Free English Class! Topic: Describing Food! 🍕🍲🥙 (Lesson Only)

Well hello and welcome to this English lesson where I'm going

to talk about how to describe food. I'm not going to talk

about the names for different types of food. I'm not going to

show you pictures of food and tell you what the food is

called. Instead in this lesson I'll help you learn different

words and phrases you can use in English to describe the food

that you're eating to describe the food that you ate maybe a

few days ago. In this lesson we'll learn a lot of words and

phrases that you can use to talk about how food tastes, how

food looks, how food behaves a little bit as well. You'll see

what I mean by that when we get to that part of the lesson. But

thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoy this

little English lesson about describing food. So my first

slide this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. A pet peeve is

something that bothers you in life. And I don't like it when

food is overcooked. When you overcooked food you cook it for

too long. If you put green beans on the stove if you boil

green beans. I like to boil them for about three or four

minutes. Or I like to steam them. When you cook them that

way they come out with a nice green colour and they're still

a little bit crispy. They're a little bit crunchy. But some

people overcooked their beans and they start to look like

this. A pale green colour. Where I think you've cooked all

of the good nutrients out of the bean. So one way to

describe food is to say it's overcooked. Um food food that's

overcooked just isn't as tasty. Um in particular I my pet peeve

is when people overcooked green beans. I like mine to be still

quite green and a little bit crunchy. Of course then we have

the other direction. Food can sometimes be undercooked.

Undercooked food is food that has not been cooked long

enough. When I eat steak I like my steak to be usually medium.

Uh some like their steak rare. But when you cook a steak rare

I consider it to be undercooked. Some people think

that's perfect. But for me I like things cooked a little bit

longer. And so if I was served steak and it was rare I would

say this is a little bit undercooked. It's a little bit

cold in the middle. Could you cook it a little bit longer. So

overcooked means you cook it too long. Undercooked means you

didn't cook it long enough. And then we have of course raw. Raw

food is simply food that has not been cooked. You might be

someone who likes seafood that is raw. You might like eating

fish that's raw. You might eat a lot of raw vegetables and raw

fruits. It's quite common to eat raw vegetables and raw

fruits. You don't have to cook all of those things. Um and

some people do really enjoy eating raw fish. So raw simply

means that the food has not been cooked. It has not been

boiled. It has not been fried. It has not been baked. It has

not been roasted. It has not been I think those are all of

the ones I can think of for how to prepare food. I'm sure

there's more. And we also just have the word fresh. So fresh

food is usually used to refer to food that is relatively

recently delivered to the grocery store. Is that a good

way to say it? So fresh fruit and vegetables means that they

are ripe. They are ready to eat. Um and you definitely want

your food to be as fresh as possible. So how would I

describe this? I should describe this in a better way.

Fresh food like if you buy fresh vegetables they probably

were like in the farmers field two or three days ago and they

were quickly brought to the grocery store. If you have your

own garden you can go out and cut fresh vegetables whenever

you want. That's probably the best way to get fresh

vegetables is to have your own garden. And then we have of

course burnt. Burnt food is food well it's way past being

overcooked. It's overcooked to the point where it starts to

turn black. The best example I could think of is toast.

Sometimes you leave toast in the toaster too long and it

gets burnt. Sometimes you leave something in the oven for too

long and it gets burnt. Burnt food does not taste good. When

I was a kid if I burnt my toast my mom would make me scrape the

burnt part off with a knife and eat it anyways. Because she

didn't Want us to waste food. So food that is burnt usually

has a charred look to it. It has black on it because the

food has cooked so long it has burnt and it has turned black.

