VOCABULARY Lesson VERBS for COOKING English Vocabulary and Verbs in the Kitchen
Sear, chop, dice, crush, fold. There
are so many verb vocabulary words,
actions, verbs that we do in the kitchen, cooking.
Do you know how to fold in and ingredient?
There is a hilarious scene from the
show Schitts Creek where two people are
following a recipe and neither of them
know what “fold in the cheese” means.
Next step is to fold in the cheese.
What does that mean? What
is fold in the cheese mean?
You fold it in.
I understand that but how do you
fold it. Do you fold it in half
like a piece of paper and drop
it in the pot or what do you do?
So we’ll cover that. We’ll divide
our verbs into four categories:
Things you do with a knife
Things that combine ingredients
Things that change the shape of ingredients. What?
And verbs that change the
temperature of ingredients.
First, verbs that use a knife or something sharp
Slice. To cut from a larger portion into a
smaller, thinner size. “I’ll slice the cake.”
Here, the chef is slicing meat.
I did this by slicing open the side of
the chicken breast to allow it to open up.
Did you notice how he made that
a phrasal verb, too? Slice open.
And yes, you can say slice off, slice in,
slice towards, slice under, and so on.
The idea here is that you’re
creating smaller, narrower pieces.
We also use slice as a noun all
the time with pizza or cake.
He’s holding a slice of pizza. Sometimes we
just say “slice” for this. “Where is the best
place to get a slice around here?” Everyone
would know that that means a slice of pizza.
Who is this guy by the way? In today’s video
we’ll see clips from two different cooking
channels here on Youtube with permission. This
is Stephen from ‘Not Another Cooking Show’
and this is Hilah from ‘Hilah Cooking’. Both
great cooking channels, if you love food go
check them out and binge watch some videos,
that’s one of my favorite things to do.
What’s the difference between ‘slice’ and ‘cut’?
I think of slice as being more thin. You slice
something into thin uniform pieces like bread.
We might use “cut” to get rid of something. To
cut something off. “Cut off the stems of the
broccoli, and just use the florets”, for example.
And you can just cut it off.
“Cut off” also works when you’re saying something
and someone else starts to talk over you before
you finished. You could say, “Hey, you cut me
off!” In the kitchen, you might cut something up.
“Cut up the carrot into 1-inch chunks.” As a
noun, a “cut up” is someone who’s always trying
to be funny, always making jokes. “He’s such
a cut up!” You can also “cut in” to something.
Then take the drumette, bend
the wing down, and cut in.
Chop. When you cut with repeated motion not just
one or two cuts. Chopping requires a lot of up and
down movement. I chopped the baby’s food into tiny
pieces for him. We would also use this for a wood,
like what you would do with an ax to get firewood.
He chopped the logs into a huge stack of firewood.
This one is also very common
as a phrasal verb like chop up.
I actually don’t notice a big difference
in the usage of “chop” versus “chop up”
when it comes to cooking. Both mean
to make lots of smaller pieces.
Let’s see, let’s chop up some onion.
There is definitely a hierarchy
of size when we change the verb.
Dice. “Diced” pieces are generally
smaller than “chopped” pieces.
And “minced” pieces are even smaller than diced.
So let’s look at “dice.” If you play boardgames,
you know that dice are 6-sided cubes with
a certain number of dots on each side.
This is an example of where the noun
comes from what you get by doing the
verb. When you dice a potato, you get
little cubes of it that look like dice.
Now if you wanted to dice it smaller,
you would just cut thinner planks.
Ok, largest to smallest, we
have: chopped, diced, minced.
Mince. I’m basically cutting the food into as
tiny pieces as I can with a knife. Really strong,
aromatic flavors like garlic and herbs
tend to be minced because getting a big
chunk of a really strong flavor in
your mouth all is not all that great.
Mincing helps these potent flavors get
more evenly distributed throughout a dish.
Of course, you’re going to hear it
as a phrasal verb too: mince up.
Okay, so I also minced up some
garlic when you weren’t looking.
Last in this group, we have
a verb that we probably use
more in relation to hair than food, but
even so, you will hear it. It’s “shave”.
It means to take off a thin layer.
For foods that have a peel, a skin,
or an outer layer of some kind,
you might hear it used there.
We’re just going to shave the rind off.
Watermelon peel is really thick, so we
call it a rind. Now, he could have said
just as naturally “cut the rind off,”
or “slice off the rind.” We have a lot
of different verbs that we can use
when it comes to using your knife.
