Hi again. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam.
Today's lesson is a very interesting
one. It's one of my favourites. Why? Because
I love to eat. Actually, a long time ago,
before I was a teacher, before I did any of
that, I went to culinary school. "Culinary"
-- I learned how to cook. I was going to be a chef.
But then I worked at a restaurant,
actually I worked in a few restaurants and I
decided: "Nope, I don't want to be a chef
anymore." But I still like to cook, I still love to eat.
So some of my students were asking
me for kitchen vocab, some
culinary cooking vocab.
First, let's start with this question: "What's
cookin'?" Now, it could mean: "Ah, something
smells good. What's cookin'?" Means what are
you making, what dish are you making? But
sometimes, people will ask this as slang:
"What's cookin?" means: "What's happening?
How are things? How are you?" Just so you know.
A good idiom to recognize.
So we're looking at kitchen vocab. When we're
talking about cooking, we're talking about
culinary arts. Okay? So you ever hear this
expression: "culinary" means about cooking,
about food. Now, before I get
into these actions, some
of these actions that you will use while you
are cooking, it's a moral imperative that
I spend a minute about these two words. What
does "moral imperative" mean? It means that
to be a good person, I must tell you something
about these words. First: "a chef", a chef
is a person who studied cooking, went to school
and studied, has worked in many restaurants,
and has practiced for a long time in his art, his
cooking skills. This person - or her -, this
person probably has a diploma and is usually the
boss of a kitchen in a restaurant somewhere.
Now, "a cook" is a person who is just starting
to cook or somebody who just makes food at
home. Anybody can be a cook. So "cook" could
be a noun, the person, or: "to cook", verb,
to prepare dishes. Now, very, very, very important
and I must stress this: "cook", the pronunciation
of this word is very important. It's: "uh", "uh", "uhk".
"Cook", okay? "Cook". Sounds
like, it rhymes with: "look" or: "took" or: "book".
Okay? "Book", "took", "look", "cook".
It does not, not rhyme with: "rock" or: "sock" or: "lock".
Okay? Not. So if somebody says
to you: "Oh, I'm a good cock." Say: "I'm happy for you.
Bye-bye." Okay? Because they're talking
about something else completely. "Cook",
be very careful about this word.
Okay, let's get started. Let's say you're
on the internet, you want to look for some
new dishes, you want to surprise your family
with a nice new meal from a different country
maybe. You get on the internet and you find a
"recipe", recipe for a nice dish. But, you're
not sure about how to make it because you
don't recognize some of these actions. "Pot",
"pan", all of these things you can understand.
My little stove here, and my little oven here,
I'm sure you can understand.
Let's look at the actions.
"To saute", now this word actually comes from
the French, but we use it in English as well.
"To saute" means in a skillet or in a pan,
to cook lightly. So you have your pan, your
flat pan, put a little bit of oil, put in
your onions on the stove, and you saute, you
flip, you cook it a little bit to a little
bit brown, and then you put other things in
it or you add it to other things.
"Boil/simmer", these are very similar actions.
"Boil", you put something in a pot, like something
like this and high, full of water. You put
the heat very, very high. So boiling is very
high heat, big bubbles, and very fast moving.
"Bluh, bluh, bluh, bluh, bluh." Right? Like
very boiling, so the bubbles go very fast
and very high. "Simmer" means lower heat,
small bubbles moving slowly. Okay? So when
you're making a nice soup or a stew, first you
get everything boiling, and then you reduce
the heat and let it simmer for like an hour;
get all the flavours to blend together really
nicely. Then you have: "broil/roast".
So "broil" and
"roast", we're using the oven. If you want
to cook something like very quickly and get
the top like very crispy, you broil. "Broil"
means heat from the top, so the heat is going
like this on to the food. "Roast" means the
heat is coming from the bottom and the sides,
so it cooks the inside and takes
a little bit longer. Okay.
"Grill". "Grill", like for example: when you barbeque.
When you're barbequing, you are
grilling. You have the lines of the grill,
you put your steak on it, then you flip it,
etcetera. That's grilling,
usually with fire, coals, lines.
Next: you're preparing your... All your "ingredients".
That's another good word. You're preparing
all your ingredients, all the
things that will go into the dish.
So you have to "chop" or "dice". Now, if you're
a chef, there's a difference between "chop"
and "dice". If you're cooking at home, there's
no difference. Like quickly cut, you take
your knife, your cutting board and: "Ch, ch,
ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch"
into little pieces. The only difference between
these two is the size that... Of the onion,
let's say you're cutting onion into
little pieces. "Chop", "dice".
"Slice". "Slice" means you're getting larger pieces.
If you take your onion, you slice,
you have a nice round piece of onion and then
you put it on your hamburger. Very delicious.
"Fry", anything that you do with oil, even
sautéing is a type of frying because you're
doing it with oil. "Deep-fry" means you cover it with oil.
Regular "fry" means just oil
both sides, away you go. "Stir", so
when you're simmering something,
don't forget once in a while to give it a stir.
Otherwise, all the ingredients, all
the heavy ingredients will fall to the bottom and burn.
Okay? Every once in a while stir,
get everything rising up again; get
all those flavours mixing. Okay?
So there. Now, I love to eat. I mean I... I'm
sure I don't look maybe that big to you,
but I do love to eat. Please, send me a recommended dish.
What is your favourite dish? Go to www.engvid.com.
First of all, you can practice these words with a quiz.
Second, tell me: what is your
favourite dish? What must I try to say that I have lived?
I need to know your dish. Okay?
Also, make sure to go to YouTube, check my
channel and subscribe to it. And come again,
visit us. Bye.
