How you profit from the Cooking Profession will depend on which recipes you have chosen to buy and whether you have Fishing leveled along with Cooking.
The key to profiting from Cooking is the timing in which you use to sell your food. People will be interested in buying food for raiding and running instances, so ideally you want to place them for sale around 3pm-7pm server time as that is when the highest population is active. For the most part, it is generally not a good idea to advertise you are selling something via Trade Channel, but when it comes to food, it is recommended you advertise if done in the 3-7pm bracket. If you advertise during off-peak times, you may end up with more competition than sales.
Spending roughly 10 to 30 minutes a day gathering will keep the cashflow fruitful. Sometimes, if you have excess of one meat, you can sell the raw product along with cooked goods. There are always people leveling their cooking skill, and some willing to pay you for farming the stuff for them.
With Fishing
While you may be tempted to farm one specific type of fish, it is recommended that you farm multiple types for maximum profit. You will also need Northern Spices from the Cooking Dailies in order to combine these recipes. It shouldn’t take too long to fish up a stack or two per fish type, if your fishing skill is maxed. Spend roughly half an hour fishing and it should turn a very nice profit.
The more profitable Cooking with Fish recipes:
Firecracker Salmon / Snapper Extreme / Spicy Fried Herring / Spicy Blue Nettlefish / Poached Northern Sculpin / Dragonfin Filet / Cuttlesteak / Blackened Dragonfin
Along with the single-person buff foods listed above, the Fish Feast is easy to fish for and is very popular on raids. You can farm all that you need to make Fish Feasts in Wintergrasp (southern area suggested for least conflict from enemy players), you can farm enough fish to make a 20-stack of Feasts within roughly 20 minutes. Be sure to use a Fishing Lure to avoid wasted time fishing up Junk items.
Read the rest of this entry »



