So this has been in the game for awhile but a lot of people don't know this so im going to make a guide on how to level cooking while saving money and time. This method can also be used to make money depending on your servers economy. So you can buy pandaria meat and fish and you can turn them into ironpaw tokens by going to Merchant Cheng . The conversion rate is 1 stack of meat/fish for 1 ironpaw token (golden carp requires 3 stacks per token). So now you can buy these meats for example 20-30g a stack and get a token and from there you can use that token to buy a stack of vegetables or the expensive materials such as rice flour, 100 year soy sauce and black pepper. You can also use the token to get the cooking bell or other vanity items. For the money aspect of it you could theortically buy meat and make it vegetables and then sell it or just buy the expensive materials like black pepper and rice flour that can go 50g+ on the AH. Below im going to add a list of all the meats/fish. I recommend not to buy golden carp as it takes up alot of space and is usually not worth it.
Pandaria Meat and Fish
Wildfowl Breast
Raw Tiger Steak
Raw Turtle Meat
Raw Crab Meat
Mushan Ribs
Raw Crocolisk Belly
Emperor Salmon
Jade Lungfish
Giant Mantis Shrimp
Reef Octopus
Redbelly Mandarin
Tiger Gourami
Jewel Danio
Krasarang Paddlefish
Golden Carp