Hobbies And Interests
Requirements
Unlike other professions, cooking is not restricted to characters of a certain level. As long as your character has already reached 350 or above skill in cooking, you will be able to unlock the grand master cooking rank by speaking to a cooking trainer in any capital city. However, if your "World of Warcraft" account is not upgraded to the "Wrath of the Lich King" expansion, you will be unable to unlock this and all other grand master profession ranks.
Available Recipes
Recipes learned between 350 and 450 skill mostly require materials from "Wrath of the Lich King" areas, with only a few exceptions. Most of the recipes are for buff food, granting 30 or 40 stamina and 30 or 40 of another useful stat, such as agility or strength. Some recipes, however, teach you how to cook novelty food with various effects, such as Critter Bites, an item which when used will cause a critter to follow you for three minutes, or the Gigantic Feast, which will cause your character to grow larger for one hour.
Increasing Your Skill
To increase your skill beyond 400, you will need to purchase recipes using Dalaran cooking awards, a currency rewarded by the daily cooking quest in Dalaran. You should begin doing these quests as soon as possible to have enough Dalaran cooking awards to buy the recipes you need and enough Northern spices to cook them. You can also get an additional one or two skill points by completing the daily cooking quest in your faction's capital cities. Although these quests were added with the "Cataclysm" expansion, they are available to all players regardless of expansion level.
Achievements
Several achievements exist that are related to the grand master cooking rank. Reaching 450 skill in cooking awards the "Grand Master Cook" achievement. Completing each the daily cooking quests in Dalaran awards the "Our Daily Bread" achievement and cooking all recipes that were added to the game in "Wrath of the Lich King" earns the "Northrend Gourmet" achievement. Eating all four "emotion" foods, the recipes for which you can randomly find while killing enemies anywhere in the Northrend continent, earns the achievement "Second That Emotion." Using Critter Bites to force 10 critters to follow you earns the "Critter Gitter" achievement. Placing a Great Feast in five battlegrounds earns the "Dinner Impossible" achievement.