Improve your Vocabulary: Learn 26 adjectives to describe the taste and texture of food!

Ah, it's so crunchy.

Salty, too.

I'm almost done.

Ah, okay.

Now, I have energy.

Hey everyone, I'm Alex, thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on how to talk

about food.

So today, I'm on a picnic, and I'm going to give you a lot of adjectives and words that

you can use to talk about the taste, the flavor, the character, the sound of food.

Now, this vocabulary is going to be very useful because we all eat, right?

We know that.

So, you can use it when you're having food in a restaurant when you're having lunch with

your friends, when you're having breakfast, when you're having dinner, anytime you're

eating, you can use this vocabulary to describe the food that you're eating.

It's a very common, human experience.

So, let's go and start looking at some flavors of food.

So first, we have the word "sweet".

So, we're going to do some pronunciation in this video too, so repeat after me: sweet.

So, anything that has sugar in it, so think of milk chocolate, right, that is very sweet.

Desserts like cakes and cookies are usually sweet.

Next, repeat after me: sour.

Think of a lemon, right?

I have a lemon here, and if you stick around to the end of this video, I am going to take

a bite of this lemon, so lemons make your face go - mm - right?

If you go to Chinese restaurant, sometimes you can get sweet and sour pork, so sometimes

you have sweet and sour mixed together.

Next, we have bitter.

Okay, so bitter is something like medicine or dark chocolate or black coffee, it's not

a very great flavor.

Most people don't like bitter food.

Think of, again, syrup that you take, or if you have Aspirin or Tylenol, these things

are bitter.

Dark chocolate, like 80% dark chocolate tastes very bitter.

Next, bland.

Now, I love potatoes, but if you put no salt in the potatoes, or nothing else in the potatoes,

and they're very boring to eat, they have no flavor, they are bland.

So, think of anything with no spices that has no salt and has no taste, no flavor, it's

boring, it's - repeat after me - bland.

So, obviously, bland has a negative meaning, but sometimes you want something that is normal,

regular, and you can say "plain".

So, if something is plain, this doesn't have a negative meaning.

Sometimes you want to eat a plain donut, for example, with, you know, no frosting or syrups

or anything, just regular, normal, nothing special, but still good.

Okay?

Next, I put spicy.

Now, I put a star beside spicy, because I don't think of spicy as a flavor, really,

it's more of like a temperature of food, so think of like jalape�o peppers are very

spicy, hot.

So, a lot of Thai food is very spicy, okay?

Szechuan cuisine is also very spicy.

Mexican food, a lot of Mexican food can be very spicy and maybe you have a lot of spicy

food in your cuisine as well.

From Poland, we don't do spicy.

I'm used to spicy now, but when I was growing up, we didn't have spicy food, just potatoes,

meat, vegetables, usually plain stuff, and maybe some salt, but that's about it.

Next, we have salty.

So, I love salty snacks.

When we started this video, I had a little salty cracker, so stuff that has salt, like

chips, are very salty.

Sometimes, you want to lick your fingers because it tastes good.

I'm not going to do that on camera because it's very rude, so next, savory.

So, repeat after me: savory.

So, when you think of savory, it kind of links with salty and spicy, could be mixed together.

It's the opposite of sweet.

So, think of like, a creamy soup that is a little salty and you just feel very comfortable

when you're eating it and - mm - it's very savory, it just, it's dancing on your tongue

because it's salty, it's nice, it tastes good, and it's not sweet, so when you think of savory,

think of like, salty, sometimes mixed with spicy, okay?

Alright.

Next, let's look at some tastes and textures of food.

So, we have first, repeat after me: crunchy.

Think of the sound when I was eating the cracker - crunch, crunch, crunch - right?

So, this is crunchy food.

Crackers, which I have here, are crunchy.

If you have a fresh apple, right, and it's hard when you bite it - crunch - it's going

to be crunchy, okay?

So, think of the sound, right, of like breaking glass together as being crunchy.

Linked with crunchy is crispy.

So, chips are also crispy.

