kochen
to cook
Kochen (to cook) is the everyday German verb for preparing food on the stove. You'll use it for das Abendessen kochen (to cook dinner), eine Suppe kochen (to make a soup), and Kaffee kochen (to make coffee). It is a regular weak verb, so once you know the pattern, every form is predictable.
The present tense is ich koche, du kochst, er/sie/es kocht, wir kochen, ihr kocht, sie/Sie kochen. The perfect tense uses haben as the auxiliary and the regular past participle gekocht: ich habe Nudeln gekocht (I cooked pasta). The simple past is kochte, which you mostly meet in writing.
Kochen has a second meaning that surprises English speakers: it also means "to boil". Das Wasser kocht means "the water is boiling", not "the water is cooking". So the same verb covers both the general act of cooking a meal and the specific point where a liquid reaches boiling. Context makes the meaning clear.
A few related words are worth knowing. Der Koch is a male cook or chef and die Köchin is the female form. Das Kochen (capitalized) is the activity of cooking as a noun, as in Kochen macht Spaß (cooking is fun). The noun die Küche (kitchen) comes from the same root.
Pronunciation: "KO-chen", with stress on the first syllable. The "o" is short, and the "ch" after it is the throaty back sound also heard in Buch and suchen, not the soft "ch" of ich.
English
to cook
Perfekt
ich habe gekocht
Partizip II
gekocht
Auxiliary
kochen appears in the following vocabulary collections:
Ich koche heute eine Suppe.
I am cooking a soup today.
Verb in position 2 after the subject.
Wir kochen am Abend Nudeln.
We cook pasta in the evening.
Time comes before the object.
Kochst du gern Reis?
Do you like cooking rice?
Yes/no question begins with the verb.
- What does kochen mean in German?
- Kochen means "to cook" in German. It covers preparing food in general (das Essen kochen, to cook the food) and also means "to boil" when used with a liquid (das Wasser kocht, the water is boiling).
- How do you conjugate kochen in the present tense?
- Kochen follows the regular -en pattern: ich koche, du kochst, er/sie/es kocht, wir kochen, ihr kocht, sie/Sie kochen. It is a weak verb, so the stem vowel never changes.
- What is the past participle of kochen?
- The past participle is gekocht. It uses haben as the auxiliary in the perfect tense: ich habe Suppe gekocht (I cooked soup). The form is fully regular: ge- at the front, -t at the end.
- Does kochen mean "to cook" or "to boil"?
- Both. Kochen means "to cook" for preparing a meal (ich koche heute, I am cooking today) and "to boil" when a liquid reaches its boiling point (das Wasser kocht, the water is boiling). German uses one verb where English uses two.
- What is the difference between kochen and der Koch?
- Kochen is the verb "to cook", while der Koch is the noun for a cook or chef (the female form is die Köchin). Capitalized, das Kochen is "cooking" as an activity, as in Kochen entspannt mich (cooking relaxes me).