Hi.
I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Today we're going to talk about kitchens.
Let's go.
No matter where you live around the world,
all houses have something in common.
They have a kitchen.
Maybe your kitchen just has one pan and one
burner or maybe you have a huge kitchen with
pots and pans passed down from your grandmother.
Whatever the case may be, there are a lot
of varieties of kitchens around the world
and there's a lot of varieties of kitchens
in the US.
So I can't explain all US kitchens, but I
can explain my kitchen.
So that's what we're going to do.
I'm going to take you on a little tour around
my kitchen and explain all of the items that
I see, all of the appliances.
Maybe there's some things that are different
in your country than what are in my house,
but it's a good way to expand your vocabulary.
Because if you spend any time in your kitchen,
it's a great chance to just talk about what
you're doing in English.
I'm cooking an egg in my frying pan.
I'm using a spatula.
Talk about what you're doing.
And I hope that today's lesson will give you
the vocabulary to be able to do that.
If you're interested in learning other household
words not just the kitchen, you can check
out this video that I made, 150 Household
Items, and expressions, and verbs, in my previous
apartment.
Now we're in our new house, which is great.
Or if you want to learn more about cleaning
expressions, because that's something that
we all have to do and you want to describe
it in English, I made a video at my mother-in-law's
house using a lot of cleaning expressions.
I think there was 70 or 80 of them.
You can watch that video up here to expand
your vocabulary.
Let's start by talking about some common kitchen
appliances.
One of the most common appliances is the fridge.
Or you can say refrigerator, but this is a
pretty big word so we often cut it down and
just say fridge.
Good news for you.
In the US we have giant fridges.
I've never been in any other country that
had fridges as big as in the US.
Maybe that's kind of typical.
We like to make things super big.
But on the top in my fridge we have the fridge
part and on the bottom is the freezer.
We'll take a look at that in just a second.
It's pretty typical that in the fridge you
have different shelves.
It's a little bit bright on my camera.
I'm sorry.
And then at the bottom we call these vegetable
crispers, just a crisper.
We don't use that that often but it's the
crisper bin.
It's somewhere where you'll put your fresh
vegetables, fresh fruit to keep them crisp,
and that is fresh, exactly the way you want
them.
On the bottom of my fridge is the freezer.
Sometimes the freezer will be kind of split
in half and will be on one side or the other
but mine is a top and bottom type of deal.
So on the bottom is the freezer, which is
where we keep some leftover soup, some frozen
vegetables, frozen fruit, ice, ice cream.
Anything that you want to keep super cold
you put in the freezer.
The second most common kitchen appliance is
a stove and an oven.
In the US we call the top of this the stove
or you might say the stove top.
That's where you cook things with pots and
pans.
Inside the oven is where you bake things.
So usually there's a door on the oven and
inside here there are some racks.
That's what we call these things.
It's a little bit hot in there so I'm not
going to grab them, but there are rack.
You might see a recipe that says, "Put this
on the bottom rack," or, "Put this on the
top rack when you're baking it," and that's
referring to those kind of metal shelves inside
your oven.
You might here some Americans calling all
of this, this whole device, the oven or call
the whole thing the stove instead of separating
the top is the stove, inside is the oven.
Sometimes we just kind of use one of those
words to talk about the whole device, so you
might hear that in movies and TV shows.
It's technically the stove and the oven, but
you might kind of interchange those sometimes.
Some technical words about the stove top is
we have the knobs.
There are knobs to turn on the stove.
And when you are baking something in here,
you need to set the temperature.
In the US we use Fahrenheit.
So when I turn on the oven and I click bake,
the first temperature is 350 degrees, and
that is in Fahrenheit.
If you're cooking in the US, make sure that
you know if your recipe is American, if your
recipe is not from the US, if your stove is
using Fahrenheit.
I've never seen a stove in the US that didn't
use Fahrenheit, but I know when I've baked
things in other countries I had to convert
everything and it was a little complicated.
So don't mess up your food.
Just check on the temperature.
Check on what you're using for the recipe.
That's all really essential.
One thing also, above the stove is the microwave.
This is a really typical placement for a microwave
in an American kitchen, maybe in your kitchen,
too.
The reason why they put a microwave above
the stove is it's a convenient location.
But also, listen to this.
What do you think that whirring sound is?
It's a fan.
So underneath here there's a fan.
I have a light on as well.