Some people like burnt toast. I think my grandfather on my

mom's side liked eating burnt toast. I don't like burnt

toast. I don't mind if it's a little bit burnt but not like

this. This would be too much for me. And then we have by the

way all of these words for describing food it's quite

random this lesson. You never know what the next picture is

going to be. We also have food that is crunchy. If you can

imagine eating celery when you bite celery it's usually

crunchy. When you eat a carrot it's usually crunchy. When you

eat this kind of peanut butter it's crunchy because there's

whole peanuts in the peanut butter. So when food is crunchy

it actually makes a sound when you bite down on it. When you

chew it. So anything Like I mentioned celery, carrots,

crunchy, peanut butter, any of those kinds of things. We

actually say they make a crunchy sound or they make a

crunchy sound. You could use both words. But when you eat

something that's kind of hard and you need to chew it a lot

and it makes kind of a sound. By the way you should you

should always chew with your mouth closed but either way

some food is crunchy. And then of course some of the basics we

have food that is sweet. Any food that you describe as sweet

has a lot of sugar in it. Candies of course are very

sweet. Um candy bars are sweet. Chocolate bars are sweet. There

are a lot of foods in the world that are very very sweet. In

fact in North America a lot of foods are quite sweet. I

personally think we put too much sugar in a lot of our

food. I think that sweet food is yummy. Ice cream is sweet by

the way as well. I really do ice cream. Um which yes let me

move on. I've soon as I start talking about ice cream I could

do a whole lesson on ice cream and that might be kind of

boring. We also will describe food sometimes as being salty.

In fact we often ask people do you like sweet food or do you

like salty food? Some people like to eat sweet food as a

snack. They like chocolates and candies and those kinds of

things. And some people like salty food as a snack. They

like chips. Well you would call crisps I think if you're

learning British English. Uh this is a pretzel and it has

lots of salt on it. Um but definitely we have sweet food

and we have salty food. We usually talk about our snacks

this way. Like I like salty snacks. Oh I like sweet snacks.

Are you a sweet or salty person? Oh I like salty snacks.

By the way Bob the Canadian likes sweet snacks. I have a

sweet tooth. I do like salty snacks a bit but not as much as

sweet snacks. And then we have hot food. And we use this word

to describe food in two ways. When food comes off the stove

or out of the oven it's hot. There's steam rising off of it.

If you try to eat soup right away sometimes the soup's too

hot and you burn your tongue. Okay. So that's one way to

describe hot. Or to use the word hot to describe food. But

we also use hot to describe food that's very very spicy in

the sense that it burns your tongue in a different way. Um

so spicy food in North America would be things like hot wings.

So we have chicken wings where there's lots of hot sauce on

it. So there there's hot sauces that are made from different

kinds of peppers. You can see some hot peppers here. So again

hot can be used two ways. We can use hot to talk about food

that's just hot because it just came off the stove or out of

the oven. But we also use hot to describe Food that has a lot

of hot sauce or peppers or other ingredients that just

give it a little bit of a zing when you eat it. And we also

have the word spicy. So in North America hot food and

spicy food these are kind of interchangeable. Like if I was

eating chicken wings with a lot of hot sauce I could say oh

these are really spicy wings. But spicy is a little broader

than just hot. Okay. Spicy means that there's a lot of

spices used in the food. When we eat at certain types of

restaurants who make food from certain countries some of that

food is quite spicy. Um the North American diet isn't used

to really spicy foods. So sometimes we eat foods and

we'll say whoa this is very very spicy. Mild. So one thing

that's interesting about North Americans. Not all North

Americans. But a lot of North Americans don't eat really

really spicy or hot food. So often you'll find something

like this. Salsa. A very common food item in North America.

You'll find it in the store and you'll be able to buy mild

medium or hot. And there might even be extra hot in some

stores. Um we usually buy mild salsa. This means that it does

not have a very strong it doesn't have a lot of peppers

in it and it doesn't have a lot of hot spices in it. So it

tastes very tomatoy. So we have some foods in North America

where if you're used to what you eat in your country and

it's very spicy you might come here and think wow this mild

salsa does not have very much kick to it. It's not very hot.

It's not very spicy. We also describe food as being chewy.

So you can see here this granola bar. This is a common

snack for kids to take to school in North America. And

it's chewy. It's soft and it sticks together a little bit

when you bite into it. It has a lot of syrup or sugar or

something in it. Maybe even marshmallows. But it has all

the kinds of ingredients that make it soft. And when you chew

it it just has a chewiness to it. It's like not rubbery but

it's it's definitely not hard and it's not crunchy. It's much

softer and it's a little bit sticky as well. Bland. So this

is white bread. Bland is a word we use to describe food that

does not have very much taste to it. Um another good example

would be plain white rice. If you do not add any salt or

butter or oil to your rice if you just eat plain rice it's

bland. But when you eat rice with other food it tastes a lot

better or when you add a little bit of salt or butter to your

rice. So food that does not have very much taste we would

say is bland food. We have dried foods. There are sections

of the grocery store where you can buy food that has been

dried. You can buy dried apricots, dried bananas, dried

plantains, you can buy dried cranberries, dried grapes which

are called raisins. Dried food really really nice when you go

on a hike. Because dried food doesn't go bad. I'll talk about

food going bad in a bit. But dried food has a very long

shelf life. Dried food doesn't go bad very quickly. So if you

buy something like dried cranberries. You can mix it

with some nuts and some other ingredients. Other things that

last a long time. And you can go on a hike for two weeks and

use that as one of the food items that you eat. Dried food.

