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  

sure to subscribe with notifications on so you  never miss a lesson! And keep your learning  

going right now with this video. That’s it, and  thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.