Learn English - 5 common mistakes when talking about food

Hello there again. My name is Ronnie, and I'm going to go through some things that are

kind of fun. I've broken these into categories of "don't say" or "mistake to say." So these

are common mistakes in English, and this is actually the correct or more natural way to

say what you mean, okay? These are all doing with food or have to do with food. This is

a really, really common mistake that I hear with a lot of my Korean students. In Korea,

you usually get a main course, and you have what you call "side dishes," like kimchi or

tofu or a lot of different pickles. Very delicious, by the way. Love the kimchi. But in English,

side dishes are only in a restaurant, and they're something that you would order in

addition to your meal. What you want to say in English is "with." So for example, if I

said to you, "What did you have for dinner?" You would say, "I had chicken with potato

and corn and a salad." We do not say, "I had chicken and side dishes," or "side dish."

I would think that you ate the plates, the small plates. And I would look at you strange

and go, "You ate dishes?" "No, you didn't eat dishes." "Not at all." You're just going

to say "with" whatever additional thing you ate with the meat, okay?

The next one is a small, little grammatical error that I hear. "I ate a dinner." We usually

don't say this. We usually just say, "I ate dinner." The only way that we would say this

would be if we ate a TV dinner, and a TV dinner is frozen, processed food that you take out

of your freezer, you put in the microwave, ding, and you eat usually in front of the

TV. Really tasty. Yeah. So that would be the only case where this would be correct, but

most people, hopefully, you don't eat TV dinners because they're not that good, okay? So just

say, "I ate dinner." Perfect.

This is one of my favorites. I love this. Usually, people will ask you, "What did you

have for dinner? What did you eat for lunch?" So a lot of people tell me this, "I had a

sandwich." "What kind of sandwich did you have?" "Bread, mustard, vegetable, cheese,

and meat." "Wow. You had bread in your sandwich?" Crazy sandwich. You don't need to say that.

All you need to do is this, "I had a ham, or pork, beef, chicken, whatever meat, or

whatever main ingredients you put between the bread, sandwich." Please do not tell

the person that you had bread in your sandwich because that's bread, bread, bread, mustard,

bread. Very confusing. A sandwich always has bread. So you don't -- we don't care. We don't

care. Maybe this is good. And meat, you need to be specific when you tell us what kind

of meat you had, okay?

Next one. Next one can go both ways. I hear a lot of people say, "I cooked my lunch."

"Oh. What did you cook?" "A sandwich." "Grilled cheese?" "No. I had a sandwich with mustard,

vegetables, cheese, and meat." "Oh. Ham sandwich?" "Yes." Okay. You don't actually ever have to

cook a ham sandwich. Ham is cold, and the bread is room temperature. Cook is only having

to do with heating or burning, if you want, your food. So if you were doing soup, or if

you were making chicken curry, or something that required you to bake it or fry it or

add heat to it, you can say "cooked." But for a sandwich, you're just going to say this,

"I made lunch." Okay?

The very last one. It's not that big of a deal, but it's just one little thing that

is important. If I asked you, "What did you have for dinner?" and you said, "I prepared

soup." "What kind of soup did you prepare?" "A can -- water and meat and noodle." "Oh,

okay. Chicken noodle soup?" "Yes, yes, yes, yes." "Okay. You prepared it. How did you

prepare it?" "It's from a can." "Okay. You didn't prepare it. You made soup." Okay?

Prepare we only use for two instances. One, if you're getting the ingredients or all the

food, and you're cutting it or slicing it and getting it ready to cook. The other way

that we would use prepare soup, if you're making a huge quantity, and you're going to

serve it at a dinner for about, let's say, ten people. You would prepare the soup, and

then you'd wait, and then you'd serve the soup. So, normally, you're going to say, "I

made soup," or "I made a sandwich." Not, remember, mustard, vegetable. Or, "I made lunch, dinner,

breakfast." I hope you understood everything. If you have any questions, please email me.

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website. Good-bye.