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

Those same Giants fired up their grill and cooked up 19 runs in one game (at Coors Field, but whatever). —Jayson Stark, New York Times, 5 June 2026

Kids ages four and up can join Dad to cook up special recipes in this Father's Day workshop. —Finch Walker, USA Today, 4 June 2026

Over two minutes, a spectrum of Black improvisational styles battle on what feels like a Red Planet, interspersed with video game chirps and tectonic-shifting airblasts that cool the magma cooked up during combat, each one building off the other’s energy. —Tatiana Lee Rodriguez, Pitchfork, 1 June 2026

The dish is cooked up by Chicken Charlie’s and made with fresh mango slices dipped in pancake batter, deep-fried, and topped with chamoy and Tajín, served with a slice of lime. —Carolyn Burt, Oc Register, 1 June 2026

Rhymes for cook up

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