煮(zhǔ) - to boil, to cook in liquid in Mandarin

煮 (zhǔ) is to cook something in water: boiling, simmering, poaching. Noodles, dumplings, eggs, soup and rice all get 煮. So does coffee, which is why 煮咖啡 sounds normal to a Chinese ear even when the machine does the work.

The four dots underneath are not decoration. 灬 is 火 (fire) squashed flat, and it turns up under a whole family of heat words including 热 and 熟. Spotting it tells you a character has something to do with cooking or warmth before you know how to say it.

The trap is treating 煮 as the general verb for cooking. It is not. Frying in a wok is 炒, roasting is 烤, and cooking a meal as an activity is 做饭. Use 煮 only when liquid is doing the work, or you will have told someone you boiled the steak.