Now our second category, combining ingredients.
Back to our original scene from Schitts creek,
when two people were trying to fold
in cheese. When you fold paper,
you can do truly amazing things with it. This
is my friend Ben who is just amazing at origami.
When you fold one ingredient into another,
you’re doing it to mix things without
crushing. We do this with light ingredients
like some egg whites that you whipped.
So, to fold something else into something, you
put the light on top and then with a spatula,
you take what’s underneath and put it
on top incorporating without crushing.
Probably the most common instruction you’ll
see in a recipe is add. To put
one thing with another thing.
And I’m going to add my
butternut squash to my broth.
Mix is another high-frequency verb when it comes
to cooking. With mix, you add ingredients together
and then agitate them with a spoon, spatula, maybe
a stand mixer so that the consistency becomes more
uniform. So this is different than fold or
being a lot more gentle. Mix. Mix in. Mix up.
Wait, what? Mix up also means to confuse things.
A server at a restaurant might say, “Shoot,
I put in the wrong order for the wrong table,
I got mixed up.” Mix in, mix together.
So, we’re just going to mix this all together.
Beat. This is to stir very quickly and with
force. A pair of beaters on an electric mixer
can combine wet and dry ingredients together
really quickly. Again, the noun “beater” relates
directly to the verb. On non-cooking use, you
could also say, “We beat the them by 2 points.”
Beat means defeated or won against. It can also
mean to hit someone or something with great force.
And we use that a lot with “up”. He got beat up at
school. But the idea of hitting food or applying
energy to the motion of stirring comes through
here. “I always beat my eggs before cooking them.”
I stir them hard and fast. This
incorporates air to make them fluffy.
I’m going to add salt to one of them and beat it.
A word with a similar meaning is “whisk”.
The object looks pretty similar to beaters,
doesn’t it? A whisk is good for
creating light mixtures and batters.
Now we’ll learn some other words for
“stir”. Everyone knows stir. Let’s
dig deeper for some synonyms.
And you just wanna start moving
it around, breaking it up.
Move around. That’s exactly what it sounds like.
Not necessarily going in a circular motion,
but poking and prodding
ingredients here and there.
Move the peppers around the pan so they
don’t burn in one spot. Move them around. Or:
And you just want to start
moving it around, breaking it up.
Break up. If you’ve got a pack of ground meat that
you’re browning in a skillet, you want to break
it up as you cook it. Stir it, move it around.
Hey, I just used another cooking verb there,
if you’re browning something. We use
this with beef, especially ground beef.
If you brown it, then you
cook it in a skillet, and it
turns brown. But you can also use it with any
food referring to changing the color to brown.
You don’t want it to brown but you
want them to start looking translucent.
But back to break up. Outside of cooking,
we used this term a lot with relationships.
it’s a verb: “They broke up last
month.” That means they stopped dating;
they’re not seeing each other anymore. It’s also
noun. “The break up was really hard on him.”
The next two words are generally used
with this appliance or something similar,
a blender. This is used to blend
ingredients into a homogenous mixture.
Blend. Blend some fruit for a smoothie.
Blend up some tomatoes for a pasta sauce.
And for those of you that need to take “blending”
still further, you can use “Pulverize”.
To reduce something to fine
particles. Just by looking at it,
you can’t tell exactly what’s in it because
it is so thoroughly combined and broken down.
Fun fact, “pulvis” is the Latin word for
“dust.” So you turn something solid into dust by
pulverizing it. Here, the chef
is making watermelon juice.
He doesn’t want any chunks or fibers left;
he wants the consistency to be super smooth.
So I’m just going to blend the sh*t out of
it; pulverize it as much as possible.
When we combine ingredients, not only do we
change how they look, we also change how they
taste. Probably the most universal way to
enhance flavor around the world is “salt”.
Salt. You’ve definitely used it as a noun,
but native speakers use it as a verb, too
We’re going to salt them right now.
Season is another fantastic word to talk
about how you change the flavor of a dish.
This usage is not connected to the
noun, the four seasons: winter,
spring, summer, fall but to herbs, spices,
and sauces that we use as seasonings. [hɜb] in
American English. Flavor additives. Anything you
use to change the flavor of what you’re making.
“My mom always seasons vegetables with
garlic powder.” There it’s a verb.
She seasons vegetables; she uses seasonings.
Here the chef uses the passive voice.
If you want scrambled eggs that
are fluffy, moist, seasoned well,
but have texture and structure
and can stick to a fork.
