VOCABULARY Lesson! | VERBS for COOKING: English Vocabulary and Verbs in the Kitchen (https:\/\/youtu.be\/mqEmj3AAZJI)<\/a><\/noscript><\/div><\/p>\nVideo Transcript:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSear, 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\u00a0Schitts\u00a0Creek where two people are following a recipe and neither of them know what \u2018fold in the cheese\u2019 means.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNext step is to fold in the cheese.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhat does that mean? What is fold in the cheese mean?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou fold it in.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI 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?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo\u00a0we\u2019ll cover that. We\u2019ll divide our verbs into four categories:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThings you do with a knife<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThings that combine ingredients<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThings that change the shape of ingredients. What?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd verbs that change the temperature of ingredients.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFirst, verbs that use a knife or something sharp<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>Slice. To cut from a larger portion into a smaller, thinner size. \u201cI\u2019ll slice the cake.\u201d\u00a0 Here, the chef is slicing meat.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI did this by slicing open the side of the chicken breast to allow it to open up.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDid 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\u2019re creating smaller, narrower pieces.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe also use slice as a noun all the time with pizza or cake.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHe\u2019s holding a slice of pizza.\u00a0 Sometimes we just say \u2018slice\u2019 for this. \u201cWhere is the best place to get a slice around here?\u201d Everyone would know that that means a slice of pizza. Who is this guy by the way? In today\u2019s video we\u2019ll see clips from two different cooking channels here on\u00a0Youtube\u00a0 with permission. This is Stephen from \u2018Not Another Cooking Show\u2019 and this is Hilah from \u2018Hilah Cooking\u2019. Both great cooking channels, if you love food go check them out and binge watch some videos, that is one of my favorite things to do.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhat\u2019s the difference between \u2018slice\u2019 and \u2018cut\u2019? I think of \u2018slice\u2019 as being\u00a0more thin. You slice something into thin uniform pieces like bread. We might use cut to get rid of something. To cut something off. \u201cCut off the stems of the broccoli, and just use the florets\u201d, for example.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd you can just cut it off.<\/span>
\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cCut off\u201d also works when you\u2019re saying something and someone else starts to talk over you before you finished. You could say, \u201cHey, you cut me off!\u201d In the kitchen, you might cut something up. \u201cCut up the carrot into 1-inch chunks.\u201d As a noun, a \u2018cut up\u2019 is someone who\u2019s always trying to be funny, always making jokes. \u201cHe\u2019s such a cut up!\u201d You can also cut in to something.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThen take the drumette, bend the wing down, and cut in.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nChop. 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\u2019s 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.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI actually don\u2019t notice a big difference in the usage of \u201cchop\u201d versus \u201cchop up\u201d when it comes to cooking. Both mean to make lots of smaller pieces.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLet\u2019s see, let\u2019s chop up some onion.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThere is definitely a hierarchy of size when we change the verb.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDice. \u201cDiced\u201d pieces are generally smaller than \u201cchopped\u201d pieces. And \u201cminced\u201d pieces are even smaller than diced.\u00a0So\u00a0let\u2019s look at \u201cdice.\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNow if you wanted to dice it smaller, you would just cut thinner planks.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOk, largest to smallest, we have: chopped, diced, minced.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMince. I\u2019m 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\u00a0these potent flavors get more evenly distributed throughout a dish. Of course, you\u2019re going to hear it as a phrasal verb too: mince up.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOkay, so I also minced up some garlic when you weren\u2019t looking.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLast 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\u2019s \u201cshave\u201d.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt 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.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe\u2019re just going to shave the rind off.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWatermelon peel is really thick, so we call it a rind. Now, he could have said just as naturally \u201ccut the rind off,\u201d or \u201cslice off the rind.\u201d We have a lot of different verbs that we can use when it comes to using your knife.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNow our second category, combining ingredients. Back to our original scene from\u00a0Schitts\u00a0creek, 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.\u00a0 When you fold one ingredient into another, you\u2019re doing it to mix things without crushing. We do this with light ingredients like some\u00a0egg whites\u00a0that you whipped.\u00a0 So, to fold something else into something, you put the light on top and then with a spatula, you take what\u2019s underneath and put it on top incorporating without crushing.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nProbably the most common instruction you\u2019ll see in a recipe is add.\u00a0<\/span>To put one thing with another thing.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd I\u2019m going to add my butternut squash to my broth.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMix 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.\u00a0So\u00a0this is different than fold or being a lot\u00a0more gentle.\u00a0 Mix.\u00a0Mix in. Mix up. Wait, what? Mix up also means to confuse things. A server at a restaurant might say, \u201cShoot, I put in the wrong order for the wrong table, I got mixed up.\u201d\u00a0 Mix in, mix together.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo, we\u2019re just going to mix this all together.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBeat. 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 \u201cbeater\u201d relates directly to the verb. On non-cooking use, you could also say, \u201cWe beat the them by 2 points.\u201d 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 \u201cup\u201d. He got beat up at school.\u00a0 But the idea of hitting food or applying energy to the motion of stirring\u00a0comes through here.\u00a0\u201cI always beat my eggs before cooking them.\u201d I stir them hard and fast. This incorporates air to make them fluffy.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m going to add salt to one of them and beat it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nA word with a similar meaning is \u201cwhisk\u201d. The object looks pretty similar to beaters, doesn\u2019t it? A whisk is good for creating light mixtures and batters.