Right Now -고 있어요

요리해요 can describe a habit or answer “What are you doing?” in the moment. 요리하고 있어요 makes the ongoing action explicit. Korean does not require -고 있다 every time English uses “I’m doing.”

Wear-verbs from 입다 vs 신다 get genuinely ambiguous with -고 있다. 티셔츠를 입고 있어요 can mean “I’m putting a t-shirt on right now” or simply “I’m wearing a t-shirt” as a state, and only context tells you which. That’s because clothing verbs describe both the act of putting something on and the resulting state of having it on.