Pay-to-play Cooking training

This is a guide which aims to assist players in training Cooking in pay to play by using the most effective and efficient techniques and methods. This guide may not always be up to date (mainly concerning GE prices). Remember to check the Grand Exchange prices before purchasing ingredients.

Level advancement - Fish
This is a fast, but more expensive way to advance the Cooking skill level. Note that the Money needed until next step column only accounts for the total amount of money that must be invested. It does not account for the money that will be earned back from selling the cooked fish. Fishing them yourself will give a sizeable amount of fishing experience, as well as reduce the cost to 0 (minus any cost for lures, e.g. feathers), and profit from selling them.

A side note: A slower, but more reliable way to train cooking is to check out the food chart under the cooking skill page to see what the best food you can cook without burning is, then cook that food. That means there's a certain number of items you must cook, without leaving things to chance or burning.

With cooking urns:

Cooking urns speed up the experience rates. In addition, it takes fewer supplies to level up.


 * Players willing to spend time training Crafting to be able to use higher-level Urns may find it easier to train Cooking, as the lower number of fish to be cooked can make a big difference in how often a character has to bank while cooking, as well as fewer fish to catch or buy. This means making a large investment of time in training Crafting, however.


 * Training with meat may be done by going to Neitiznot's Yak Field where people leave the meat on the ground. There is a range and bank near to make easily cooking banking and collecting.

Remember: burning a piece of food does not yield experience, so it is always better to plan on having extra money.

At level 85, some players switch to cooking pies with the lunar spell so that they gain experience comparable to shark or better, but also gain magic experience and spend runes. It requires 65 magic. As the quest Lunar Diplomacy requires 65 magic to complete, skill boosts will not work. Lunar spell cooked pies will never burn.

From level 84 to 90, you will burn approximately 525 monkfish without cooking gauntlets.

With cooking gauntlets: From level 90 to 94, you will burn approximately 270 sharks. Beyond that level you will not burn any.

Combined POH training with a Chef's delight (barrel)
A very useful tip for training AND to save gold is to install a Chef's delight barrel in your POH kitchen along with a range. Mounting an Amulet of glory in your quest hall nearby the kitchen requires 48 construction, and can be used to provide teleports to Edgeville to bank. Teleportation to your POH can be used with a tab or runes. Using runes requires 40 magic. This helps you burn less food with the cooking level increase, and cook higher level foods.

Steps to train:


 * 1) Pick up food from a bank (raw).
 * 2) Teleport to your house.
 * 3) Grab a beer glass, and fill it with chef's delight from your barrel.
 * 4) Cook the food.
 * 5) Go to your quest hall, and teleport to Edgeville using your Amulet of glory
 * 6) Bank, and repeat.

The total levels used for this method are:
 * 40 Magic (optional to save 3x as much money by using runes instead of teleport tabs)
 * 48 Construction (Optional by buying flatpacks for everything but mounting your uncharged amulet of glory)

You can use cooking gauntlets to further boost your cooking success rate.

Alternatively, you could find a friend who has a larder and a range and continuously make cakes inside their POH for free. World 31 (House Parties) often has open houses in Yanille, and many of these do have these facilities.

Alternate methods
Below are some alternate methods to level cooking without burning fish; however, it will most likely be slower than the method above. It is recommended to use the above method to attain level 50 cooking before beginning. It is possible to get 1,960 cooking xp with 1 inventory of trout.

Clan citadel
If you are in a clan with a cooking plot (barbecue) a substantial amount of cooking experience can be gained weekly.

Cooked Sweetcorn
Not exactly a profitable method, but it's effective. Simply buy a lot of sweetcorn, and cook it for 104 cooking experience per corn. This method, although not profitable, is very cheap. You can get 2912 experience per inventory, more if using a bonfire. As it only requires 28 cooking to cook, this is great experience for lower levels. At level 67 cooking, sweetcorn can be combined with chopped tuna to create tuna and corn for 204 cooking experience and gives over 400 gp in profit.

Chocolate Cakes
This method is possibly profitable, although it does take some time. Simply buy lots of chocolate bars at gp each and cakes at  gp each, and make the cakes into chocolate cakes which sell for  gp. This is rather time consuming, but can make a large profit depending on the price of cakes. You get 30 cooking experience per cake and gp per chocolate cake. At today's prices, this method  profitable.

Gunnarsgrunn Cooking
This method neither makes nor loses money, so it can be quite helpful for players without a lot of money. Since many players power-fish salmon and trout at Gunnarsgrunn, you can easily light a fire with the trees nearby and cook all the fish that they drop. After that, drop the cooked fish and pick up the new fish the players have dropped. Since the fish are cooked, alternating between dropping and eating is both more effective and uses less clicks than simply dropping. It can be more efficient if you can get one of the other players to directly trade you the fish. This method is helpful to both players, the fisher gets more experience per hour and the cooker gets a free way of gaining cooking levels.

Wine
While this method makes you lose a lot of money (0 coins per inventory), it is very fast experience around 700K+ XP/H. 14 grapes are used with 14 jugs of water to make 14 unfermented wines which, after 12 seconds, become jugs of wine granting 200 experience each, up to 2,800 experience if no jugs of bad wine are made. Wine is made very fast, and ferments in your bank. As wine only requires level 35 cooking to make, it becomes very difficult to fail.

Curry
As an alternative to swordfish, at level 74 you might choose to cook Curry as you will get much more experience, and will not burn any at that level. However this method is also much more expensive. Cooking 6626 Uncooked curry is required to get you to level 84. Cooking Curry gives the most experience in one step, making it faster than any other item that takes 4 ticks to cook, such as rocktail. However wine can be made 4 times faster and is therefore faster experience than curry.