Super yummy. Um if you go to any grocery store in North

America there will be a dried food section where you can buy

foods that are dried. It's not very big. But it's definitely

there. Mashed. This would be what Bob the Canadian. This was

a typical meal when Bob the Canadian was a kid. Um some

kind of meat looks like sausages here. But those white

things there are mashed potatoes. When I was a kid we

ate mashed potatoes almost everyday There were a couple

reasons why. Number one it was a very common food to eat in

Holland. So when my family immigrated here I was born here

but when my family immigrated here they continued to eat

them. Number two potatoes were very very cheap and are still

very very cheap. It's one of the cheapest foods you can buy.

So we ate a lot of potatoes because they were cheap. And we

always ate them mashed. So mashed means when you cook

something and then you you you smash it up so that it becomes

almost smooth. Mashed potatoes. Um I still like them by the

way. By the way this to me it looks fairly yummy. I'm not

sure what the vegetable is though. Let's go a little

bigger and see. Yeah the vegetable doesn't look familiar

to me. It looks like a little bit of a tomato salad with some

cilantro or something like that. So anyways let's get back

to the lesson. I'm reminiscing eating mashed potatoes as a kid

though. Mashed potatoes with butter and gravy. Not healthy

but very yummy. Sometimes we describe food as being old. Um

if you look here you'll see that this jar I think this is

actually like a mustard jar. It has a best before date. So BB

means best before. And it's an MA means mayor avon. I think

that's the French. Uh this jar of mustard is old. We might

also say it's gone bad. Or we'd would say it's past its expiry

date. Or it's expired. So this was good until April 21st,

2019. By the way when food hits its best before date it doesn't

mean the food's old right away or bad right away. Usually with

something like mustard it would probably take another month

before it would be bad. This is not nutritional advice by the

way. But sometimes food goes gets old. Like oh this bread is

it's dry and crusty and there's mold on it. This this bread is

old. Or we would say this bread has gone bad. Never nice for me

when I find food that has gotten old or gone bad in my

house because I feel like it means we wasted some money.

Stale. So bread in particular will go stale. When you first

buy bread when you have fresh bread it smells really good and

it's nice and chewy or it has a certain nice taste to it. It's

nice and crusty on the outside and nice and soft on the

inside. But eventually the bread goes stale. It it it's

still okay to eat but it doesn't taste as good. It's not

as nice to eat. It doesn't it's not crunchy on the outside

anymore. It's a little soft everywhere. Um usually when we

have stale bread we make something else out of it. We

usually make French toast. So when we have stale bread we dip

it in eggs and fry it in a frying pan. But there are a lot

of other recipes that you can use if you have stale bread. We

have food that's healthy. So any kind of food that is good

for you. Any kind of food that improves your health. Any kind

of food that when you eat it you feel better and your body

is happy we call healthy food. A lot of fruits and vegetables

are healthy. Um but of course everything should be eaten in

moderation. So but that's definitely a basket of healthy

food. We have crispy food. So I talked about potato chips

earlier. In Canada we call these potato chips in North

America. They're potato chips. I think in the UK they're

called crisps. They are definitely crispy. If you take

one and it's very thin and very hard and if you break it it

makes a little bit of a sound. Now again the difference

between crunchy and crispy. I think crunchy also refers to

something that's bigger that you have to chew to make

smaller. Whereas potato chips are crisps. They're crispy

because you don't have to chew them a lot. So I don't know

there's a bit of a difference. A peanut butter can be crunchy

potato chips are crispy. There's some examples of food

that are one or the other. Sour. So the other day I think

it was Judith asked what kind of cherries we make pie out of.

And I said we make pie out of sour cherries and then add a

lot of sugar. When something is sour it's not necessarily the

opposite of sweet but it kind of is. It it kind of makes your

mouth close up a bit and it's a very strong yeah sour taste.

