Cooking Guide in Runescape
1-19:
When starting at level 1, the best thing to cook would be shrimp. Many will burn, but shrimp isn’t too expensive, and if you really wanted to, you could fish it, although I would suggest buying it because it saves time and it doesn’t really cost a lot. As you gain cooking levels, you will notice that you will burn less and less, but the levels will take longer to obtain.
If you wanted to cook something else at these levels, it’s alright, but shrimp is cheap and good pace for this level range.
20-39:
Cooking speeds up a little more here. Starting at 20, I suggest that you switch to trout since it gives more xp than shrimp, and shrimp gets significantly slower as you gain levels. You will burn trout at the beginning, and you may burn a lot, but it shouldn’t be a huge problem, seeing that trout’s not expensive either. Also, around level 30, I suggest either starting salmon with trout or stopping trout to cook salmon – just to speed things up. It shouldn’t cost you too much if you sell the cooked food back; but even if you don’t, it won’t cost you much.