cook up

present singular third person cooks up · participle present cooking up · participle past cooked up · past cooked up

1. transitiveTo prepare (food or chemical substances) by cooking or heating.

   Let me cook up some eggs and bacon before you go.

   2 more examples

   To cook up a batch of biodiesel, scientists stir together methanol and vegetable fat.

   Owsley Stanley started cooking up those famous purple LSD tabs.

2. figurativelytransitiveTo manufacture; to invent (something, often a deceit or falsehood); to counterfeit (something).

   He really cooked up a good one this time, something about an airline disaster.

   3 more examples

   The financiers cooked up an instrument called a collateralized debt obligation.

   For more than two years Thailand's ruling junta, which seized power in a coup in 2014, has been cooking up a constitution which it hopes will keep military men in control even after elections take place.

   2017 January 14, “Thailand's new king rejects the army's proposed constitution”, in The Economist

   "RMT will not sit back while this carve-up of the rail network is cooked up in company boardrooms. [...]".

   2021 September 8, “RMT on "war footing" in response to workforce cutback threats”, in RAIL, number 939, page 15

3. slangTo prepare (heroin, opium, crack, or meth) by heating or otherwise manufacturing.
4. slangTo manufacture a significant amount of illegal drugs (LSD, methamphetamine, etc.).
5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cook, up.