Cooking
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Cooking-icon.png Introduction

Cooking allows players to cook raw ingredients into cooked food that can be eaten. The primary gathering skill that supplements Cooking is Fishing, as all fish can be cooked for quick and easy experience. While the Fishing guide can be used as a barebones (no pun intended) guide to 99 Cooking, this page will serve (again, no pun intended) as a more in-depth guide that explores not only alternate methods of gaining cooking experience, but also the many beneficial dishes other than cooked fish that can be concocted using this skill. Think of this guide not as a 100% no-fishing-ever alternative to levelling cooking, but more as a series of beneficial supplementary methods that you should at least dabble in on the way to 99 cooking.

Burning Food

  • Whilst training Cooking, the player has a chance to burn any raw ingredient during the cooking process.

The best way to mitigate this is to have a higher Cooking level than the minimum required to make a dish, as well as using a range, which gives a significant reduction to burn chance. Cooking Gauntlets (from the Family Crest quest) will also reduce the chance of burning most fish you cook significantly, i.e. Sharks normally have a chance to be burnt at level 99, but with the Cooking Gauntlets they will stop burning at level 94. Monkfish require level 90 with the Gauntlets to stop burning, or level 92 without them.

The best place to cook on a range, with respect to bank distance, is the Cooking Guild. You'll need to complete the Hard Varrock Achievement Diary to even access it though.
Second best place would probably be at Catherby, there is a range just next to the bank in a building next door.
If you don't need a range, the Rouges Den' located under the Inn at Burthorpe has a permanently lit fire right by Emerald Benedict who gives access to the bank.

To Brew or Not to Brew

  • This version of this guide intentionally avoids the topic of brewing ales and other alcoholic drinks.

This guide avoids brewing not only because the "Barbarian Skills" book clearly advises against consumption of alcohol (t. Varg), but because brewing in vscape, as in OSRS and in Realscape, offers the player nothing more than an elaborate way to waste time (and not a fun one, hence why it is omitted here).

Refer to this vscape Brewing page if you really want to look into brewing.

First Section

  • The first major section of this guide goes over various methods of leveling cooking that DO NOT involve simply "fire good, fish good, put fish to fire, firefish good."

These methods are organized based on three main criteria: 1. both the MINIMUM and SUGGESTED levels at which you can begin the method, 2. any required and/or suggested items and quests necessary for the method, 3. the general availability, in vscape, of the ingredients you will need. Level requirements, quest requirements, and ingredient availability all become more challenging as the list progresses.

NOTE: In order to avoid burning nearly half of what you're cooking, it is advisable to OVER-LEVEL before you begin ANY form of cooking involving hard-to-obtain ingredients. The level at which it becomes impossible to burn each food item (regardless of cooking gloves or the use of a range) is included in the second section in each instance where that data was available.

Second Section

  • The second major section of this guide lists all of the various foods that can be cooked in vscape.

The level at which burning is impossible included where the data was available. This section will likely never be 100% "complete," as a great deal of data simply does not exist due to a lack of players of all versions of the game bothering to cook weird and useless things like lava eels enough to get a sense of the % burn chance at ANY given level, let alone the one where that chance reaches 0% (not even taking cooking gauntlets and ranges into account). That having been said, if data is missing, it will either be added later or it won't, so don't freak out.

Section 1: Beyond Fishing - Alternate Cooking Methods

Method 1: The Potatopill (Levels 1-39, 39-68)

  • Additional Requirements: Lots of Potato Seeds and/or Raw Potatoes; Access to Milk, Cream, and/or Butter.

This method is a great way to start cooking while levelling farming, since your early farming levels depend on growing potatoes. You can cook potatoes at level 1, producing baked potatoes, and you will stop burning them at level 41. Once you get to level 39, however, start adding butter to your baked potatoes. The reason you should keep doing this until 68 cooking (combining this with other methods of levelling such as cooking fish) rather than to use your baked potatoes to make potatoes with cheese, is that potatoes with butter can be used to make Tuna Potatoes, the highest single-bite healing food in vscape.

The potato method requires a bit of patience, but it's worth it. The Culinaromancer's chest starts stocking pats of butter (and buckets of milk) fairly early in the RFD questline, albeit at smaller amounts, but the chest re-stocks fairly quickly. If you don't have access to pats of butter, you can buy pots of cream at the Tree Gnome Stronghold right next to the Grand Tree's second-floor West bank, then churn them into butter either at the Zanaris dairy churn or at the one in Yanille. Churning butter is easily the slowest and most tedious part of this method, so if you can avoid it by buying pats of butter, do so. Under no circumstances should you collect your own buckets of milk from cows and then try churning them…my uncle died that way.

Save your buttered potatoes until 68 cooking (or ideally around 80 so you don't burn all your tuna potatoes), get some cooked tuna, a knife, some cooked sweetcorn and some bowls, and then go to town. By the time you've levelled cooking a bit past 68 you'll probably have some sweetcorn lying around that you can use. Making tuna potatoes is solid experience in addition to giving you access to some very good food.