You can see that light.
And that fan is going to help to suck up all
of the smells, and steam, and anything that
you're cooking here.
It's going to help that not spread out throughout
the rest of the house.
So in my old apartment, we didn't have a microwave
and there was no fan above our stove.
So whenever we cooked something, our entire
house got so hot and it smelled so strongly
like whatever we were cooking.
Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad.
But, it's really nice to have a fan so that
all the smells and all the steam can get sucked
up and the rest of your house isn't completely
humid from your cooking.
The last common item in an American kitchen
is a dishwasher.
I love the dishwasher so much.
In our old apartment, we didn't have a dishwasher
and we bought this tabletop dishwasher.
It was so amazing.
If you live in a place where you're always
hand washing dishes, I respect you a lot because
that is tough work, especially when you're
cooking a lot.
We cook a lot at home.
When you have kids, it is not easy to spend
time doing the dishes by hand.
So you can do the dishes by hand or you could
use a dishwasher.
Yes, thank you, dishwasher for existing.
So inside the dishwasher there are racks.
You might recognize that word from the oven.
Inside the oven there are oven racks and there
are racks in here as well.
Something you might notice is on some dishes,
on the bottom ... This one doesn't say it.
It might just say dishwasher safe, but on
some dishes they might say top rack safe only.
For example, we have these cool little bamboo
bowls that we use for Theo, our two-year-old,
and we use them, too.
There's some plates to go along with it.
These are our dirty dishes.
But when I bought these, it said top rack
safe only.
That's because there's also a bottom rack.
And this rack usually gets a little bit hotter,
and it's going to have a little more pressure.
It's just going to be a little bit more intense
for whatever you're washing.
So some things might say top rack safe only.
And if I'm not sure, sometimes I just put
it on the top rack just to be careful with
it.
Next, I'd like to just simply go around the
kitchen and talk about what's out on the counter,
the things that are visible, and then we're
going to go into the cupboards and into to
drawers and discuss what's in there.
It could be appliances, could be things you
eat with.
It could be food.
Let's start on the counter.
So this is the counter.
Simple word.
Or you might call it the countertop.
This is where we prepare food.
It's where we set out food.
This countertop is kind of unusual.
Usually you'll see laminate counters, which
we'll take a look at over here.
You might be able to see a little bit right
here.
Kind of like a plastic-type surface.
Or you might see granite countertops.
That's stone.
It's really nice.
But this is a wood block.
The family who lived in this house before
us, the woman was a professional baker so
she had this wooden block to replace the old
countertop and now we get to use it, which
is pretty cool.
So it's kind of unusual to see a big wooden
block like that but usually you'll have a
big counter where you can prepare food.
And this is one is especially big, which is
wonderful, because in our old apartment we
had a small counter space for preparing food
and now we can prepare everything, which is
great.
The next thing that you'll see on this counter
is a fruit stand.
We have some fruit hanging out here and some
fruit bowls.
Then, Dan's precious coffee maker.
If you've been watching my channel for a while,
you know that I don't drink coffee but Dan
loves it.
So we'll get to what I have over here.
So we have the coffee maker.
Your coffee maker might look a little more
traditional than this, but this is Dan's special
thing.
Then we have the paper towel stand.
Sometimes this paper towel stand might be
underneath a counter and it kind of attaches
to the bottom of the counter and you can roll
it out underneath a shelf, something like
that, but ours just is a standalone paper
towel rack.
And at the sink we got a couple other things,
so let's go take a look.
This is our sink where we wash things, where
we fill up water.
All of those great things happen.
At most sinks you'll see dish soap.
It's quite clear.
Liquid dish soap.
It's easy to understand.
This is what you're going to use when you're
hand washing dishes.
You do not, do not, want to put dish soap
into your dishwasher.
If you put dish soap, and it usually says
something about ... Yes, dish soap for hand
washing dishes that uses biodegradable, bio-based
formula, blah, blah, blah.
So it says hand washing.
That's your key.
If I put this in my dishwasher, our house
would be covered in bubbles.
So please don't do this unless you want to
have some fun experiment.
There is specific soap you put in the dishwasher.
It might be a little pod like this or it's
... Usually we buy just powder that you put
in the dishwasher.
It's a little box that has dish washing soap.
So make sure that you use dishwasher soap.
It's for washing your dishes in the dishwasher
in the right place, and you use this in the
right place.