Fried chicken is crispy.

Any food that you fry in oil, okay, if you make it with oil and the outside is hard,

like a little hard, like the outside of the chicken skin if you fry it in oil, this is

called crispy.

It's also why in British English, potato chips are called "crisps", right?

So, they're called crisps, they're crispy.

Crispy food is usually crunchy, okay?

So, if you come from a country that has a lot of fried food, where you fry your food

or deep fry your food in oil, that food is probably crispy and crunchy.

Next, I hate this texture, so mealy.

So, repeat after me: mealy.

So, mealy is an apple or a tomato and they're a little too soft.

You bite it and it's not fresh.

It's not crunchy.

It kind of tastes like you're eating sand from the beach, okay?

So, if something is mealy, it's soft and sandy.

It's not a good texture in your mouth.

It tastes like you're eating sand.

So, I hate mealy apples and mealy tomatoes.

You probably do, too.

You want a fresh apple, a nice crunchy apple, right?

Next, mushy.

So, it just so happens I went to my mom's house today and I got clementine.

This clementine is a little old.

When I press it, ugh, it's a little too soft.

Ugh, it's very soft.

So, if something is mushy, like it's not hard anymore, it's not fresh anymore, it's too

soft, it's mushy.

Now, you can also pronounce this, some people say "mochy", okay, so you can say "mochy"

or "muchy", and it feels like Play-Doh, like I could make something with this.

So, this is a mushy clementine.

I am definitely not eating that.

Next, soggy.

Now, the most common food I think of when I think of soggy is cereal with milk.

So, obviously when you have cereal, you put milk, after about 30 seconds, one minute,

perfect time to eat, right?

It's not too crunchy, it's not too wet, but if you are a slow eater and you leave your

cereal for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, you come back and you look at it, ugh, and the

milk is dripping from the cereal, it's soggy, okay?

It's not good anymore.

I mean, you can eat it, but it's wet, alright?

The milk is inside the cereal now, and it's too wet, okay?

Next, let's do, yeah, we'll do tender.

So, tender usually you use this when you're talking about meat.

So, if meat is soft, well cooked, and you know, you put it in your mouth and it just

melts in your mouth, it is tender.

So, a tender pork chop, or a tender steak, a tender piece of chicken, like it's not too

hard, not too tough, it's soft and tender.

So, you want your meat, if you eat meat, to be tender.

You don't want it to be hard, so think of soft meat, okay?

So first, repeat after me, and actually repeat this word first: soggy - tender.

Okay.

And let's repeat the next one: juicy.

So, many vegetables and fruits can be juicy, so this tomato, I'm not going to bite it now,

but I can feel it, like it's the right amount of ready to be eaten.

So, if I bite this, I'm going to make a big mess, have lots of juice on my mouth, this

is a juicy tomato, okay?

You can also have many juicy fruits, juicy grapes, juicy peaches, alright, anything that

you bite and you have water coming down your chin, this is juicy.

It's very juicy, full of juice, right?

Alright, next, we have, repeat: fatty.

So, this one is easy to guess, I think.

You have the word "fat" and if something has a lot of fat, like if you have a steak, for

example, and you have more fat than actual meat, you can say "Ugh, this steak is too

fatty.", so usually meat is too fatty, alright?

If you get a bad cut of meat, it is fatty.

And linked with fatty, we have oily and greasy.

So, let's repeat those words with me: oily - greasy.

You see the word "oil", right?

So, if you say "Ugh, this food is oily", okay, or "This food is greasy", usually if you have

fried food, you fry food in oil, if you put too much oil or you don't cook it the right

way, it will end up oily and greasy.

So, think of if you order a pizza, I remember this pizza place I used to order pizza from

all the time, when I ordered the pizza, the bottom of the box, you could see the oil underneath

the box.

They used so much, I guess in the cheese and when they were making the dough, I don't know

what they were doing, but the bottom of the box had a lot of oil and grease, so the pizza

was greasy.

You could think of a greasy hamburger, for example.

