Rice & Beer: A Guide to Pandarian Cuisine
1. Introduction
Mists of Pandaria revamped most professions, and this includes cooking. New low cooking skill recipes have been added to quickly get your cooking up to speed, and past 525 skill, cooking is split into 6 specializations called Ways. These specializations are not exclusive; you can learn all 6 on a single character. 5 of the Ways are dedicated to the specific stats they increase, and the last one focuses on alcoholic beverages. Ironpaw Tokens are used as currency for Pandarian ingredients, recipes and vanity items.
Each Way starts at 525 skill, and cooking a dish associated with that Way will increase your skill, as well as increasing your overall cooking skill. All Ways have 4 levels of recipes, learned at 525, 550, 575 and 600 skill. If you reach the required level of the next recipe, the previous one stops giving skillups.
The 525 skill recipe creates food which increases the associated stat by 250.
The 550 skill recipe requires considerable more ingredients but increases the stat by 275. These recipes grant 2 skillups per craft.
At 575, all Ways get recipes for a 10man and a 25man Banquet (the new feasts), that will increase stats by 250. Note that the Banquets are not bound to the Way's stat; a DPS warrior eating from a Banquet of the Steamer will still get 250 Strength from it, even tho the Way of the Steamer is associated with Spirit. Crafting a Banquet will grant 5 (10man) or 8 (25man) skillups as long as it's orange.
At 600 you can learn the ultimate recipe of a Way, which allows you to create food that increases the Way's associated stat by 300! The 300 stat food requires an ingredient that can only be bought with Ironpaw Tokens, but 5 of the food are created per craft. Having 600 skill in a Way will also allows you to get 275 stats from Banquets of that Way. For example a Master of the Wok will get 275 Agility when eating from a Banquet of the Wok.
If you manage to get all 6 ways to 600 skill, you will get the achievement Master of Pandaren Cooking. This will allow you to get 300 stats from Pandaren Banquets, while players without Master of Pandaren Cooking will only get 275 stats from them.
Items that can be bought with Ironpaw Tokens besides ingredients:
The Frying Pan, Rolling Pin and Apron are Heirlooms and can be used to make getting cooking on an alt easier (+30 cooking in total from the set).
2. Becoming a Master
0. Make sure you have 520 Cooking and are level 85. If you don't have 520 cooking, look below for new ways to level up cooking quickly.
(optional) You can get a prequest from NPCs all over Pandaria (Dawn's Blossom, Pang's Stead, etc) that sends you to Halfhill, which rewards an Ironpaw Token: Everything I Know About Cooking.
1. Go to the Halfhill Market in Valley of the Four Winds and talk to Sungshin Ironpaw <Guide to the Ways>
2. Click "I need supplies for cooking lessons." and buy 5x Pandaren Peach, 5x Yak Milk, 5x Rice, and (optionally) 20x Ginseng.
3. Talk to her again, click "I seek training in Pandaren Cooking" and learn the recipes for Sliced Peaches and Rice Pudding.
4. Talk to her again, accept the quest So You Want to Be a Chef..., make 5 sliced peaches, and turn in the quest. Make sure to make the peaches while on the quest, not before.
5. Talk to her again, accept the quest Ready for Greatness, make 5x Rice Pudding, and turn in the quest. Again, make sure to make the pudding while on the quest.
6. 6 new quests now open up, 1 for each way. I'd suggest to take at least Way of the Brew, as it has a very easy to complete first part. The other 5 Ways are each associated with 1 primary stat:
Strength - Way of the Grill
Agility - Way of the Wok
Stamina - Way of the Oven
Intellect - Way of the Pot
Spirit - Way of the Steamer
7. If you bought the Ginseng, you can turn in Way of the Brew right away, get the followup Have a Drink, learn the recipe for Ginseng Tea from him, make 20 of those, and turn it in. This will get your Way of the Brew skill to 550, allowing you to get the recipe for Jade Witch Brew.
8. You'll need 20 of the ingredient associated with your chosen Way;
Grill needs Raw Tiger Steak (from tigers in jade forest / karasarang)
Wok needs Juicycrunch Carrots (from virmen in valley of the 4 winds)
Pot needs Jade Lungfish (fishing in lakes/rivers of jade forest)
Steamer needs Giant Mantis Shrimp (fishing at the coast of jade forest / karasarang)
Oven needs Wildfowl Breast. (cranes along the rivers in jade forest, or just east of Paoquan Hollow in valley)
I'd suggest getting at least 5 for each of the other Ways as well, as it will allow you to complete a bunch more quests for Ironpaw Tokens, 2 for each way and 1 more afterwards (you'll need those for your 300stat food!)