Little friendly word of warning.
So usually at the counter, when you're washing
dishes, you'll find some kind of towel.
We don't use sponges, but you might find a
sponge.
This is like a reusable, cool little microfiber
towel.
We have a bunch of these, and that's what
we use to hand wash dishes.
You might also find ... This is called steel
wool.
It's just a little piece of metal mushed up
together.
You can use it to kind of scrape some hard
spots on pans or pots.
You'll also see a faucet.
This is the faucet.
And hot water, cold water.
We're so lucky we're living in the 21st century
we can just have hot and cold water whenever
we want.
It's amazing.
Our sink also has this cool little thing.
I wonder if this exists in your country.
I'm going to turn on the water, and then I'm
going to turn this.
Whoa.
Isn't that cool?
I'm amazed.
This is just like a little sprayer so you
can spray the sink out or you can spray a
dish.
I once played a terrible prank on my dad for
April Fools' Day because if ... This has a
little button on the side, and I put a rubber
band around it so it was always pressed.
When you turn on the water, usually it comes
out here, but if this button is pressed, it
will come out of the sprayer automatically.
So I had a rubber band around it.
And in the morning, he went to the sink and
he turned on the water.
You can imagine what happened.
It didn't come out here.
It came out here and went ... and sprayed
him.
It was a good prank.
And it was April Fools' Day, so it's all right.
But, I thought that was a pretty clever moment
when I was in high school, so watch out for
rubber bands around your sprayer.
There's also hand soap.
This is for your hands.
That's quite obvious.
Usually we use liquid hand soap.
You might see people use a bar of soap, but
that's pretty unusual.
I am curious in your country if you use bar
soap or liquid soap like that.
Let's continue on to the side and see some
other things that are on the counter.
You might be wondering what this giant metal
tub is.
Well, this not common in most American households,
but I'm a water snob and I love clean, pure
water.
In the US, it's totally fine to drink tap
water.
That's water that comes from the faucet.
It's not a problem I'd say 98% of places in
the US.
You can drink the tap water.
And here, you can drink the tap water.
It's completely fine.
But I think it tastes very strongly like chlorine
and just kind of chemicals.
So we have this water filter, and we use this
glass jar, take the tap water, and pour in
here.
It has some huge filters.
This is called like a gravitational long filter
device.
I forget the technical term for it.
But, it doesn't filter it automatically.
It takes maybe two hours to filter so we're
always pouring water in there.
It stores the water down here, and it tastes
amazing.
So if you ever come to my house, drink some
water.
All right.
Another part of this counter is ... This is
kind of a fancy, fancy-shmancy device, but
I got for Dan one year for Christmas because
he likes to drink sparkling water.
I felt like it was a little bit wasteful to
buy cans of sparkling water so I bought this
soda stream device.
It's pretty nifty.
So there's a bottle, a specific bottle, that
goes with this machine.
And you fill the bottle with water.
You put it in here, and it just carbonates
the water, so it makes it sparkly.
You can do it as much as you want.
You can use your own water, and it's kind
of an endless thing.
Then when your carbonation device is empty,
you can just return it and they recycle it.
It's a really cool system.
Anyway, if you drink a lot of sparkling water,
check it out.
Well, the next thing is a toaster.
You might have this in your house or maybe
you don't.
In my other video, 150 Household Items, we
had a toaster oven.
That's with a door, and you have to lay everything
flat.
You can also use it like an oven.
It's kind of like a mini oven.
But In this house we decided to get a toaster,
just a regular toaster, that has slots at
the top.
Then we have Dan's coffee grinder, more coffee
devices.
And here is my section.
This is the tea section.
I have a lovely teapot, some tea strainers,
a couple things of tea right here.
I have another drawer that's got lots of fun
tea.
If you drink tea in your country, I would
love to try tea from your country.
That's always the thing that I love to try.
I love to try lots of stuff when I travel.
But whenever I travel, I love to try the kind
of traditional food and also the kinds of
tea that people drink around the world.
So I'm always curious what kind of things
that other people drink.
My PO Box is in the description if you want
to send me any.
All right.
We are back at the stove top.
But on the stove top there is something I
didn't mention, and that's a tea kettle for
heating water.
Pretty clear it's for my tea or for something
else if you want to just heat up some water.
Got a cool little thermometer on the top so
that you can see how hot it is because you
don't want to overheat your green tea.