Method 2: The Pizzapill (Levels 35-65, 65-99)

  • Additional Requirements: Ability to Brave the Wilderness and/or Access to the Warrior's Guild

This method is fairly straightforward: either make or buy plain pizzas, then add stuff to them. Done. You can make the pizzas at Tony's Pizza base in the Wilderness Bandit Camp, where Tony will sell you pizza bases and then look the other way while you steal cheese and tomatoes from the tables near him. You can start modifying plain pizzas at level 35 to make meat pizzas, or add anchovies to make anchovy pizzas at level 55, but it's better to wait until 65 cooking to make pineapple pizzas if you can. Pineapple pizzas heal a total of 22 HP in two 11-HP bites, making them quite the culinary powerhouse. You will stop burning plain pizzas at level 64 cooking.

Pineapples can be farmed at fruit tree spots or picked in the Karamja jungle, but by far the most convenient way to get them is to speak to Arnheim in Catherby once a day, who will sell you 40 pineapples every 24 hours. Simply use a knife on the pineapple to make pineapple chunks and then add those to the plain pizza. The best part? There's no chance you'll burn the plain pizza, since it's already cooked!

The better way to obtain plain pizzas is to level your combat stats until you can access the Warrior's Guild, where cooked plain pizzas are sold just East of the first-floor bank. This way, you have no chance of burning the pizzas.

Method 3: The Winepill (Levels 35-99)

  • Additional Requirements: Grapes, Jugs, and Water; some level of access to the Culinaromancer's chest's stock of grapes

Easily the simplest and fastest way to level cooking (once you have the ingredients, that is…), making wines is the patrician's way of utilizing grapes. Getting grapes is the only real bottleneck. Access to the culinaromancer's chest helps immensely, but if you find yourself killing Goblins or Guards, keep an eye out for their grape drops. These are worth saving, especially if you're an ironman or if you just really hate fishing for some reason. Jugs and water can be found all over the place, but the best place to make wines is still Lumbridge Castle basement, camping that Culinaromancer's chest.

Jugs of wine are great food to use while thieving, since it numbs your character, preventing them from remembering a time when pick-pocketing Heroes were still a viable training method.

Method 4: The Piepill (Levels 85-95, 95-99)

  • Additional Requirements: High Cooking Level, Lots of Farming seeds/mats, Lunar Spellbook

Baking any pie other than redberry without the Lunar Spellbook's "bake pie" spell (which cooks pies with a 0% burn rate) is inadvisable. This is especially true when it comes to Wild Pies and Summer Pies, the two highest-healing pies in vscape. Virtually all other pies aren't worth making: Garden pies require very easy-to-get ingredients (tomato, onion, and cabbage) as filling, but only heal 6 HP per bite and, really, a +3 farming boost is next-to-useless. Fish pies require cod and trout, two fish most players will never have much of, and Admiral pies require Tuna, which we all know should of course be saved for Tuna Potatoes. Wild pies are admittedly a pain to find the filling for, mostly because you need to kill Chompy birds for their succulent 11-herbs-and-spices carcass, but if you just don't want to get those 5 remaining Slayer levels to kill Abyssal Demons or Dark Beasts and you'd rather stuff your face with pies, you have that option.

Summer pies heal a total of 22 HP (11 per bite) and restore 10% run energy per bite. If you're doing GWD, Summer pies are amazing against bosses that you can use hit-and-run/kiting tactics against. They're also fairly useful against the Chaos Elemental if you're into tentacles.
Assuming you have access to the fully-stocked Culinaromancer's chest by now (if you have 85+ cooking and you haven't done RFD you should re-evaluate your life choices), then you can buy flour and use the nearby sink to make pastry dough.

Section 2: Fantastic Types of Food & When You'll Burn Them

Meat

Name Required Level Experience Healing
Cooked meat 1 67.5 3
Cooked chicken 1 67.5 3
Cooked rabbit 1 67.5 5
Roast rabbit 16 157.5 7
Crab meat 21 225 10

Fish

Name Required Level Experience Healing Stops burning at Lvl (with Cooking gauntlets)
Raw shrimps 1 67.5 3
Raw karambwanji 1 33.75 3
Raw sardine 1 90 4
Raw anchovies 1 67.5 1
Raw karambwan 1 427.5 (180 when poisoned) 18
Raw herring 5 112.5 5
Raw mackerel 10 135 6
Raw trout 15 157.5 7
Raw cod 18 168.75 7
Raw pike 20 180 8
Raw salmon 25 202.5 9
Raw slimy eel 28 213.75 6 to 10
Raw tuna 30 225 10 63
Raw cave eel 38 258.75 7 to 11
Raw lobster 40 270 12 64
Raw bass 34 292.5 13
Raw swordfish 45 315 14 81
Raw lava eel 53 67.5 14
Raw monkfish 62 337.5 16 90
Raw shark 80 472.5 20 94

Pies

Name Required Level Experience Healing Effect
Redberry pie 10 175.5 9 None
Meat pie 20 234 11 None
Mud pie 29 288 0 Thrown at enemies.
Apple pie 30 292.5 14 None
Garden pie 34 288 12 +3 Farming
Fish pie 47 369 12 +3 Fishing
Admiral pie 70 472.5 16 +5 Fishing
Wild pie 85 540 22 +4 Ranged
+5 Slayer
Summer pie 95 585 22 +5 Agility, restores 10% run energy

Other

Name Required Level Experience Healing
Plain pizza 35 321.75 14
Meat pizza 45 380.25 16
Anchovy pizza 55 409.5 18
Pineapple pizza 65 438.75 22
Cooked fishcake 31 225 11
Cake 40 405 12
Chocolate cake 50 472.5 15
Jug of wine 35 450 11
Sweetcorn 28 234 10% of your maximum
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