OSRS Cooking Training Guide From Level 1 To 99

Last Updated: 2026-05-03

Cooking is one of the fastest skills to 99 in Old School RuneScape, and one of the cheapest if you pick the right method. This guide covers the level requirements that actually matter, the best XP/hr methods at every stage, the gauntlets and locations that cut your burn rate to almost zero, and dedicated paths for F2P and Ironman accounts.

Why train Cooking in OSRS?

Cooking unlocks four things players actually care about: Barrows gloves (level 70 via Recipe for Disaster), the Kandarin Hard Diary (level 80 for Cooking Guild access), the Cooking cape at 99, and Achievement Diary Cape eligibility (which counts every 99). Most players train Cooking specifically to clear the level-70 Barrows-gloves requirement, then push to 99 because it's the cheapest skillcape in the game when done right.

You also bank passive XP from Barbarian Fishing (5k-16k Cooking XP/hr), Wintertodt firemaking, and any time you cook food during slayer or PvM trips.

Best Cooking locations in OSRS

The Hosidius Kitchen is the strongest training location: a 5% lower burn rate than any other range, a bank chest five tiles from the cooking range, and no quest requirements beyond 100% Hosidius favour. The Myths' Guild range is the only zero-tile bank in the game, but you need Dragon Slayer II completed to access it. The Rogues' Den fire is the best no-requirement option for fresh accounts.

For 1-tick methods (covered below) you don't need a range at all — a fire works fine and lets you set up anywhere with a tile pattern that suits your timing.

Cooking Gauntlets — the most important reward in Cooking

Cooking Gauntlets are a Family Crest quest reward that drop your burn rate on lobsters, swordfish, monkfish, sharks and anglerfish to almost zero. Equipping them effectively shifts the "stop burning" level down by ~7 levels per fish — sharks stop burning around level 86 with gauntlets, vs level 94 without. Every player training Cooking past level 50 should already own these.

To unlock them you need 40 Mining, 40 Smithing, 59 Magic and 40 Crafting, then complete the Family Crest quest and choose the Cooking Gauntlets variant from Dimintheis. Per the OSRS Wiki page on Cooking Gauntlets, no other equipment slot offers this size of burn-rate reduction.

Levels 1-99 AFK Cooking path (cheapest route)

The AFK path uses regular fish at the Hosidius range with Cooking Gauntlets. It's slow compared to wines or 1-tick karambwans, but it costs almost nothing if you fish your own supplies and turns a small profit if you buy from the Grand Exchange.

Total time 1-99 on the AFK path is roughly 70-80 hours assuming you bank your own catches.

Fastest XP method: 1-tick Karambwans

1-tick Karambwan cooking is the fastest method in the game at 450,000-950,000 XP/hr depending on tick precision. You alternate between cooking a karambwan on a fire and clicking a non-cooking action (knife on log, knife on a vegetable, or chopping a log) on the same game tick to skip the cook animation. Hitting 99 takes around 14 hours of active play and roughly 75,000 raw karambwans.

Setup: stand next to a fire with raw karambwans in slot 1 and a knife + log (or knife + onion) in slots 2 and 3. Use the karambwan on the fire, then immediately use the knife on the log on the next tick. The trick is muscle memory and consistent latency — at 600ms per tick you have a tight window. Practice in PvP worlds where the lower player count gives slightly more stable ticks.

Karambwans require level 30 Cooking and Tai Bwo Wannai Trio completion to fish, so most players buy raw karambwans off the Grand Exchange. As of live OSRS Wiki Prices for raw karambwan, a full 1-99 stack runs around 30M GP, and you sell the cooked product back for a near-break-even result.

Fastest non-tick method: Jugs of Wine

Jugs of Wine give 200 XP each at 300,000-490,000 XP/hr — the fastest method that doesn't require tick manipulation. From level 35 to 99 you'll burn through about 65,000 jugs and 65,000 grapes for roughly 3.5M-4M GP total, completed in ~30 hours. The method is a money-loser but unmatched for AFK-style "fast" XP.

Setup: bank stand at any range, withdraw 14 jugs of water and 14 grapes, click "Use" on water-on-grape, select "Make X" to fill the inventory, then bank and repeat. The bake-pie spell on Lunar magic is roughly equivalent XP/hr if you've already done Lunar Diplomacy.