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNow we\u2019ll learn some other words\u00a0for \u201cstir\u201d. Everyone knows stir. Let\u2019s dig deeper for some synonyms.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd\u00a0you just\u00a0wanna\u00a0start moving it around, breaking it up.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMove around.\u00a0That\u2019s 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\u2019t burn in one spot. Move them around. Or:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd you just want to start moving it around, breaking it up.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBreak up. If you\u2019ve got a pack of ground meat that you\u2019re 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\u2019re browning something.\u00a0 We use this with beef, especially ground beef.\u00a0 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\u00a0<\/span>brown.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou don\u2019t want it to brown but you want them to start looking translucent.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut back to break up. Outside of cooking, we used this term a lot with relationships. it\u2019s a verb: \u201cThey broke up last month.\u201d That means they stopped dating; they\u2019re not seeing each other anymore. It\u2019s also noun. \u201cThe break up was really hard on him.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe next two words are generally used with this appliance or something similar, a blender. This is used to blend ingredients into a homogenous mixture.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBlend. Blend some fruit for a smoothie. Blend up some tomatoes for a pasta sauce.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd for those of you that need to take \u201cblending\u201d still further, you can use \u201cPulverize\u201d.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTo reduce something to fine particles. Just by looking at it, you can\u2019t tell exactly what\u2019s in it because it is so thoroughly combined and broken down. Fun fact, \u201cpulvis\u201d is the Latin word for \u201cdust.\u201d\u00a0So\u00a0you turn something solid into dust by pulverizing it. Here, the chef is making watermelon juice. He doesn\u2019t want any chunks or fibers left; he wants the consistency to be super smooth.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo\u00a0I\u2019m just going to blend the\u00a0sh*t out of it; pulverize it as much as possible.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen 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 \u201csalt\u201d.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSalt.\u00a0You\u2019ve definitely used it as a noun, but native speakers use it as a verb, too<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe\u2019re going to salt them right now.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSeason is another fantastic word to talk about how you change the flavor of a dish. This usage is not connected to the noun, the\u00a0four seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall but to herbs, spices, and sauces that we use as seasonings. [h\u025cb] in American English. Flavor additives. Anything you use to change the flavor of what you\u2019re making. \u201cMy mom always seasons vegetables with garlic powder.\u201d There it\u2019s a verb. She seasons vegetables; she uses seasonings. Here the chef uses the passive voice.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIf you want scrambled eggs that are fluffy, moist, seasoned well, but have texture and structure and can stick to a fork.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSeasoned well. The eggs have been seasoned well.\u00a0The past participle here has an -ed ending, seasoned, seasoned well. Now when you want to use the noun form, we don\u2019t say, \u201cThose are great seasons.\u201d We add -ing\u00a0and it is a regular count verb, meaning that we use an s at the ending to make it plural. \u201cThat\u2019s a great seasoning.\u201d Seasoning singular or: \u201cThose are great seasonings.\u201d Recently my husband David seasoned some pork with a dry rub.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nGoing to do a rub?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYeah, here\u2019s the rub. Mustard powder, coarse salt, hot pepper flakes, thyme, oregano, celery salt, onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWow.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYeah, it\u2019s going to be good.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDid you hear all those seasonings he named?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd if you\u2019re like me, you want to get the balance of flavors just right, then you might \u201cadjust\u201d how you season your food. I\u2019m constantly tasting as I cook. Adding a little more of this or a little more of that.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAdjust means to change.\u00a0\u201cWe need to adjust the seasonings.\u201d or \u201cWe need to adjust the acidity.\u201d You can also use it with temperature.\u00a0 For example, \u201cWatch the pot and adjust the heat if needed.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhile there\u2019s definitely a science to cooking, I also love approaching it as an art. Everything doesn\u2019t have to be exact all the time. When you\u2019re cooking without measuring everything exactly, you\u2019re just \u201ceyeballing\u201d the measurements.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nEyeball.\u00a0This means\u00a0looking at an amount to get a general measurement.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd this is a very flexible recipe; you can see I\u2019m just sort of\u00a0eyeballing\u00a0this, some of these measurements.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nEyeballing is estimating. Estimate-\u00a0<\/span>To roughly calculate or judge the value, number, or quantity. I estimate that\u2019s about a teaspoon. It\u2019s not exact, but close enough.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnother synonym is \u201cguess\u201d. To think or suppose something without being 100% certain. And a really fun one\u00a0is the combination of guess plus estimate, and that\u2019s \u201cguesstimate\u201d. 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\u2019ll hear various forms of it:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe have the verb \u201cguesstimate\u201d. \u201cGuesstimating\u201d. We have \u201cguesstimate\u201d, the noun and also \u201cguesstimation\u201d.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIf you\u2019re into this approach to cooking, you might say, \u201cLet\u2019s go heavy with the cream.\u201d Meaning, let\u2019s put more than the recipe calls for.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nGo heavy with.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou can go heavy with all this stuff especially when you\u2019re using flour.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou may also hear \u201cgo heavy on\u201d instead of\u00a0go heavy with.\u00a0 Now the opposite, to \u201cgo light on\u201d. To go light on something is to use slightly less. Let\u2019s go light on the sugar in this recipe.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOne more way to talk about combining ingredients, you\u2019ve probably used this one to reference a piece of clothing: Coat. This is to cover or spread with an enclosing layer. Chef Hilah uses \u201ccoat\u201d in passive voice here to show us that all the pieces of chopped onion need to be\u00a0completely covered in\u00a0the oil as it saut\u00e9s.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMake sure it gets coated with all the oil.<\/span>