MUST-KNOW Adjectives to describe food in English | Advanced English vocabulary

Hi there, this is Harry and welcome back to advanced English lessons with Harry, where

I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language.

The lesson today is all about food.

But it's advanced English adjectives that we use to describe food, okay, so it's not

a food lesson.

As such, I'm not going to talk about recipes, you'll be very glad to hear I'm not even going

to tell you what to cook.

So it's only about food.

And it's about tastes and smells and the adjectives that we can use to describe those.

So it's advanced English lesson with adjectives connected with foods.

So we've got 13 particular adjectives that we will use.

And in some cases, they may sound similar, you might have some words that you've heard

before, but a lot of them you may not, and we use them to describe particular smells

or particular tastes.

And at the end of this particular lesson, I'm also going to give you a few specific

words that we use only to describe certain types of foods, and it's really, really important

to understand those.

Okay, so let's go down to them one by one.

Bland.

Well, if you get some food that is bland, it's really tasteless.

So tasteless will be another adjective you could use.

But bland is something like eating wet paper, some food just absolutely no taste.

It's either been overcooked, or there just aren't enough spices or some salt or pepper

or something that could be added to give it some flavour but it's just very bland.

Like baking an omelette with no mushrooms or tomatoes or onions or anything in it.

Yeah, so that might be a little bit bland in its taste.

The other word or the next word insipid is very similar to bland, it has the same meaning.

But this is a little bit more formal.

Insipid, for me is something again, that has zero taste, things like consome soup with...

without any vegetables, meat or anything else.

And I really just don't like it.

Tea is another drink that I find very insipid, because every time we have a little taste

that there's nothing, it's just you might as well be drinking hot water.

Okay, so bland and insipid, very, very similar.

Nothingless or tasteless.

Tangy, on the other hand, is much, much more zest in it.

Tangy would describe that freshly squeezed orange juice that you get when you go on holiday.

So you can still get the little pips floating around on the top of the glass and the little

bits of orange in it.

So it's really freshly squeezed.

And it's got a real zip to it and it's tangy.

Yes.

Or a glass of lime juice or lemon juice that have also been freshly squeezed and a little

bit bitter.

But it really is tangy and it will take away or kill any thirst that you might have.

So tangy.

Next word is pungent.

And pungent has everything to do with the smell, it affects the nose.

So when you come into a room, there's a strong, pungent smell.

It could be decayed fruit.

It could be a smell like ammonia or rotten eggs.

And it really, really hits you at the back of the throat.

Right up the nose.

Okay, so a pungent smell.

So this is all about the smells rather than the taste.

So you come back from a holiday and somebody has left some food in the rubbish bin, they

didn't throw out it before you you went on holidays, and you know there's a black banana,

and you can get that sickly smell as you walk into the kitchen.

And that's very pungent.

And as always, if you liked this particular lesson, then please like the video, and if

you can subscribe to the channel because it really, really helps.

The next is a word connected with bread.

Stale.

Stale bread is that bread that has been sitting in the bread basket for four or five days

and it's rock hard and it's almost something you could knock nails into the wall with.

So a very, very hard stale bread.

What we used to do with stale bread is soak it in water and then take it to the park and

feed it to the swans or the ducks or whichever birds were happened to be sitting there but

it's not pleasant for you or I to eat.

When it's stale is so hard.

You'd probably break your teeth.

So it's all about the taste.

Stale bread.

Rancid.

Rancid has everything to do with things like butter, okay.

Butter when you open it usually has a nice, fresh golden yellow colour, and it's a nice

oil and shiny.

Whereas when it's rancid, it loses that's the colour and the taste is awful.

So we use that word and specifically when we're talking about butter.

Rancid.

The next word is stodgy.

So we get the pronunciation, stodgy.

When something is stodgy, it's usually heavy.

Heavy fat meat, lots of potatoes, lots of those earthy type vegetables that are great

in the wintertime they will fill you up but wow, it takes a long time to digest them so

you can't eat too much of it.

So if you eat too much stodgy food, you feel bloated and you're hardly able to move.

Lots of people in Northern Europe tend to eat more stodgy food because of the cold,

wet weather that we experience.

Also like a big plate of porridge, that's a nice breakfast to warm you in the wintertime.

But it can be a little bit stodgy depending on how you make it.

And yeah, it sits in the stomach for a long long time.

You certainly won't be hungry after a couple of hours if you've eaten a plate of Scottish

porridge.

Chewy.

Chewy is that good experience when you like your food you chew it well, but chewy in a

negative sense is when the meat has been overcooked perhaps.

Or it is a poor piece of meat and a cheap piece of meat and therefore you seem to be

chewing it for hours.

Ying yang.

Like eating the sole of your shoe.

Okay, so oh that meat is very chewy, it's that you...

I can hardly cut it with the knife.

So it's a good sign that it has been overcooked.

Chewy, and lots of food can be chewy.

The next word when this is the two we had that are very similar in the sound chewy and

gooey.

Okay now gooey I really like.

And gooey is if you can picture this when you make yourself a toasty ham and cheese

toasted sandwich and if you do it correct when you take it out of the toaster or out

of the sandwich maker, you'll have the soft cheese oozing out of the sides of the sandwich

and it's gooey and really really tasty.

