cook up

verb

cooked up; cooking up; cooks up

1

: to prepare (food) for eating especially quickly

I can cook up some hamburgers.

He cooked this whole meal up in less than 30 minutes.

2

: to invent (something, such as an idea, excuse, etc.) to deal with a particular situation

They cooked up a scheme to fool their neighbor.

You'll have to cook an excuse up quickly.

Examples of cook up in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The executive decisions that have defined his second administration were like something cooked up in #Resistance laboratories to alienate the vast majority of Americans from his political project. — Aidan McLaughlin, Vanity Fair, 4 Nov. 2026

Case in point, in that early-’10s resurgence, others returned to the source and cooked up a suite of stupefyingly hypnotic remixes. — Gabriel Szatan, Pitchfork, 2 Nov. 2026

After a career as a cook up and down the East Coast, Dunn moved to the Philadelphia suburbs and voted last week in Levittown. — Marc Levy, Los Angeles Times, 2 Nov. 2026

Tony is busy launching the paddle board into the water, while our hostess, Matea, cooks up a surprise Croatian lunch. — Michaela Trimble, Condé Nast Traveler, 30 Oct. 2026

Rhymes for cook up

• backup
• blowup
• breakup
• buildup
• checkup
• cleanup
• holdup
• hookup
• lineup
• lockup
• makeup
• markup