking guild just south of the grand exchange and at several other locations.

Wine
Wine is made from a jug of water and a bunch of grapes. Grapes can be found in the Cooking guild, In the Phoenix Gang's hideout, as a common drop from Guards, or stolen from Fortunato's Fine Wine in Draynor Village (level 22 Thieving required, members only); members who have completed a portion of Recipe for Disaster can obtain grapes from the Culinaromancer's chest. A jug can be found on the top floor of the cooking guild.

Use the grapes with the jug of water to make unfermented wine. About ten seconds later, the wine will ferment and either be drinkable, or go bad. Wine gives 200 experience for a good jug, and none for a bad jug. If you make the maximum amount of jugs in one trip (14) successfully,you will get 2800 experience.

Hot drinks
The only hot drink is nettle tea, which is members only. To make nettle tea, players need first a bowl of water. Next, nettles are needed. Nettles are located near the prison along the road between the Wizard's Tower and Draynor Village, south-east of the slayer master in Canifis, or next to the yew trees in Edgeville. It is important to note that nettles will hurt players when they pick them up, so they have to wear gloves. The nettles have to be used with the bowl of water to make nettle-water. The nettle-water next has to be boiled on a range to turn it into nettle tea. The tea can then be placed into an empty cup. Empty cups can be bought or stolen from the tea stall in Varrock or by speaking to Brother Galahad, located east of the coal trucks. Also, if a player wants to add milk to their tea, they can obtain some milk in a bucket and use it with the tea. Adding milk is optional.

Brewing
Brewing is much more complicated and time consuming than other foods, but the results are quite useful, for most of them boost assorted stats.

Ales
To brew ales, you have to be in the brewery in either Keldagrim or Port Phasmatys. Steps for brewing Ales:
 * 1) 2 buckets of water added to fermenting vat.
 * 2) 2 lots of barley malt added to fermenting vat. (made by cooking barley on a cooking range)
 * 3) (Optional) 1 bag of The stuff added to fermenting vat. (50% increase chance of mature ale)
 * 4) Add the ingredients that vary for the specific beer/ale you are making.
 * 5) 1 pot of ale yeast added to fermenting vat. (bought from NPC near vat, players will need an Amulet of Ghostspeak and 5 Ecto-tokens AND an Empty pot for the one located in Port Phasmatys, 25 coins for Keldagrim, empty pot spawn near vat)
 * 6) Next, wait for the brew to ferment. If the brew is not ready, the examine text will say, " ale is fermenting in this vat." If you attempt to turn the valve prematurely, you will receive the prompt, "Are you sure you want to drain the vat?" Note that fermenting often takes a good 24–72 hours possibly more! Depending on your cooking level, it may take as low as 12 hours on the Keldagrim fermenting vat. Port Phasmatys' vat will always take a longer time to ferment.
 * 7) Once it's done brewing (examine will say "This vat is filled with ale."), turn the valve between the vat and the attached barrel to move brewed ale to the barrel (make sure the barrel is empty first!)
 * 8) Use 8 beer glasses on the barrel or 2 Calquat kegs

Note: The contents of the vat will change colour as the fermenting progresses.

Cider
To make cider, 16 cooking apples, a pot of ale yeast, and 4 empty buckets are required.

Head to the brewery and put four of the apples in the nearby cider barrel. The players' character will do a nice dance and squish the apples to a pulp, making a bucket of apple mush. Use empty buckets on the apple barrel to get 4 buckets of mashed apples. Once all 4 buckets are filled, add them to the fermenting vat, then the ale yeast into the fermenting vat and wait.

Note: Remember, you do NOT need to put in water or barley to make cider.

Mature brews
With normal brewing, a player can randomly make matured ale, shown by a (m) next to the drink. Matured ale is slightly stronger than normal ale.

"The stuff" is available from Honest Jimmy for 5 Pieces of Eight at the Trouble Brewing minigame. It gives a 50% chance of brewing a mature ale of the type the player is brewing.

Add "The stuff" after the barley and before other ingredients and yeast. If the player try to add it after the other ingredient or after the yeast, it's too late, and will be told he or she can't add that to this vat.

Failure
Occasionally ale will become bad, the bad ale will have a lime-green color in the fermenting vat and have the examine text "This vat is filled with bad ale". Turning the valve will drain the bad ale from the vat into the barrel. The bad ale cannot be collected, only drained from the barrel. The bad ale in the barrel will have the examine text "The barrel is now full of bad ale."

Types of Ales and Ciders

 * All ales except Moonlight Mead decrease attack, and all ales except Asgarnian Ale and Dragon Bitter decrease strength.
 * Most stat changes are relative to your level in that stat.

Gnome Cooking
Gnome cooking plays a big part in the Gnome Restaurant minigame. Further information can be found in said article.

Gnome cooking is useful to advance skills from 10 up to 30 quickly. Go to The Grand Tree in the Gnome Stronghold and see a gnome called Aluft Gianne on the first level. He looks like a chef. Tell him that you want to work for him and he will give you a recipe book and everything you need to create dishes for him. Once he is happy with a dish he will ask you to make another. If you don't have enough skill for the next dish you can buy supplies from a gnome called Hudo who is found by the cooking range and keep making dishes until your skill improves. Start by making crunchies which can be banked close by and sold on the Grand Exchange until you can make a cheese and tomato batta. After that you can start the Gnome Cooking minigame.

Training
See the following articles
 * Free-to-play Cooking Training
 * Pay-to-play Cooking Training

Burning food
Burning can occur when cooking, especially when cooking something you have the exact level requirements for. As you increase your cooking level beyond the required level for that particular food, you will burn less and less until, with some foods, especially lower to mid level foods you stop burning entirely at a specific level. Other than increasing your cooking level, there are other methods of decreasing the chance of burning while cooking.