Absolutely lovely.

Now, so gooey.

And you also get it when you taste or eat in Swiss restaurants where they love to have

fondues, cheese fondue and you dip your fork or your knife or skewer with bread on the

end of it into the fondue.

And there's a lot of gooey cheese and the end of the bread but wow, that is certainly

stodgy because you got lots of bread and lots of cheese but it is gooey, gooey and stodgy

at the same time.

Okay, I don't like fondue myself but I do as I said love those cheese and ham toasties

which should have that wonderful smell of gooey cheese.

Crispy is next.

If you're ...and we're talking about foods and nice foods to have.

If you're like burgers, we all like burgers.

And if you top it with cheese and then sometimes we put crispy bacon on the top of that.

Wow, that's really nice where the bacon breaks in the middle, really crispy.

And the other thing that we'd like when it's crispy is the skin of the turkey that when

we roast the turkey for Christmas dinner.

The skin of the turkey is really brown and crispy and it adds a lovely lovely flavour

to the meat when you carve it very, very pleasant.

So that's crispy.

Crispy bacon or the crispy skin on the turkey that's been roasted specifically for Thanksgiving

or for Christmas.

Crunchy.

Crunchy is the word we use when we're describing that sensation when we bite into that golden

delicious green apple there we've just washed it and we either cut it and bite it and you

get the lovely crunchy sound or the crunch you get when you're crunching your cornflakes

or the crunch the dog makes when he's crunching his biscuits that he... that you give him.

Okay.

So nice ah hum hum nice crunchy sound.

Savoury.

Savoury is usually the opposite of sweet.

Sweet as you usually honey and sugar and things like that, but savoury is something that has

a different taste.

It's not a sweet taste.

For example, an omelette with tomatoes and onions or ham that would have a savoury and

was been... and would be known as a savoury omelette.

Or a crepe that you make and without adding sugar or honey.

Instead you put up maybe a fried egg like the French do, some chopped ham.

Absolutely gorgeous.

So that would be savoury crepe or savoury omelette, something really tasty, but not

sweet.

And then finally we've got mouldy now the pronunciation is mould it's not mouldy.

It's mouldy, mouldy cheese.

So some people like it, some different types of cheeses are sold as mouldy cheese, but

I don't like it.

I prefer the little bit fresher.

Okay, now mould has also use a, sorry, a word that we use when we look at our windows and

our room at the back of the house that doesn't get the sunshine.

And if you haven't opened the windows for a while, you'll see little black spots of

mould around the window.

Yes and this is exactly the same as you get under cheese.

So black mould or mouldy.

So, mould as a noun, mouldy as as the... the adjective, okay.

So, mouldy old cheese, some people like it, some people don't.

Okay, so they are adjectives.

These are advanced adjectives describing food mostly as I said, tastes or smell.

So let me give them to you one more time.

Bland, insipid, tangy, pungent, stale, rancid, stodgy, chewy, gooey, crispy, crunchy, savoury,

and then finally mouldy.

Yeah, and remember the pronunciation mouldy, gooey, Chewy, okay, so they all have those

"y" sounds and because they are adjectives, after all.

Now, I did promise that I would also give you some specific words relating to specific

foods and these words.

Be really careful, we only use them in connection with these particular foods.

So the first is stale.

Always stale bread.

Stale bread, that bread that is four or five days old, hard to bite, hard to chew, and

you can knock it on the table or use it to hammer nails into the wall stale bread.

Next is sour.

S-o-u-r.

Sour milk.

Now, sour milk is when the milk has gone off, it would sort of break into two parts water

at the bottom, the milk at the top and or be a terrible smell and certainly a terrible

taste it would be all lumpy.

Okay, so not something really pleasant at all.

But we only use the word sour when we're really relating to milk or milk products sour milk,

sour cream.

Next word we have is rotten.

This word we use when we're talking about bad fruit, bad vegetables, bad meat.

So the meat that has been sitting in the fridge longer than it should the vegetables that

we left in the tray at the bottom of the cupboard.

The fruit that we left in the fruit bowl for five or six days so the banana has gone all

black and gooey.

The vegetables are gone soft and they've got bits of flakes on them and then they've gone

a bit soggy and wet and oh, just not so nice.

Not such a bad smell but just not so nice to pick up.

And then the meat of course just really really bad.

So we we use the word rotten.

So it's not rotten bread or rotten milk.

It's stale bread, sour milk, rotten vegetables, rotten meat, and rotten fruit.

Okay, and then finally, rancid butter.

Rancid.

And rancid is when the butter loses its look its colour and the taste is not so nice and

you don't want to eat it you're probably not be so sick but it's not so pleasant.

So the butter is rancid and it's time to buy some new butter.

Okay, so there the all of the adjectives that we're using, the advanced English adjectives

connected with food and those particular words, those four words that I've just given you

there - stale, sour, rancid and rotten - only used with specific food types.

Okay, so you know the drill by now.

You need to practice these, you need to look at them, you need to listen to them once or

twice.

If you have any problems, you come back to me, and I'll give you some more examples.

As always, I really really appreciate you watching and listening.

Join me again soon.

Harry's saying goodbye.