Free-to-play Cooking training

Cooking is an easy skill to train, even in Free worlds, because of the availability of fish everywhere and the large amount of experience that cooking yields over a relatively short amount of time. Also, power levelling is efficient and cooking only incurs a low level of cash loss. Completing Cook's Assistant is helpful for all players as it opens up access to a new range in Lumbridge, which is close to a bank and reduces the chance of burning the food.

Uncooked items
Some food items that requires combination of multiple items can be bought uncooked from the Grand Exchange. Though they are usually hard to buy, they may be good for training cooking.

Cooking level table
This is a cropped table indicating what can be achieved starting at certain levels. It only covers items efficient for training cooking.

Note: Cooking with a fire now gives 10% more xp as of the recent Bonfires update

Training routes
Below are some training routes suitable for different kinds of players.

Training with Fishing
For players willing to train cooking along with fishing, this route is suitable.

Level 1
Crayfish and shrimps can be caught without any requirement. Crayfish can be fished much faster, though both of them yield 30 experience per successful cooking. Cooked crayfish and shrimps don't sell much in Grand Exchange, thus they should be used for food only. The best place to net shrimps is Draynor, and the best place to cage crayfish is at the river behind the Lumbridge church.

Level 15
Trouts can be caught in Gunnarsgrunn or in Lumbridge, provided you have level 20 Fishing. Trouts are very handy and each of them would give 70 experience. Power-cookers can even grab dropped raw trouts from powerfishers and cook them. If you go to Gunnarsgrunn in World 1, or a populated world, there are usually people giving away free raw trouts and salmon.

Level 30
Tunas can be caught in Musa point in Karamja by harpooning them, provided 35 fishing is attained. Tuna yields 100 experience each cooking, though catching speed is slow. The dropped raw tunas from powerfishers can be taken to cook. If a player decides to use this method to train cooking, a very busy world should be selected.

Level 40
Lobsters can be caught in Musa point in Karamja, provided 40 fishing is attained. Lobster yields 120 experience each cooking, catching speed is comparable to harpooning. There are rarely any lobster drops from powerfishers, thus fishing them is better.

Level 50
Swordfish can be caught in Musa point in Karamja, provided 50 fishing is attained. Swordfish yields 140 experience each cooking. With the swordfish gloves obtained from the Fist of Guthix activity, players can earn double the amount of experience in catching a swordfish. However swordfish catching speed is the slowest among all fish, with the fact tunas are often caught when harpooning. Also, a higher cooking level should be attained before starting cooking swordfish, as the burning rate is high among them.

It used to be a common practice to trade cooked for raw food; however, this is less common now due to the prices of raw food being more expensive.

Dungeoneering training
The reason this method is placed in a small part, is fishing is also involved in the part, and dungeoneering cannot yield stable cooking experience. The working principle is simple. Just chop/buy some high tier branches, fish and cook them into cooked food. There are several points to notice:
 * Fishing speed is much faster, and each fishing spot yields 11-14 fish before depletion.
 * Wood for burning can greatly affect the burning rate, choose the best wood to cook.
 * Buying wood would be much more expensive than cutting them, but fish do not have great cost.
 * Do it after defeating the boss.

Alternate method to level without burning food
This is an alternate method to level cooking without burning fish; however, it will most likely be slower than the method suggested above. It is recommended to use the other methods to attain level 50 cooking before beginning.

Without urns With Cooking urns

Note It is not advisable to start cooking swordfish after you reach level 86 while cooking with urns, because you can't use urns on Swordfish, the amount of Swordfish you need to cook is a couple of thousand more than you need with Lobsters and you will lose a bit more money.

A cooking urn gives 950 experience when full. If one uses a cooking urn and 40 lobsters the experience gained averages to 143.75 per lobster. This is higher than swordfish at only 140 per swordfish.

Also another faster method is to cook pizza from the level you're able to cook them all the way to 99. It is better experience than swordfish (143 vs 140) and you make 100 coins per pizza. The prices change all the time though, so check the prices before selling the pizzas. If one uses a cooking urn and 43 uncooked pizzas the experience gained averages to 170.94 per pizza.

Training via Cooking guild
Please note, 32 Cooking is needed to enter the guild. Some equipment, like a chef's hat should be brought before entering the guild as well.

Level 32
Although apple pies can be made at level 30 cooking, only the cooking guild has free and fairly abundant resource for mass making them. One jug, pot, pie dish and three cooking apple respawn are available in guild. Process can be sped up if some jugs, pots are brought prior. Wheat can be harvested in the field right next to the guild, then made into flour. Collecting flour, water and mixing pastry dough can all be done at ground floor, then cooked at first floor, while the equipments obtained from the first and second floor.

Level 35
Jugs and grapes can be taken in the guild, with the jug filling water and grapes squeezed in it, a wine would be fermented. Buying the ingredients from the GE results in a profit/loss of 0 coins per inventory. Wine gives the highest cooking experience per success, though grape spawning is slow. Nothing is needed to be brought prior. This method of training is somewhat expensive, but can give up to 2,800 experience per inventory (14 grapes/14 jugs of water).