Seasoned well. The eggs have been seasoned well.
The past participle here has an -ed
ending, seasoned, seasoned well. Now when
you want to use the noun form, we don’t say,
“Those are great seasons.” We add -ing and it
is a regular count verb, meaning that we use an
s at the ending to make it plural. “That’s
a great seasoning.” Seasoning singular or:
“Those are great seasonings.” Recently my
husband David seasoned some pork with a dry rub.
Going to do a rub?
Yeah, here’s the rub. Mustard powder, coarse
salt, hot pepper flakes, thyme, oregano,
celery salt, onion powder,
garlic powder, black pepper.
Wow.
Yeah, it’s going to be good.
Did you hear all those seasonings he named?
And if you’re like me, you want to
get the balance of flavors just right,
then you might “adjust” how you season your food.
I’m constantly tasting as I cook. Adding a
little more of this or a little more of that.
Adjust means to change. “We need to adjust the
seasonings.” or “We need to adjust the acidity.”
You can also use it with temperature. For example,
“Watch the pot and adjust the heat if needed.”
While there’s definitely a science to
cooking, I also love approaching it
as an art. Everything doesn’t have to be
exact all the time. When you’re cooking
without measuring everything exactly,
you’re just “eyeballing” the measurements.
Eyeball. This means looking at an
amount to get a general measurement.
And this is a very flexible recipe; you can
see I’m just sort of eyeballing this,
some of these measurements.
Eyeballing is estimating. Estimate- To
roughly calculate or judge the value,
number, or quantity. I estimate that’s about
a teaspoon. It’s not exact, but close enough.
Another synonym is “guess”. To think or suppose
something without being 100% certain. And a
really fun one is the combination of guess plus
estimate, and that’s “guesstimate”. This word
popped up in American English in the 1930s when
statisticians used it to describe an estimate
made without using adequate or complete
information. Now, you’ll hear various forms of it:
We have the verb “guesstimate”.
“Guesstimating”. We have
“guesstimate”, the noun and also “guesstimation”.
If you’re into this approach
to cooking, you might say,
“Let’s go heavy with the cream.” Meaning,
let’s put more than the recipe calls for.
Go heavy with.
You can go heavy with all this stuff
especially when you’re using flour.
You may also hear “go heavy on” instead of
go heavy with. Now the opposite, to “go light
on”. To go light on something is to use slightly
less. Let’s go light on the sugar in this recipe.
One more way to talk about combining ingredients,
you’ve probably used this one to reference
a piece of clothing: Coat. This is to cover
or spread with an enclosing layer. Chef
Hilah uses “coat” in passive voice here
to show us that all the pieces of chopped onion
need to be completely covered in the oil as it sautés.
Make sure it gets coated with all the oil.
Part three, let’s look at words that
show how we change the shape of something
using something other than a knife. A special
kitchen tool, gadget, or your bare hand.
First, “grate”. This sounds just like this word:
great. And this is a verb that comes from a noun,
the thing called a grater. You can get
lots of little small pieces or threads
by grating something like cheese or potato.
Could you grate some cheddar for the tacos?
It also shows up as a phrasal
verb, “to grate in”. Notice the T
here is a Flap T linking the two words, grate in.
And then I’m going to grate in my onion.
If you love baking pastries or cookies, I
bet you own some version of this: a rolling
pin. You’ll use this to flatten something.
Flatten. Notice that Stop T. Flatten, flatten.
With a rolling pin, I began to flatten it.
Also, flatten out
Kind of flatten it out a little bit.
Remove: To take something away or off.
First thing you want to do is remove the tip.
Crush. As a verb, to compress
or squeeze or squish.
I’m just going to kind of crush it up a little
bit, bruise it, so that the oils release.
We use this verb another way. If you want to say
that someone is doing a job, doing so well, you
could say, “You crushed it” or “You’re crushing
that!” Actually, my husband said this about a cake
I recently made. The icing was unbelievable,
so good and he said, “Wow, you crushed that!”
We also use it this way: To “have
a crush” on someone, that means
you find the person attractive in a romantic way.
He or she is your crush. You can have a crush
on your crush; just don’t crush your
crush. Don’t smash the person you like.
Smash. To violently or forcefully break
something into pieces. Smash two eggs together.
My preferred egg-cracking method
is this Italian grandma style where
you smash two eggs together and magically
and mysteriously only one egg will crack.
Crack. This can happen when you crush or
smash something against something else.
