Legion Cooking Leveling Guide 1-100

This Legion Cooking leveling guide will show you the fastest way how to level your Cooking skill from 1 to 100.

Legion altered the process of leveling cooking. Cooking skill does not limit which Legion recipes are available. The number of dishes produced by each cook varies with recipe ranks.

Learning Legion Cooking

Visit your trainer Awilo Lon'gomba (Horde), or Katherine Lee(Alliance) at Dalaran and learn Legion Cooking.

Recipe ranks

Every Legion cooking recipe has 3 ranks. Higher rank recipes allow you to cook more food for the same materials, and higher rank recipes also give skill points much longer. (the exceptions are the new Feast recipes, you always make one, but it will cost fewer materials)

If you hover over the little stars in your spellbook, you can see the source of the next rank for the selected recipe.

Unlocking Cooking Research

The best cooking recipes and every rank 2 and rank 3 recipes are unlocked by doing research at Nomi's test kitchen at Dalaran.

To unlock the cooking research, you have to find a cooking recipe in the world, then Nomi will spawn near you, and offer you a quest: Too Many Cooks - Horde / The Prodigal Sous Chef - Alliance. (If you don't have any new legion recipe yet, and Nomi haven't offered you the quest, then you can get one of the recipes below)

The follow-up quest is A Good Recipe List. You must learn 6 Legion Cooking recipes. Sometimes it doesn't count your cooking recipes correctly, but a quick logout should fix it.

These 6 recipes are the easiest to get:

Recipe

Source
[Recipe: Bear Tartare] Dropped by Mordvigbjorn at Stormheim.
[Recipe: Barracuda Mrglgagh] To get this recipe, you must do three short quests from King Mrgl-Mrgl (at 42.7, 10.9). These quests are Slime Time, I'll Huff, I'll Puff..., Nature vs. Nurture. After you complete these 3, you will get the quest Murlocs: The Next Generation which will reward you with the recipe.
[Recipe: Salt and Pepper Shank] You have to finish the following 3 quests at Highmountain for this recipe. First, you must do Amateur Hour and Lion Stalkin' from Hemet Nesingwary. After you finish these two, you can pick up the quest I'm Not Lion! from Ellias
[Recipe: Deep-Fried Mossgill] Get A Village in Peril from Darcy Heathrow at Val'Sharah 54.79, 52.77 (lying on the ground). This quest sends you to Bradensbrook where you complete it by talking to Mayor Heathrow. After turning in this quest to Mayor Heathrow in Bradensbrook, you can head directly to Cecily Radcliffe at 37.11, 58.31 and begin Shriek No More.
[Recipe: Leybeque Ribs] Dropped by Myonix at Suramar. 
[Recipe: Fighter Chow] Kill Salteye Murlocs at Azsuna until you get [Okuna's Message]. This item begins the quest Bottled Up, which will send you to Lady Irisse. Then you will getInfiltrating Shipwreck Arena, in which you find Okuna Longtusk. Okuna gives you a series of quests, ultimately bringing you to Morale Booster, which rewards you with this recipe.

Work Orders and Cooking Research

If you completed A Good Recipe List, you are now able to start Work Orders for any type of Legion meat or fish you have in your bags.

You can start work orders if you talk to Nomi near your cooking trainers. Nomi takes various meat, fish, and animal byproducts for Work Orders, 5 at a time.

Each Work Order takes 4 hours to complete. Creating a Work Order with a specific ingredients has a chance to teach you a recipe that uses that ingredient.

Getting new recipes from the research is not 100%. There is a high chance you will only get [Badly Burnt Food].

1 - 50

Use [Lean Shank] for research until you get [Rank 2 - Salt and Pepper Shank].

55 x [Rank 2 - Salt and Pepper Shank] - 275 x Lean Shank, 110 x Flaked Sea Salt, 110 x Dalapeno Pepper

If you get the [Rank 3 - Salt and Pepper Shank], you can use that to level up to 70 or even 80.

You can also use [Wildfowl Egg] for research if you choose Faronaar Fizz. (or any other meat/fish, but these are the cheapest)

50 - 100

There are only 8 recipes that you can use to level cooking to 100. 7 of them come from cooking discovery, and you need the rank 2 versions because the rank 1 recipes turn grey at 80. Rank 3 would be the best option, but the chance to get these rank 3 recipes is really low.

If you are revered with the Wardens, then you can buy [Recipe: Spiced Falcosaur Omelet] from Marin Bladewing at Azsuna and use that to level to 100. You will need a lot of [Falcosaur Egg], around 120-150.

You can choose from one of these recipes below and pick one of the ingredients to use as research until you get the rank 2 recipe. You can get duplicate recipes, therefore it's a good idea to check your workorder often and learn the rank 1 recipe before you finish more work orders, so you have a chance to get rank 2 and not another rank 1.

List of recipes and the meat/fish needed for research:

All of these recipes above are green between 90-100 (at rank 2), so you won't gain skill points for every craft!  You will probably have to cook around 70-90 from one of them to reach 100. If you are lucky enough to get the rank 3, then you only have to craft 50 because it gives guaranteed skill points up to 100.

I hope you liked this Legion Cooking leveling guide, congratulations to 100!