Profitable cooking — methods that pay you to train

Three fish flip from cost to profit at typical Grand Exchange prices: tuna (60-90 GP profit each, ~140k XP/hr at level 63+), monkfish (100-150 GP profit each at level 82+), and sharks (turn a profit at level 80+ with gauntlets, ~250k XP/hr). All three are AFK methods at the Hosidius Kitchen.

• Tuna 63-99 — net ~50-70M profit over the full grind
• Monkfish 82-99 — net ~70-90M profit
• Sharks 80-99 — usually 0 to 20M profit; depends heavily on shark spread that week

If your only goal is gold (not training XP), buying OSRS gold from Probemas is several orders of magnitude faster than any cooking-for-profit method. Cooking-for-profit only makes sense as a side-effect of training to 99.

F2P 1-99 Cooking path

F2P players train at the Lumbridge Castle range — 1 tile to a bank chest and identical burn rates to other F2P ranges. The path is shrimp (1-15) → trout (15-35) → salmon (35-50) → swordfish (50-99) for the AFK route, or jugs of wine 35-99 for the fastest legal F2P method.

F2P stops burning swordfish at level 86 (no gauntlets available — they require P2P Family Crest), so the swordfish path runs slower than the P2P shark equivalent.

Ironman 1-99 Cooking path

Ironmen can't buy supplies off the Grand Exchange, so the path centres on self-sustaining methods. The Mess Hall in Hosidius (level 20+) hands out free meat pies and pineapple pizzas as long as you keep the kitchen tidy — up to 200k XP/hr at level 65 once pizzas unlock. Trouble Brewing minigame yields ~200k XP/hr without supply cost. Karambwan fishing + cooking is the standard Ironman 1-99 finisher.

The Recipe for Disaster chest in Lumbridge gives access to grapes and jugs farmed via the Humidify spell, which lets Ironmen run the wines method for roughly 100k GP total cost to 99 — see the OSRS Wiki page on Pay-to-play Cooking training for the full Ironman-specific decision tree.

Cooking boosts and temporary level boosts

You can temporarily raise your Cooking level with five items: a spicy stew (orange spice gives ±5, randomised), a Pyromaster mix (+1 Cooking, ironman-only from Wintertodt rewards), the Mature wild kebab (+5 Cooking but -3 to all combat stats), the Brown Spice from Evil Bob's island (+0 to +5), and the Hosidius Kitchen's per-cook 5% burn-reduction (passive, not a stat boost).

The most-used boost in practice is the spicy stew with orange spice — it can push you above 99 to start otherwise-locked cooking actions, including starting Recipe for Disaster sub-quests below the listed Cooking requirement.

Cooking quests for fast early XP

Quest XP gets you from level 1 to ~32 without any direct training:

• Cook's Assistant — 300 XP, free to play
• Gertrude's Cat — 1,525 XP
• Recipe for Disaster (subquests) — 1,000-2,500 XP per subquest, plus unlocks Barrows gloves
• Forgettable Tale of a Drunken Dwarf — 5,000 XP
• Heroes' Quest — 2,825 XP
• Family Crest — unlocks Cooking Gauntlets (the most valuable reward in this list)

Cooking cape — perks and how to wear it

The Cooking cape costs 99,000 GP from the Cooking tutor in the Cooking Guild. Its perk is identical to the Hosidius range bonus: stop burning every cookable food in the game, including 1-tick karambwans. Equipping the cape lets you train other skills (firemaking, fishing) while still cooking your catches with no burns.

If you stack 99 Cooking with the Achievement Diary Cape (Kandarin Hard requires level 80 Cooking and a Cooking cape proves the milestone), you unlock the Max-cape-tier perks — see the OSRS Wiki entry for Cooking cape.

Related Probemas guides

Cooking pairs naturally with these other support skills — every one of them benefits from levelling alongside cooking on a balanced account:

• OSRS Fishing Guide — feeds your cooking supply chain
• OSRS Firemaking Guide — for fires used in 1-tick karambwans
• OSRS Prayer Training Guide — paired skill for combat support
• OSRS Agility Guide — Wintertodt and Mess Hall pair well
• Fastest OSRS Skill to 99 — see how Cooking ranks against every other skill

For a full-price comparison and instant 24/7 delivery, our OSRS gold page covers every standard quantity from 1M up to bonded packages.