9. Turn in the Way quest(s), and you'll get followup quests to learn a recipe for that way and make 5 of it. If you got 20 mats, these will get you to 550 for each Way.
(optional) After completing the 5 followup quests, you'll get a quest from Nam Ironpaw to buy an Empty Raw Tiger Steak Container from Merchant Cheng, for another Ironpaw Token.
This unlocks a repeatable quest to turn in Bundles of Groceries for Ironpaw Tokens. Bundles of Groceries can be created by buying an Empty X Container and then filling it with X of a certain cooking ingredient. The amount of ingredients varies by type: Vegetables require 100, Fish & Meat requires 20 and Golden Carp requires 60.
Also unlocked is a random level 90 daily quest from 1 of the Masters; these quests are completed in the same area as the Tillers dailies, either at the Hozen village or at the Virmen warrens that are only reachable by flying mount.
The Thousand-Year Dumpling
Cindergut Peppers
The Truffle Shuffle
The Mile-High Grub
Fatty Goatsteak
10. Now you can start making the 550 recipe for your way to get up to 576. 550 recipes give 2 skillup per craft, so you'll need 13 crafts. Total required mats are:
Grill - Eternal Blossom Fish - 13x Jade Lungfish, 65x Striped Melon
Wok - Valley Stir Fry - 13x Reef Octopus, 13x Wildfowl Breast
Oven - Twin Fish Platter - 26x Krasarang Paddlefish
Pot - Braised Turtle - 13x Raw Turtle Meat, 65x Juicycrunch Carrot
Steamer - Fire Spirit Salmon - 13x Emperor Salmon, 65x Scallions
Brew - Jade Witch Brew - 65x Witchberries, 65x Jade Squash
(optional) There's 10 hidden lvl90 dailies spread around Valley of the Four Winds that only show up if you got certain food in your bags. They reward 5 valor but no Ironpaw tokens. They do increase your rep with the various Tiller npcs, which is useful for farming vegetables (more rep = more fields available). The quests become visible when you got 1 of the required food, but they require 5 of that food to be completed. The npcs can be located at the halfhill market instead of their normal spot (they're usually offering a tillers daily as well then).
A Dish for Chee Chee - 5x Valley Stir Fry (550 Wok) - SW of the Heartland
A Dish for Ella - 5x Shrimp Dumplings (525 Steamer)
A Dish for Farmer Fung - 5x Wildfowl Roast (525 Oven)
A Dish for Fish - 5x Twin Fish Platters (550 Oven) - Pier N of the Heartland
A Dish for Gina - 5x Swirling Mist Soup (525 Pot) - Halfhill Market
A Dish for Haohan - 5x Charbroiled Tiger Steak (525 Grill) - NE of the Heartland
A Dish for Jogu - 5x Sauteed Carrots (525 Wok) - Halfhill Market
A Dish for Old Hillpaw - 5x Braised Turtle (550 Pot) - SW of the Heartland
A Dish for Sho - 5x Eternal Blossom Fish (550 Grill)
A Dish for Tina - 5x Fire Spirit Salmon (550 Steamer)
11. At 575 you can learn the next recipes, which are the +250 Banquets. These require a ton of mats, including 100 Year Soy Sauce which is bought for Ironpaw Tokens, but grant +5 (10man) / +8 (25man) skillup per craft. So you either need to make 5 10man banquets, or 3 25man banquets. So with 25man banquets, you'll need 2 less Ironpaw Tokens, but 20% more of the other ingredients.