 * Fires have the greatest chance of burning food, can be made almost everywhere.


 * Standard ranges will burn less often than fires, but cannot be made anywhere like a fire can be.


 * The "Cooking range" on the ground floor of Lumbridge castle will burn food less often than any other place to cook, although the Cook's Assistant quest is required, and there are other spots closer to a bank.


 * Wearing Cooking gauntlets from the family Family Crest quest will lower the chance of burning lobsters, monkfish, swordfish, and sharks anywhere.

The information on the Cooking gauntlets is based on statistical data and has not officially been proven by Jagex

Power-Cooking
This is where players don't speak to anyone and have no distractions. This reduces the time to cook things thus gaining cooking level up faster. However, players will have no breaks so it is somewhat hard to keep cooking after a long time. Instead of dropping burnt food, which takes many clicks, simply bank them. Dropping individual items takes a long time, so it isn't good to do, even if they are not power-cooking. After having cooked everything, just take the burnt items of food out of the bank (noted) and drop them. Most power-cookers go to the area underneath the bar in Burthorpe, called the Rogue's Den. This is because the perpetual fire is only 1 to 6 squares away from the bank, as the banker is able to move around the Rogue's Den but he tends to stay in one place unless talked to. The bank isn't a normal bank, its a man named Emerald Benedict. This is the shortest distance to a fire anywhere. The shortest distance to a range is in the cooks guild although the downside of this is that the player must have completed Varrock Achievement diary completely. Players normally buy raw fish in large quantities and cook them, then resell to the Grand Exchange.

Temporary boosts

 * Chef's delight, a type of player-made beer, temporarily increases Cooking level by 1-5 when drank (5% of base cooking level).
 * Orange Spicy stew raises Cooking level by up to 6 temporarily, but can also have the opposite effect and lower it by 6.

Cooking Cape of Accomplishment
You can buy this skillcape from the Head Chef at the Cooking Guild in Varrock.


 * You need to get a Chef's hat or Varrock armour 3 to enter.
 * Please note that all skillcapes (even those for non-member skills) are only available to members to purchase for a price of 99,000 coins.

Training Tips

 * A good way to train cooking for lower levels is to go to the Barbarian village fishing spot. Then on a quiet world collect the fish that fisherman drop and cook that fish on the fireplace in the helmet vendor's house in barbarian village. This is also helpful to do on world 1(F2p) or 2(p2p), and just ask for raws. If you are doing this enough, the raw givers start to recognise you, and give to you more often.
 * Another way to train cooking at a higher level is to go to Musa Point in Karamja (where F2P players fish for Swordfish and Lobsters) and pick up dropped tuna and lobsters. To do this, get out a tinderbox and hatchet (and 30 coins for travel) from the Draynor Village bank, walk over to Port Sarim, and take the ship to Musa Point (30 coins). Pick up raw fish, chop wood on the island, and make a fire down by the docks.
 * To recap the above tip, training cooking with fish is good. Uncooked fish are easy to obtain, and with cooking gauntlets you'll have a lower chance of burning Lobster, Monkfish, Swordfish, Shark and Rocktail.
 * The cook's range in Lumbridge Castle has less chance of burning food, and is available to all players who have completed the Cook's Assistant quest.
 * If you have uncooked food in the bank, go to places where fires are commonly lit, such as the G.E., Draynor bank or Edgeville bank. By doing this you save two inventory spaces by not needing to light a fire.
 * Al Kharid, Catherby, Zanaris and Neitiznot all have a range quite close to the bank.
 * If you have completed all tasks in the Varrock Diary, you can wear your Varrock Armour 3 and use the bank and stove inside the cooking guild. These are only 3 steps from each other.
 * After you buy, fish or make your food it is advised that the best cooking spot for Members is underneath the pub south-east of the Burthorpe games room, where there is a fire only a few feet away from the banker (Emerald Benedict). This is the closest a fire is to a bank.
 * Cooking Gauntlets: This helpful item is a reward from the Family Crest Quest, and will increase your chance of successfully cooking various types of fish.
 * For wealthier players it is a good option to buy raw fish in large quantities. Players with a cooking level of 39-50 should buy herring, players with 50-52 trout (Trout is also a way that people who do not have much money go from 50-99 losing only 3-5 Gp loss per fish.), 52-58 pike, (although raw pike is hard to obtain and cooked pike is hard to sell) 58-63 salmon, 63-68 tuna, 68-81 lobsters, and 81+ swordfish. It is recommended for players to cook at Lumbridge's range this is because there is a bank very close to the range and foods have a lower chance of burning although it is better to start with one type of fish once it no longer burns, this way you get to save money, for example if you buy 1k raw lobsters at a cooking level of 40, lobsters will burn very often reducing the cost/effective rate, because if a lobster gets cooked you get exp and a minimal GP loss, but if burned, you really lose cash.
 * Note: After all it is all about commitment and cook on!

Trivia

 * Currently, 123 players have 200,000,000 experience in Cooking, the most for any skill.
 * Currently, 179 players have 100,000,000 experience or higher in Cooking, the most for any skill.
 * There was a bug after the first update of 2 September 2009, during which people could cook at a rate 0.5 times faster. This bug was fixed in a later update that day.
 * There was a bug sometime in 2006 that when players tried to cook Lobsters inside the Fletching shop in Catherby, they would never burn it. This was exploited by players training Cooking on the range nearby. Since there was a bank right next door, players flocked here to train cooking. This was fixed a few days later. No action was taken against the players who exploited this glitch.
 * Before Fishing was added in June 2001, the experience for cooking meat depended on the player's cooking level, namely, 25 + 1.75 * level.
 * Before pies were added in March 2001, the amount of healing provided by bread and meat (the only food available at the time) depended on the player's Cooking level.