It must be the perfect temperature.
Maybe some people don't care, but I do.
And finally, before we go into the cupboards
and the drawers, I'd like to end at this piece
of the counter which has some important elements
for cooking.
We have some cutting boards.
These are wooden cutting boards that we have
here, and this kind of laminate wood cutting
board here, and some oven mitts.
So this is a flat oven mitt and this is an
actual mitt, like a mitten, that you can use
to protect your hands.
On this little tray ... Not everybody has
this.
This is just something that we do for convenience.
We have some common items that we use when
we're cooking, like olive oil, or honey, or
salt and paper, or my prenatal vitamin for
our baby, some chopsticks, some knives, and
some kitchen scissors.
I'm curious if you use scissors in the kitchen.
We use scissors a lot, but I feel like growing
up my parents didn't use scissors that much
in the kitchen.
So maybe it's kind of a more modern thing.
I'm not sure.
Do you use scissors in the kitchen?
Next, let's take a look at some of the dry
goods, some things in cupboards, some different
appliances, and things that are put away.
These shelves are quite high, as you can see.
But up here we have some dry goods.
Dry goods are any kind of food that doesn't
need to be refrigerated.
So for us, that's pasta, or couscous, or quinoa,
the types of things that don't need to be
refrigerated.
We have some alcohol.
I was actually using that to make some apple
cider spiked with rum, not for me, unfortunately,
because I'm pregnant, but for our friends
for our pumpkin party we had.
Here is a little bit messy, but it's all right.
We have cookbooks.
A lot of kitchens have cookbooks.
You probably do, too.
If you have any favorite cookbooks, please
recommend them.
I always love browsing through cookbooks.
And at the end of every year for Christmas
I usually buy a new cookbook.
We have just a couple here, but it's always
nice to start the year with new recipes and
new ideas.
So if you have any recommendations, let me
know.
I have some cookbooks.
This is my personal cookbook.
Not really my recipes but these are just recipes
that I have written down in a little notebook.
We also have some other ... These are mainly
knickknacks, just kind of for display.
It's not really for the kitchen.
But here we have other dry goods.
These dry goods are kind of our snacks goods.
So we try to have healthy snacks, especially
with a two-year-old who always wants snacks.
I don't want to give him something unhealthy
all the time so we always try to have a lot
of nuts available.
So in these different jars ... These are usually
called mason jars.
It's the brand of jar but we use it as just
a name of it.
It's a mason jar or you could say it's a glass
jar.
It has this type of lid that's kind of two-piece.
It's got two pieces to it.
So we usually store different peanuts, cashews,
almonds, pistachios, Brazil nuts, popcorn
seeds, or sunflower seeds, or raisins, anything
that's kind of a healthy snack we try to put
on this shelf.
All right.
Let's go back to the kitchen, which is just
right here, and we're going to take a look
inside some of the cupboards to look at some
other appliances and things that might be
hiding.
Pretty much every kitchen has something that
you eat on, right?
So we have some small plates.
There's not really a fancy term for these.
You might have really small plates that are
called saucers.
We don't have these, but you can use it to
put like a teacup on.
And it usually has a little rim on the inside,
some place where you can safely set your teacup.
This is not a saucer.
This is just a small plate for small portions
of food.
Then we also have some big plates, some larger
plates.
We do have bowls, but, as you saw, they are
dirty.
All of our bowls are dirty.
We usually go through bowls really quickly
because, especially now, it's a little bit
colder outside so we eat a lot of soup in
our house and we finish all of our bowls pretty
quickly.
So we do have bowls.
I'm sure you know what bowls are, though,
so no problem.
On this shelf as well we have some mugs, some
more mugs in here.
I love mugs.
And some glasses or just some cups.
You can call this ... It is glass.
It is made of glass, but you can also call
it just a cup.
There's some smaller cups.
There's some beer glasses.
This is the right size for drinking beer according
to Dan.
I don't know.
I'm not a big fan of beer.
But we also have up here a strainer.
Sorry.
I'm a little bit low here because these shelves
are really high.
This is a strainer.
We put this in the sink to wash our fruit
and vegetables.
Super handy.
You probably have something like that in your
kitchen.
And we just have some other coffee things,
like a hand grinder.
Dan loves grinding coffee by hand, or a pour
over for coffee.
This is kind of the miscellaneous coffee supplies.
There's a French press up there, other little
devices.