A lot of people say "Alright, after you - if you drink too much, if you go to the pub after,

it's good to have some greasy food."

So like, chicken wings and hamburgers and French fries with a lot of oil can also be

greasy.

Just ugh, you need to wash your hands with soap after that.

Okay, and we're almost finished, so let's go to talk about like the character of some

food.

So, we have these kind of go together: rich.

So, repeat after me: rich.

Decadent.

Heavy.

So, food that is rich is usually made with a lot of butter, a lot of cream, and it has

a lot of calories, right?

So, this is food that is heavy, that makes your stomach feel bleh, like you're so full,

because it is so loaded, so packed with these creams and butters and sugars.

Now, basically, this is food with a lot of calories.

Decadent, usually we refer to desserts, like big chocolate cakes, as decadent.

It's too much, it's too rich, it's too full.

Heavy, like hamburgers with French fries and gravy, that is a heavy meal.

Okay?

So, think of these words in kind of one family.

Rich, decadent, heavy, calorie rich foods like, foods that are heavy with calories.

Right, next: ripe.

So, ripe, we refer to fruit as being ripe most often.

So, if fruit is ripe or a vegetable is ripe, it means it is ready to be eaten.

So, yeah, this is a ripe apple, it is ready to be eaten.

If you have a banana, if the banana is green, it is not ripe.

It is not ready to be eaten.

When the banana turns yellow, okay, the banana is ripe, it's ready to be eaten.

You can take it from the tree and you can eat it.

Like this tomato, I'm going to eat this probably by myself later because yeah, this is a good

tomato, it's ripe, it's ready, okay?

So, next: light.

So, if you, you can have a light dessert.

Something that doesn't have a lot of sugar or cream and it tastes just hmm, you don't

feel it when you eat it, right?

You can have a very soft cake.

So, a soft cake, you can say "Ah, this tastes very light", not heavy, not loaded with cream

and calories, it's light, it's nice.

You don't feel guilty after eating it.

Alright, next: burned.

So, burned you can kind of tell if you have fried food and the food on the outside is

black from too much fire, you cooked it too long, you put too much oil and it's on high

heat, it is burned.

So, repeat after me: burned.

Alright, and we have two more.

We have undercooked and overcooked.

So usually, you can do this with many things, but usually we talk about meat as being undercooked

or overcooked.

It's - if something is undercooked, it means you didn't cook it long enough.

So, for example, chicken.

If you cut a piece of chicken and you see inside the chicken is pink, you can also say

the chicken is raw, r-a-w, raw, or it's not cooked properly.

It's undercooked, okay?

Something is overcooked usually when it's burned, if you overcook something, it is burned.

Think of a steak.

I will go back to steak because I like steak, so if you eat steak, and you cook it and you

leave it on the barbeque or inside, you know, your oven for too long, it becomes black or

it becomes very hard, very tough, not tender, it is overcooked, okay?

That's a lot of vocabulary today, guys.

So, I hope that you will take the words you learned today and apply them when you're eating

out with your friends, with your family, or by yourself, you can practice vocabulary by

yourself, right?

This is a juicy apple.

This is a sour lemon.

Whatever.

Okay.

Now, if you want to test your understanding of all the material we learned today, as always,

you can check out the quiz on www.engvid.com and also, don't forget, you can check me out

on Facebook, on Twitter, subscribe to my YouTube channel, hit that little bell and leave a

comment for me.

Do you prefer salty snacks, or do you prefer sweet snacks?

Do you like spicy food?

Tell me what you like.

Tell me what you don't like, and we can have a conversation and continue talking forever

and ever as long as you keep commenting, I'll do my best to reply to as many of you as possible.

Until next time, thanks for - ah, I said I was going to eat a lemon, didn't I?

Now, I've never done this before.

I've only eaten oranges and clementines.

I put lemon in my tea sometimes.

I put it on fish occasionally, but I've never eaten a lemon just like this.

Whew.

I'm getting nervous now.

You ready?

I'm just going to take one bite.

It's juicy and very sour!

Very sour!