Crack is a verb and a noun; it’s a line on
the surface of something where it has split
without breaking into separate
parts. You can crack an egg,
you can crack a nut and then you’ll
use that crack to open it up.
Pinch off. Using your finger tips to sever
or detach something from something else.
Trying to use the edge of the shell
to sort of pinch off that egg white
that sort of hangs there.
Juice. We all know this word as a
noun: orange juice, apple juice,
but have you used it as a verb? To
squeeze the liquid out of something.
Got my trusty lemon squeezer; just start
juicing at least three of the limes.
There’s also this helpful tool for juicing.
Take a guess as to what it’s called?
A juicer. Turns out, there are an awful
lot of different juicers out there.
Spread out. To open, arrange,
or place something over an
area. Like frosting on a cake. Spread out
the frosting into smooth, even layers.
And this waffle batter, because it’s thick,
you do have to spread it out a little.
Or if you’re roasting vegetables,
you want them to be in a single layer
then you’ll going to spread them out on the
cooking sheet. Roasting, another cooking verb,
something you do in the oven or over fire
to vegetables or meat. You usually get a
little color, a little browning on them when you
cook this way. I just love roasted vegetables.
You can also use it to describe yourself if you’re
really hot. Ugh, it’s so hot. I’m just roasting.
Scoop. I’m fairly certain that the noun came
first here. A scoop or a scooper is a utensil
like this, handle, deep bowl to
remove something from a container
like an ice cream scoop. In the process known as
“verbing,” the noun can also be used as a verb:
to scoop. I’m scooping some ice cream for us.
You want to scoop about a
third of a cup I would say.
As a noun, we also us scoop to mean information,
you may have heard the phrase, “What’s the scoop?”
That’s like “What’s going on?”
“What’s the information?”,
related to some topic that you’re
already addressing. What’s the scoop?
Pop. Very often, this is a noun. A light,
explosive sound like the sound when you pop the
top off a bottle of champagne. Or when you hear
your bones pop as you stretch. In the northern
part of the U.S., saying “I’ll have a pop” means
I want a carbonated beverage like Coke or Pepsi.
In other regions they call that “soda”. But this
word also “pops up” or shows up occurs as verb.
You’ll get to where the bone and the
joint are, and you can just pop it.
Just pop it. Apply pressure until it pops,
until it breaks. We also use this for, not
hard to guess, popcorn. Is it done popping?
What about plop? An object dropping into liquid,
or something soft landing on something hard.
Going to plop some of our
chicken mixture on top of there.
Plop! The final group here deals with
vocabulary for changing the temperature
of something. We already went over ‘roast’ and
‘brown’. I don’t know how many recipes I’ve
followed where this is step one: preheat.
This is to heat something like an oven,
a grill, or a skillet to a designated
temperature before using it for cooking.
And we’re just going to follow
my method for cooking scrambled
eggs which is by preheating a pan on
medium heat, not too high, not too low.
Following preheat, you’ll likely
see this word later in the recipe:
Bake. To cook food using dry heat without direct
exposure to a flame. To specify a temperature
and duration, we say, “Bake at X degrees for X
minutes.” Done in the oven just like roasting,
we use this verb for things
like casseroles and cakes.
Just baked it at 375, cold oven, flipped it.
Flip. To turn to another side.
We also have crisp. To give something
a crunchy surface by baking, grilling,
frying and so on. “You want to
crisp the edges of the bacon.”
Or “Bake the casserole until
the top is lightly crisped.”
Ok, let’s go on the opposite direction now.
Cool. This is to bring the temperature down.
But we’re going to let this
cool for about five minutes.
That usually just means remove from heat.
Not necessarily to put in the refrigerator.
And similar: Cool off
it’s cooled off enough to try it.
Turn the temperature down even more and
you get to “freeze”. This is how we
turn into ice or to store food at a very low
temperature in order to preserve it. Water,
in case you didn’t know freezes at
32 degrees Fahrenheit. Here the chef
is showing us how to make an Enchilada
Casserole to store in the freezer for later.
And if you were going to
freeze this, you would just
put the cheese on, cover it with some
foil, and stick it in the freezer.
And then, you can bake it in the
oven. Um, you don’t need to thaw it.
Thaw it. The opposite of freeze, to bring something
frozen back to a warmer
temperature, room temperature.
Um, you don’t need to thaw it.
There are several ways to thaw frozen
food. Leave it on the counter until
it comes to room temperature. Or
if you don’t have a lot of time,
a very American way to do this
is to: Stick it in the microwave.
