Ironman Mode/Strategies/Cooking

On Ironman Mode, cooking does not differ significantly from the main game, other than that you have to obtain most raw items from fishing yourself, and portable ranges cannot be used.

Important equipment

Cooking gauntlets, from Family Crest. Important to obtain early to minimise burn rate of fish.
Sous chef's outfit from Gnome Restaurant minigame - provides a passive 6% XP boost and each piece is a common reward obtained sequentially.
Cooking urns, volatile effigies, and explosive effigies - useful passive experience.
The Dwarven army axe gives a flat 3 bonus cooking experience when equipped or in the inventory to any item cooked in any location.

Bait and Switch relic

The Bait and Switch relic automatically cooks any caught fish, providing 50% of the fish's normal Cooking experience. This is not generally a recommended training method as it means the player would have to spend twice as long fishing, but if you have a large amount of raw fish obtained from PvM it may provide a useful low intensity alternative, especially with the Shark outfit set to consume.

Locations to cook

Bonfires which are built by players grant 10% additional experience versus cooking on a range . This does not apply to any pre-built bonfires (Prifddinas, Menaphos, Yeti Town) or the Rogue's den fire. This makes bonfire cooking slightly more click intensive for the benefit of extra experience.

Bonfire options:

At early levels, it is most convenient to catch raw fish, chop logs to make a bonfire and cook on the spot.
Once you have a lot of raw fish banked, the bank on top of Lumbridge Castle is useful due to the 4 log spawns outside.
The bank chest north-east of the burthrope lodestone allows for fires to be made 0 tiles away, making it a decent choice.
If you have built the tier 3 kitchen in Fort Forinthry, the 5% experience boost from cooking there stacks with the 10% from using a bonfire, making this the optimal method to maximise experience.

Alternatives if not wanting to maintain a bonfire:

Rogue's Den in south-west Taverley has a permanently lit fire a few tiles away from a bank. Useful as no requirements.
Fort Forinthry. Requires partial completion of Murder on the Border. Gives a 5% experience bonus if tier 3 is built, requiring 85 construction.
Prifddinas bonfire.
Max guild bonfire.

Obtaining raw food

The vast majority of food will be obtained through fishing.
- Desert sole (52 cooking, stops burning at 81 with gauntlets), catfish (60 cooking, stop burning at 86 with gauntlets) and beltfish (72 cooking, stops burning at 90 with gauntlets) obtained from fishing in Menaphos are particularly useful. They provide a variety of levels of fish from one fishing spot which is close to a bank and each is a good food choice for training slayer, hence catching and cooking large quantities of these is common in a mid-level ironman.
- Swarm fishing is useful at higher levels to provide a variety of high level foods useful for bossing, however all food obtained from this all has a high burn rate until level 99, at which point the cooking cape perk prevents burning. The exception to this is sharks and blue blubber jellyfish, which stop burning at 94 and 97 cooking with cooking gauntlets, respectively.
- Ghostly sole spot is a very AFK way of getting ghostly sole (66 cooking) which cook for 160 experience.
Managing Miscellania: Provides raw tuna and raw swordfish in large quantities.
Monster drops: raw lobster is common from the rare drop table, frequently accessed through slayer or Seren spirits. All Heart of Gielinor generals drop 45-55 raw sharks commonly. Croesus drops 45-55 raw rocktails commonly. Many other high-level bosses commonly drop large amounts of raw fish, such as Zamorak, Rise of the Six, Vorago, and Telos.
Raw sharks can be obtained from Temple Trekking, which may be useful if also trying to obtain the constructor's outfit.
Raw bacon, obtainable after the quest Bringing Home the Bacon can be gathered very quickly with no risk and low skill requirements.

Alternate Methods

Dairy churn

Churning cheese wheels gives 64 experience per bucket of milk. There are also milkmaids near milk cows from whom milk can be bought. Cheese wheels are untradeable and must be sliced in order to be sold or even noted. So they are a potential hassle to manage after creation.

Players can double their experience (to 128 xp) from dairy production by having a farm totem and an elder cow in a pen at the player-owned farm (requires level 49 Farming and level 60 Construction). Players can quadruple their experience (to 256 xp) by having farm totems and elder cows in both pens at the player-owned farm (requires level 71 Farming and level 60 Construction).

With both farm totems active giving quadruple experience, and a full Sous chef's outfit, it's possible to get upwards of 215,000 experience per hour at a cost of only −16,125 per hour. With partial completion of Chef's Assistant players can start churning Cream cheese. It not only increases base xp gain by 25% (64 xp per Cheese wheel vs 80 xp per Cream cheese) but it also requires a lower cooking level to start.