Banquet of the Grill - 5x / 3x 100 Year Soy Sauce, 50x / 60x Redbelly Mandarin, 50x / 60x Raw Crab Meat, 250x / 300x White Turnip
Banquet of the Wok - 5x / 3x 100 Year Soy Sauce, 50x / 60x Giant Mantis Shrimp, 50x / 60x Raw Crocolisk Belly, 250x / 300x Red Blossom Leek
Banquet of the Oven - 5x / 3x 100 Year Soy Sauce, 50x / 60x Krasarang Paddlefish, 50x / 60x Raw Turtle Meat, 250x / 300x Mogu Pumpkin
Banquet of the Pot - 5x / 3x 100 Year Soy Sauce, 50x / 60x Reef Octopus, 50x / 60x Mushan Ribs, 250x / 300x Juicycrunch Carrot
Banquet of the Steamer - 5x / 3x 100 Year Soy Sauce, 50x / 60x Emperor Salmon, 50x / 60x Wildfowl Breast, 250x / 300x Jade Squash
Banquet of the Brew - 5x / 3x 100 Year Soy Sauce, 250x / 300x Green Cabbage, 250x / 300x Witchberries
12. You should be at 600 Cooking now, as well as 600 skill in your Way, which allows you to get the 300 stat food recipe. Grats!
(optional) After getting a Way to 600, you'll get the quest To Be a Master which requires you to cook 1 of each final Way food. When this is completed, you can buy the Recipes for +275 stat food banquets for 10 Ironpaw Tokens, and the Cooking School Bell for 50 Ironpaw Tokens, which summons Nomi, your very own cooking student. He offers a daily quest that will increase your relation with him. When you max out, he will give you an Ironpaw Token and some random 300stat food every day.
3. Getting Up to Speed
If you're lvl85+ but your cooking skill isn't 520 yet, there's an easy new way to level your cooking: the cooking trainers in Pandaria have recipes to get from 1-520 using mostly vendor-bought ingredients. The recipes grant 5 skillups per craft as long as they're orange, so it's really fast. A a few of the recipes require Golden Carp, which can be fished from any water in Pandaria. This requires you to have 625 Fishing skill. If you don't have fishing that high, and there's no golden carp available from your guild or the AH, you'll need to cover those parts with pre-MoP recipes.
If your character is a Pandaren, or has the cooking heirlooms that grant +cooking skill, you might be able to skip these parts entirely.
The golden carp parts are:
65-90 (1 golden carp per 5 cooking = 5 golden carp)
275-330 (2 golden carp per 5 cooking = 22 golden carp)
425-450 (2 golden carp per 5 cooking = 10 golden carp)
for a total of 37 golden carp. If you can get 5 more golden carp you can make all recipes while they are orange, speeding up the process a bit more.
Finally, for the 510-520 part you'll need 2x Wildfowl Breast. These are easily looted from most birds in Pandaria, like the cranes along the rivers in Jade Forest or just northeast of Halfhill.
Doing this on all your alts will grant you quite a few extra Ironpaw Tokens from completing the Way of the X quests, for buying 300 stat food/feast ingredients.
Covering the gaps with pre-MoP recipes is best done using recipes not learned from the trainer, as you can take those recipes with you instead of having to travel back and forth between the MoP cooking trainer and the SW one. Good candidates for this:
65-90 many options for this range:
- Recipe: Bat Bites from Ghostlands (H), Bat Flesh from Bats in the same zone
- Recipe: Goretusk Liver Pie from Stormwind (A), Goretusk Liver from Boars in Westfall / Redridge
- Recipe: Loch Frenzy Delight from Loch Modan (A), Raw Loch Frenzy from fishing in the same zone
- Recipe: Longjaw Mud Snapper from Mulgore / Silverpine Forest / Undercity / Thunder Bluff / Loch Modan / Teldrassil / Ironforge / Elwynn Forest, Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper from fishing in level 1-20 zones
- Recipe: Rainbow Fin Albacore from Stormwind, Westfall, Teldrassil, Wetlands, Silverpine Forest, Northern Barrens, Undercity, Orgrimmar, Durotar, Raw Rainbow Fin Albacore from fishing in level 15-30 zones
- Recipe: Strider Stew from Northern Barrens (H), Strider Meat from Plainstriders in the same zone
- Recipe: Blood Sausage from Loch Modan (Q) / Stormwind, Bear Meat from Bears in Loch Modan
- Recipe: Crunchy Spider Surprise from Bloodmyst Isle (A) / Ghostlands (H), Crunchy Spider Leg from spiders in the same zones
275-300
300-330 - Recipe: Ravager Dog (recipe and Ravager Flesh both from hellfire peninsula)
for 425-450 i could only find a trainer recipe: Blackened Surprise (Toughened Flesh from beasts in cata)
all other recipes for this range require Epicurean's Awards.