Training with complex food
Complex food requires time to make and some base fund, but can be very rewarding. Complex food basically has varied trips, ranging from Draynor to Wilderness. It is possible to power-level these kinds of food, simply by purchasing the final uncooked version of the food (an uncooked pie, for example) from the Grand Exchange, or trading with another player. This method is usually quite expensive, but in turn offers very fast experience.

Level 10
Redberry pies are the first complex food that can be made. As these pies serve no purpose at higher levels, a quick method shall be shown here. Redberries, jug, pie dish, and pots can be bought from Beefy Bill site. Beefy Bill can supply all the goods for about 8 coins. If you're in Lumbridge, Beefy Bill can bank them and the mill can give flour, so it's the easiest powerlevelling. The supplies such as buckets or jugs can also be bought from general store, but it's better to get them from the bushes south east of Varrock, straight north from the entrance to al-Kharid. After that, redberry pies can be made in bulk.

Level 20
Meat pies can be made, with method similar to redberry pies, except cows can be killed at the old Gnomecopter site and banked for quick storage.

Level 25
Stews can be made, by picking potatoes in the potato field between Lumbridge and Draynor Village, and killing cows for their beef. Bowls can be taken from kitchen of Lumbridge cook, purchased from Grand Exchange, or manufactured with the Crafting skill (requires level 8 Crafting at a minimum).

Level 35
Plain pizza can be made. Plain pizza is composed of tomato, cheese and pizza base; the pizza base can be made in the cooking guild or bought from Fat Tony in Bandit Camp (Wilderness) for 4 coins each. To ensure quick buying of pizza bases, exactly 51 coins can be brought to buy exactly 10 pizza bases, and immediately move to and from the bank. Due to personal shop update, the respawn rate of shop supply is low and players might choose to make the pizza bases themselves. Cheese and tomato can be taken from Aggie's house or Fat Tony's camp, but both of them have disadvantages. Draynor lacks a support of cooking ranges, and Fat Tony is in Level 23 Wilderness, which might be dangerous as player killers may drop by the camp. Cooking pizzas at the range in Al-Kharid can earn up to 180k xp per hour.

Level 55
Anchovy pizza can be made. Making an Anchovy pizza out of plain pizza and anchovies is always a success. Raw anchovies can be fished south of Lumbridge, in Al Kharid and in Draynor.

Level 70
Cook lobsters as they provide decent experience and are relatively cheap. Players will stop burning lobsters at level 74 Cooking.

Bonfires
Bonfires are a great way of earning more experience. Cooking on a Bonfire will earn a player 10% more experience. eg. Cooking lobster on a range will give the player 120 experience, if using a bonfire this will be boosted to 132 experience. (This is a very good choice for training if you have the correct level not to burn certain food. Bonfires are lit in the Grand Exchange all the time and so can be very close to a bank).

Sell and buy, or just trade
Fish, particularly the high level ones, play a big role in the cooking market. They make up the bulk of the food market, with high demands of both raw and cooked forms.

When training on lobsters or swordfish, players may wish to use the RuneScape food forum to buy raw fish and sell cooked ones. This can be made quicker by going to the fishing spot in Karamja and ask for lobster, usually they will be happy to oblige.

Note that buying most fish raw from the Grand Exchange and selling the cooked product in the Grand Exchange is no longer profitable due to many players buying mass amounts of fish to get to 99 Cooking. For many fish there is a significant price difference between cooked and raw fish. If players wish to be profitable, they should sell on demand. This, however, is a slow way to sell food. A way to train cooking and gain a profit would be to make foods containing many steps. These foods give much more experience than fish when made from scratch, many cannot be burnt, and can be sold for modest profit in the Grand Exchange. The downside to this method is that it takes much longer to prepare the ingredients for combining.

Cost Control
Anchovies are one of the few fish that players can buy raw, sell cooked, and gain profit. This is due to the fact that people buy cooked anchovies to make anchovy pizza, the highest-healing free-to-play food.

Another good way for training cooking for little loss is to buy raw trout. The market buying price is coins and selling price is  coins. This is a good way to gain cooking exp without spending lots of money. However, cooked trout takes a very long time to sell because there is not a high demand for them.

However, in exchange for the low cost, these methods provide very slow experience rates. At higher levels, players may wish to move on to higher-level foods that give better experience.

There is a way to get pretty quick levels and make a small profit. Although it takes longer than some methods if you cook 100,000+ tuna from the time that it doesn't burn you are able to not burn your cash and it is still suitable for training.

All in all, cooking is not a very good money making skill, and it should be warned that it is not a very useful skill to train unless you are trying to boost your overall skill level for the high scores or get a skill cape.

Hot spots
Some places are more suited for cooking than others. Here are some recommended places.

Note: If you create your own fires in the Grand Exchange near the bankers, you can eliminate travel time entirely. However, this means you can only cook 27 items per inventory, as you need one spot for logs (and your tinderbox would be in your toolbelt). Also, this requires one log for every 27 items you wish to cook, slightly increasing the cost of cooking. Nevertheless, it is significantly faster.