Cooking

Cooking is a secondary profession which allows players to combine various ingredients such as fish or meat into delicious food and drink items which can be consumed to restore health and mana, as well as to grant combat buffs. This skill is often paired with Fishing, since leveling the latter often provides the materials needed for Cooking.

To cook, you will need to either find yourself a fire - and have the required ingredients, of course. Many innkeepers and cooking trainers have a cooking fire, a brazier, or some other tool needed for cooking around them. If you are out in the wilderness however, you can always create your own Cooking Fire - a skill you learn when you learn Cooking. Regardless of the location though, your food will be delicious and fully capable of providing one of the Well Fed buffs, its strength dependent on the level of the food you have eaten.
Recipes
There are three ways you can learn cooking recipes. Most of the ones you will need for leveling will come from your local trainer. Occasionally you will encounter a vendor who will sell you a recipe, or you will get one drop from a random creature in the world. And finally, since Wrath of the Lich King, you can do Cooking daily quests and earn cooking awards, which can in turn be used to purchase key ingredients and powerful recipes.
Cooking Awards
There are two types of cooking awards - Dalaran Cooking Award and Chef's Award. The first one can be earned by complete the one Cooking daily quest in Dalaran, and is for the most part obsolete; the recipes purchased with it are not nearly as powerful as ones tied to the Chef's Awards. This being said though, they are still worth collecting, because once you have 100, you can purchase Chef's Hat, which cuts down your cooking time from 2-4 seconds down to 0.5!

Chef's Awards, the Cataclysm cooking token, can be earned by completing your capital cities daily quest. Keep in mind though, although three of your faction's cities (Orgrimmar/Thunder Bluff/Undercity or Darnassus/Ironforge/Stormwind) will offer you a quest each, you can only complete one of them each day. You should check all three cities if you are short on Awards, since some of the dailies give 2 instead of the standard 1, and it will be obviously better to do one of them if it's available.

Whether you are a new character or an old one just picking up Cooking, you should try to do your dailies every day. The Chef's Awards are used for almost all of the Cataclysm recipes, and some of them are quite powerful and can provide essential buffs (like those last few points of hit/expertise rating, for example). Once you've purchased every recipe you possibly can (which will cost you 91), you can start spending your Awards on either Crate of Tasty Meat, which contains some meat reagents you can sell, or on Imported Supplies, which contain a lot of Cocoa Beans, which you can then use to make Chocolate Cookies and be Satisfied.