That's probably a bad way to describe it. But we have food

that we describe as sour. Um sometimes when you eat an apple

that's not ripe it might be a bit sour. Sometimes when you

eat cherries you can eat sweet cherries which are really yummy

but there's also sour cherries which don't have as much

natural sugar in them. And then we definitely have a lot of

candies that are sour as well. When you describe a food as

being delicious it means that you really like it. You like

how it tastes. I would say bananas are delicious. When you

describe food as being scrumptious. I usually use the

word scrumptious to talk about things that usually desserts or

snacks. You don't have to use it for that. You can say a meal

is scrumptious. But for me apple pie is scrumptious. Um

any kind of sweet dessert like chocolate cake is scrumptious.

So when I use the scrumptious. I use it to talk about things

that are very sweet and yummy but you can use it to describe

anything that tastes good. Flavorful. Sometimes we will

try a different pizza place. We'll get pizza from a

different restaurant. And sometimes we find it's not as

flavourful or it's more flavourful. So when food is

flavourful it can be from the spices that are used to make

the food. But it can also be because of how the ingredients

mixed together while it was baking or cooking that make it

really really flavourful. Um I find that when I go to a really

fancy restaurant and I order a meal. It's very flavorful.

Because the chef knew how to combine the spices and

ingredients and cook it in a way where all of the flavours

come out. And it's very flavourful. And of course we

have things food that is juicy. Um you can have a juicy steak.

So even meat can be juicy. Um you can have of course

something like an orange. When you eat an orange it can be

really juicy. And the juice might even shoot out when you

bite into it. Um but definitely when we describe food that has

a liquid that comes out of it. That doesn't sound very yummy

does it when I say food with liquid that comes out. But when

you have a juicy steak as opposed to a dry steak or when

you have something like an orange and it's really juicy it

can be quite yummy. We have greasy food. Greasy food is

food that is usually cooked in oil. So they heat oil up. They

put the food into the hot oil and the oil it. So we have

things like French fries, fried chicken. There are a number of

different things. Maybe you like fish and chips. Usually

the fish and chips are deep fried. And that food is all

kind of greasy. So grease and oil are very similar things.

Oil is a liquid. When you cook something in oil when we eat it

we don't usually say it's oily. We usually say it's greasy. Oh

this is really greasy food. Um I think they even use it to

describe a diner in the United States like a greasy spoon. I

don't know. Maybe that's a really old phrase. Sticky. If

any of you have ever eaten honey you'll know that it's

sticky. If you get honey on this finger and this finger it

it actually makes your fingers stick together a little bit. So

we have a lot of different foods that are sticky. Um

definitely when you eat honey or if you ever bake with honey

you'll realize that it's just a very sticky type of food. We

have food that we describe as being bite sized. So bite-sized

food. If you look these little tiny hamburgers they're maybe a

little too big for this but you can see the person's hand

there. They're small enough that you can eat them with one

bite. You can just pop it in your mouth. We have a few

things in North America that are bite sized. You can buy

bite sized brownies at the grocery store. A little

chocolate treat. Anything that's bite sized would fit in

your mouth. It's just small enough. Um Is there a fancy

word for it? I'm used bush. Is that a French word? I think we

use that as well. Uh like an appetizer that you can eat in

one bite. Cheesy. So pizza is definitely cheesy. Lasagna is

cheesy. Anything that we eat that has a lot of cheese. If

one of the ingredients is cheese and if there's a lot of

it we describe it as cheesy. Some people order their pizza

with extra cheese. They'll say I'll get an extra large

pepperoni pizza and could I have extra cheese. And so that

pizza would definitely be very very cheesy. Um Creamy. So a

lot of the soups that we make. We make squash soup. We make

tomato soup. Um we make the soup so it's very creamy. So

it's like a thick liquid. That's the best way I can

describe it. If you're familiar with what cream looks like. You

have milk and you have cream. Cream is very very thick

compared to milk. Milk is more liquidy. So when we make soup

even if there's no actual cream in it. We sometimes make soups

that are very very creamy. So I like soups that are very

creamy. They have a nice smooth texture to them. Deep fried. So

I talked about food that is greasy and that same food could

be described as deep fried. Um deep fried food is of course

cooked in oil. Here's the French fries again. They're

coming out of the oil. They're nice and golden brown. They're

probably crispy and they're just yummy to eat. And they

might be a little bit greasy. But French fries are good

aren't they? So I've just realized you can't really

describe food as being fizzy. This is more about a drink.