Honestly, what I usually do is stick it in
the microwave for like five minutes because
everything’s already cooked. You’re
just trying to get the cheese to melt.
Melt. To make something liquid by applying
heat. The opposite of freeze where
you take a liquid and make it a solid.
Melt butter, melt chocolate melt cheese.
Simmer. This is to stay just below
the boiling point when being heated.
If you simmer soup on the stove, the
steam is rising from the surface of it
and there might be little bubbles, but there
aren’t large bubbles making it roll. It’s not
a rolling boil, this is what we call it when a
liquid is fully boiling, It can’t get hotter.
Boil. The boiling point in Fahrenheit is 212
degrees, so simmering is just a little under that.
You want to make sure that your stock
is simmering as you add it to the rice.
As you boil or simmer a liquid, the vapor that
rises from the surface is called “steam”. And
this is also a verb another way of cooking
something. Here’s an example of a steaming pot.
The water boils in the bottom pot,
then the food rests in the upper pot and the
steam comes up to the holes to cook it.
This is baby spinach, and what I did, what I did
was I steamed it in the microwave for 30 seconds.
And one more verb related to hot
liquid: Steep. This is when you pour
hot water or liquid over your
ingredients and let them sit.
Over time, the food flavors the liquid.
I steep my tea for about 5 minutes. This weekend,
I made a mushroom potpie, it was so good that
called for steeping dried porcini mushrooms.
Then I have mint that I’m going
to steep in it once it’s done.
Remember this clip?
You don’t want it to brown; but you
want them to start looking translucent.
Here, Hilah is sautéing rice.
Sauté is to cook food quickly with a
bit of fat over relatively high heat.
Sautéing is often done in a skillet so that
you can easily control the temperature
and easily stir to keep the food from burning.
Broil. Now this is something that when I do it, I
often accidentally burn my food. So this is when
you expose food to direct very high heat in the
oven. Most American ovens have a broil setting
that’s about 500-550 degrees. The
upper heating element comes on,
and you put your food just below it. And if you’re
like me, you should not walk away from that oven,
you should watch it every second
because it can get really brown
really fast and then the next thing you
know it’s burnt and you’re throwing it out.
Now, let’s go back to David
to learn a few more verbs.
Going to grill that David?
Yup. Going to be smoked for about seven hours.
You’re not searing it first?
Nope. Doesn’t need it.
Grill is when you use one of these to
provide direct heat to what you’re cooking.
A great way to cook during the hot summer when
you don’t want your kitchen to get even hotter.
I asked if he was going to sear it first. If you
sear something, you apply a really strong heat to
the surface of it to burn it a little bit. This
can help lock in the juices when cooking meat.
David said he didn’t need to sear it, but that he
was going to smoke it. When you smoke something,
you expose it to not just heat but, smoke,
to flavor the meat. This is how he does it.
A couple of wood chunks to give it some smoke.
Then the meat has a fat cap on the bottom.
So you put that down against the hot coals
to kind of keep it protected from cooking
too fast and it goes opposite of coals.
Grilling is really usually about direct heat
so the meat being right on top of the coals.
Barbeque is more indirect heat so the
smoke is kind of waft around past it.
And you’ll see the smoke kind of
pass over to that side and the air
kind of sort to go like this because
one side is cold, one side is hot.
So you can smoke meat in a smoker
but you can also smoke a cigarette.
Now I don’t eat meat but everyone
really liked that smoked pork.
I would say it was not just smoked,
but it ended up a little charred. Char,
that’s beyond searing, when the outside
gets really burnt and blackened.
And to wrap up this list, let’s go with
the safest way to end any cooking activity:
Turn off. Turn down the heat. Lower
the heat. Bring down the heat.
Turn off as a noun is something
that you don’t like. For example,
the smell of fish sauce is a turn
off; it totally kills my appetite.
It can also carry a sexual connotation. If a
guy brags a lot, that’s a major turn off for me.
If you turn off the heat, then you kill the heat.
At that point you’re going to kill the heat.
Kill. Completely stop something.
We can say kill the heat, kill the
music, kill the engine and so on.
Ok. I want everyone watching this to put in the
comments, what is your favorite thing to cook and
better yet, if you can find a video on YouTube of
someone making it, paste that link in too, I love
to see what people make and eat and I’m
also pretty hungry right now, so there’s that.
Thanks for sticking with me, I love teaching
English and I make new videos every week. Be
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going right now with this video. That’s it, and
thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.