All right.
Let's go to this shelf over here.
Okay, I'm just going to sit up on the counter
because it's a little bit awkward to film
a high spot and I'm down here and I'm showing
this.
So, I'm siting on the counter.
No judging.
All right.
Up here we have our wine glasses.
Your wine glasses might have a stem.
A stem is that part on the bottom.
A stem is the word that you use with a flower.
There's a flower, and then under the flower
is a stem and it looks like that.
But, these wine glasses do not have a stem.
We have some little fancy glasses, too.
And on this shelf is generally just knickknacks.
This is a point of contention in our relationship.
Whenever Dan has a really cool beer glass,
he wants to keep it because it looks cool.
But I feel like when you display too many
beer glasses it kind of looks bad.
Kind of looks like you drink too much alcohol.
And Dan doesn't drink that much alcohol, but
when you display all of it, it's not that
great, I think.
Anyway, so I'm always secretly recycling them.
Shh.
Don't tell him.
Actually, he knows.
He knows.
Sometimes he'll look up and say, "Hey, where'd
that go?
Oh.
Okay.
I guess there were too many."
So these are some glasses that Dan thinks
are super cool.
All right.
Now we're going to go around the kitchen drawer
by drawer.
I'm going to pull some things out.
You're going to see inside the drawers of
kitchen.
Not so clean, but maybe yours is not so clean
either.
All right.
Inside this drawer there are all of our lids
for our pots and pans.
We haven't looked at our pots and pans yet.
We'll take a look at those in a moment.
They're kind of hanging up in an awkward spot
to film.
But we have like a lid rack so that you can
hold all of the lids.
It's so convenient.
I really like having that.
Down here we have a lot of our baking things.
So there's cookie sheets or baking sheets.
You can use these for baking cookies, for
baking french fries, whatever you want to
cook, baking vegetables.
We also have a ... This is technically called
a cooling rack.
So you can bake cookies and set them here.
And because there is some space, it will cool
the cookies and they won't get too moist.
It'll cool evenly.
But I also use this for baking.
It fits on the sheet perfectly.
I use it when maybe we're baking something
that has a lot of grease, like chicken wings,
something that has a lot of grease and I don't
want my food cooking in the grease.
I'll put that up here and then the grease
will fall down underneath onto the pan.
And it's a little bit healthier and also tastes
good for some things to cook it like that.
Some other baking items that are under here
are different pans for baking different items.
So this is a bread pan but we also have different
casserole dishes.
This is a casserole dish.
It's pretty common in the US to eat casseroles.
I don't know if I've ever actually made one
myself.
Maybe that's more of my parent's generation
making a casserole.
I don't know.
Maybe in colder places in the US they make
casseroles.
It's basically just throwing everything in,
maybe some potatoes, maybe some paste, some
cheese, some broccoli, throwing maybe some
meat and you just kind of bake it together.
It's kind of like a strange lasagna if you
can imagine this kind of idea.
It's kind of an easy thing to make.
So this is a casserole dish, but I use it
for other things, maybe for brownies or for
baking vegetables.
I use it for a lot of different things.
This one is a glass baking dish.
Some people might actually call it by the
brand name.
The brand name is Pyrex.
That's a really common brand name for baking
items.
Sometimes we use that to describe it.
So instead of saying the glass dish we might
say the Pyrex dish.
Not everyone's going to use that.
They might just say the glass dish but you
might occasionally hear that, and that's just
the brand name being used for the item.
Even if it's not that brand name but it's
that same idea, it's a glass dish, you might
hear that used.
Something else that I dug out from the back
of this shelf are two silicone muffin tins.
Now, you might have ... It's more likely to
have metal muffin tins, but I like to make
muffins and it's really annoying to get them
out of the metal muffin tin, and this you
can use less oil on it.
It just comes out so easily.
It's really great and it lasts for a long
time.
It's very easy to clean.
So I have these silicone muffin tins.
You might use that or just something to make
muffins with.
Also in this drawer is a strainer.
Or, this is not a strainer.
This is a steamer, a steamer.
We already saw the strainer, which was up
in the cupboard, and we use that to wash the
vegetables.
This steamer is going to fold up.
It's supposed to fold up.
You can put that in a pan or a pot of steaming
water and you can steam broccoli, you can
steam green beans, you can steam vegetables
in this really easily, steam shrimp.
I use that for all of these things.