Dairy churn
As normally unused as it is now, churning cheese wheels is one of the better ways of making cooking experience. Firstly it doesn't fail, you cannot burn cheese using a dairy churn, and therefore you constantly get 64 experience per bucket of milk. Second, each slice of cheese you make gives you an additional 4 experience. Finally, you can get milk from dairy cows scattered all over RuneScape. There are also milkmaids near milk cows from whom milk can be bought.

A good place to train with a churn is at the Sinclair Mansion, just north of Seer's Village/Camelot. All you need is 14 buckets, or whatever number you prefer. There's a dairy cow just a few steps south of the churn. Milk the cow, churn the milk, drop the churned product, and then repeat for fast churning exp.

Another good place to train is the farm south of Falador, by cabbage-porting with your Explorers Ring 3 or 4, buying a full inventory of milk from the nearby milkmaid and churning it in the nearby churn. Bank, using an Amulet of glory or a Ring of kinship for example, then repeat.

Alternatively, with a POH in Yanille, you can take buckets of milk from the larder in your kitchen, half an inventory at a time. Then, go to the dairy churn in the food shop east of the POH portal. Once all milk has been churned, you may take the cheese to the bank even farther east to the bank, and repeat.

Tuna and Corn
At level 67 cooking using Cooked Sweetcorn on a Chopped tuna awards 204 experience. Using bank shortcuts this can be a fairly quick source of experience. Because of it's use in Tuna Potatoes and the low cost of materials this method can often be profitable.

Completing quests
Some quests grant Cooking experience. Refer to the main article for more details.

Alternative method (cooking gauntlets)
You can also cook Sharks as an alternative to Rocktails and Monkfish. At 90 cooking, you will burn roughly 7% of your sharks, which still works out at a higher xp/h rate than monkfish and will probably be more profitable.

XP boosts
Assignable XP bonuses are usually better assigned to slower skills than cooking, however there are a number of boosts that are useful.

Clan avatar
Being in the same world as, or within 11 tiles of your clan's avatar can boost XP by 3% or 6% respectively.

Sous chef's outfit
Wearing as much as you own of this outfit can boost Cooking XP by up to 6%

Pulse cores
Using a pulse core or being caught in the blast of a pulse core can provide a 10% experience boost for 10 minutes.

Cooking urns
Cooking urns will significantly increase experience rates per hour, and indeed per fish by up to 20%.

If using Cooking urns together with Bank presets, it may be a good idea to use an inventory preset with a new cooking urn (r) along with an activated cooking urn. This method sacrifices one inventory space for the convenience of not having to bank again for new urns, and guaranteeing the start of another urn right after one is being teleported away.

Dwarven army axe
Upon completion of the Troll Warzone, the dwarven army axe provides an extra +3 cooking experience when it is equipped whilst cooking food, except for cheese. This is great for lower leveled players.

Collecting raw fish
After finishing the quest Throne of Miscellania you can set up your kingdom to gather raw fish. If allocated and well funded, subjects will gather raw swordfish and raw tuna, and a good amount of raw fish available to be cooked can be collected – either every day, or after a few days. This is a free way to help towards levelling your Cooking skill. For more information on managing your kingdom, please refer to the page: Managing Miscellania.

Another great place to get fish is on the west bank of the River Lum next to Gunnarsgrunn, as there are usually several people power-fishing along the river's bank, dropping their trout and/or salmon. You can go to Gunnarsgrunn to cook the fish right in one of the shops. It's a great place to cook as there are very few players cooking there and lots of fishers.

Portable ranges
Portable ranges are similar to bonfires and provide maximum convenience for banking. They provide 21% additional cooking experience when cooked on, have the same burn rates as a standard range, have a 5% chance of producing an additional food item (which is sent to the bank but does not provide any experience), and can be placed anywhere by the player, even right next to a bank.

Each range lasts 5 minutes once placed and can either be purchased from GE or obtained from Treasure Hunter.

You can usually find a portable range being hosted somewhere, usually at the Combat Academy (CA) in Lumbridge, north of the castle by the bank chest. This allows you to cook on the range without even moving from the spot in front of the bank chest.

Bonfire
Bonfires are a great way of training cooking for both members and non-members. Cooking on a Bonfire will earn a player 10% more experience. Additionally, compared to a range they can be placed and so are often closer to a bank.

Recommended places to cook
A great place to train cooking on bonfires is in world 100 (The unofficial Bonfire world) at the Castle Wars bank, the Shantay pass or Culinaromancer's Chest (Lumbridge Castle cellar). All three locations have a 'one-click' bank chest. There are many players cooking, or training firemaking 24/7. To avoid trolling players often found at the more popular locations, some groups have moved to the chest at the Combat Academy in world 5.

The bonfire in the northwest corner of the Prifddinas Grand Exchange area now has a Cook option available. This bonfire is equivalent in exp rates to a normal bonfire with five players training on it. With a bank being steps away from the fire, this is another alternative to consider.

Another excellent place to cook is on a hosted portable range, usually found at the Combat Academy. This allows you to gain 21% bonus experience, as well as extra food items 5% of the time, all without having to move from the spot right in front of the bank chest.

Below is a comprehensive list of commonly used locations to cook (any other location close to a bank can be used too). If you still wish to use a regular range, oven or similar, a list of some places more suited for cooking follows.

99+
For players wishing to continue training after level 99, a Cooking cape is a good alternative to the cooking gauntlets due to its perk which causes players to be unable to burn food whilst cooking. This will allow the player to use their gauntlets for something else.