When we drink something like soda in my part of Canada we

call it pop. You would describe it as fizzy. Because it's

carbonated. So whenever you have anything that's

carbonated. Anything that has little bubbles in it. Like

Coca-Cola or Pepsi or you might even drink seltzer water or

some other form of drink we describe it as being fizzy.

When you drink you can if it's the bubbles are popping at the

top you can feel them against your nose. It's a fizzy thing.

Sometimes we even say in my area fizzy drinks. Like people

like to have fizzy drinks. Um but when something's fizzy it

means it's carbonated. Flaky here is sadly I have to

pronounce this in the way English speakers pronounce it.

This in Canada is called a croissant. I apologize to all

my French speaking listeners but of croissant is very very

flaky. If you want the French French pronunciation I'll do my

best job. It's croissant but this in Canada we call a

croissant croissant. This doesn't sound right does it?

But that's how English speakers say it. It's very flaky. It has

many many layers and those layers when you bite into it

little flakes fall off. It's just a yummy yummy treat. The

croissant croissant. The croissant is probably the best

example of something that is flaky. By the way if you have

never had a croissant go buy one day if you can find one. If

I was to describe one of my favourite pastries. I'm gonna

call it a pastry. I would say it's the croissant definitely.

Uh frozen food. We have a lot of food that is frozen. Uh food

that is precooked in a factory and then frozen and you can buy

it from the frozen food section. In North America

people buy I bet you frozen pizza is the most popular. So

you take home the frozen food. You warm it up Or cook it in

the oven and then you eat it. Um but there's definitely other

frozen food as well. Gourmet. So gourmet food is usually food

prepared in a fancy restaurant by a chef. Um it doesn't have

to be. They use the word gourmet on all kinds of food

labels here. But usually if you say I'm going to have a gourmet

dinner on Friday night. People will think you're going to a

very nice restaurant and you're going to have food prepared by

someone who is a chef. So gourmet food is prepared really

really well. There's a big difference between regular food

and gourmet food. When I make a hamburger it's just a normal

hamburger. But when I go to a really nice restaurant and

order a hamburger I would say it's a gourmet hamburger. It's

just really well made. Low fat. This is pretty popular in our

part of the world. People are eating too much. So they want

to buy food that has less fat in it. So you can buy low fat

mayonnaise. You can buy almost anything low fat. If it has fat

in it you can buy it in a low fat version. I usually don't. I

like the normal I don't like low fat versions of things.

They don't they don't usually taste right. And we also have

sugar free. So we also have food that doesn't have sugar in

it. It might have a sugar substitute. So these are sugar

free candies. You can buy sugar free pop. Um you can buy sugar

free soda if you want to use the word soda. Um there are

many many types of food that you can buy where instead of

sugar they'll use something like stevia or aspartame.

There's a couple different sugar replacements. So they'll

use those instead. These are donuts and these donuts are

glazed. A glazed donut has a coating of sugar around it.

That's I think sprayed on or it might be dipped in. Um but

glazed donuts. They take a normal donut and then it has

that nice shiny coating of sugar on it. There are many

different kinds of treats and things you can buy that are

glazed. Okay you can buy glazed donuts. Um there are little

treats at the grocery store too that you can buy that are

glazed. You can even buy a glazed croissant. Isn't that

crazy? A croissant with a layer of sugar on it. And then

roasted. So these are roasted almonds. We buy coffee is

roasted as well. Although that's a drink again isn't it?

Not a food. There are many things you can buy that

roasted. In particular nuts are often roasted. Okay you can buy

roasted peanuts, roasted almonds. Basically they put

them in an oven and they heat them up to a certain point and

they develop better tastes. Although I do like my almonds

raw. Which is a word we learned at the beginning of the lesson

right? And then we can defy we can describe food as being

crumbly. You can see that this cookie someone took a bite. And

there's just little pieces of the cookie everywhere. Those

pieces are called crumbs. I would describe this as being

crumbly. A crumbly cookie is a cookie where when you bite it

it starts to fall apart. There are just a lot of crumbs. Um I

like my cookies a little bit chewy in the middle. I don't

like crumbly cookies cos then they're usually a little bit

too dry for me.