I use this steamer basket.
I think these steamer baskets, maybe they're
pretty common around the world, but this folding
metal type, I've had a couple of them and
they always fall apart.
The little leaves on them always fall off,
even if it's a pretty good, brand name steamer
basket.
So I'm curious in your country if you use
this type of thing and if you have better
quality ones.
It's cool that it can fold up, but sometimes
the little leaves get stuck.
Okay, that worked pretty well.
But maybe it's just because I have a two-year-old.
He likes to pull them off and then you find
them around the house.
Not very handy when you have a two-year-old.
Next, lets move on from this cabinet and go
to these drawers.
A cabinet is going to open like this, like
a door, and a drawer, it's a tricky word to
say, is going to open like this.
Well, let's start at the top.
At the top we have silverware.
Some people call this flatware.
It's kind of a restaurant word.
When we're talking about forks, spoons, butter
knives, chopsticks, steak knives, children's
stuff, when we're talking about these items
that you put on the table when you eat, the
most common word is silverware.
It doesn't need to be actually made of silver.
Usually they're not because that takes a lot
of work to keep up.
But we usually call that silverware.
At a restaurant, you might hear the restaurant
staff say flatware.
Or maybe if you work in a really fancy restaurant
or ... Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard
a family call it flatware at home.
I just remember in my home ec class ... Home
ec is home economics where you learn about
baking, and sewing, and all those kinds of
things in high school.
In my home ec class, I remember our our home
ec teacher said, "In this class you will not
call it silverware, you will call it flatware,"
and everyone kind of laughed a little bit
like, "Who says that?
That's so fancy."
But in her class we had to call it flatware,
but I've never used that term since.
So if you're from the US or you have American
friends, I'm curious if you've ever heard
flatware in that kind of casual situation.
All right.
In the next drawer we have some other helpful
items for baking and cooking.
This is kind of our random drawer.
Everyone has stuff like that.
Here we have teaspoons and tablespoons.
So as I mentioned, ovens use ... Maybe I didn't
mention this but ovens use Fahrenheit in the
US.
And instead of using milliliters, and liters,
and these kind of easy measurements, we decided
to do things the hard way in the US and use
tablespoons, which is this measurement or
this one here, this big circle, or teaspoons,
which are these.
There's various increments, half a teaspoon,
a forth of a teaspoon, an eighth of a teaspoon.
Yeah.
If you're using spices, or salt, or you're
baking, that's really essential.
If you're cooking something, like you're making
a soup, I just throw stuff in.
I don't usually measure it, but that's a personal
preference.
We also have some tongs.
Great for picking up out things when you're
cooking them, like corn, when you're boiling
corn.
Great to have this.
We also have a thermometer.
This is a meat thermometer.
I guess you could use it for water, too, or
for soup, other things, but we usually use
this for meat.
On the back of the thermometer it says C/F,
and that's Celsius of Fahrenheit.
So if you buy a meat thermometer in the US,
make sure that you have the right button clicked.
And if you're thinking about the temperature,
what temperature should pork be in Celsius,
make sure that you're showing the Celsius
number.
I've thought about that a lot because sometimes
the wrong one is clicked and in my head I'm
thinking the Fahrenheit number but it's showing
the Celsius number and it's just mixed up.
So make sure that don't get that wrong, especially
with meat.
We also have a meat pounder for pounding chicken,
or steak, or whatever you want to get to be
more tender.
You might see this also called a tenderizer.
It has some knobs on the top, a tenderizer,
but it's for pounding meat.
All right.
Let's go to the next drawer.
In this drawer we have other random thing.
This is a box of drink accessories.
So if you want to make yourself a shot of
some alcohol, if you want to open some wine,
we have a wine opener.
There's also a corkscrew.
That's this little device is a corkscrew.
So you need to put that into the cork, turn
it, and then you can use the wine opener for
this, or you could ... This is a really old
one.
But you could use a bottle opener to open
beer or cider, whatever you're drinking out
of the bottle.
This is a bottle opener and this is a wine
opener.
I also have some wine stoppers because we
don't drink that much wine.
And if we have a bottle of wine, we don't
finish it in one day.
So it's nice to kind of pump the air out.
Our two-year-old likes to play with this a
lot, likes to pump the air out.
And you put the stopper in and it keeps your
wine fresh for longer.
Pretty handy little thing.
We also have a knife sharpener.
This is for our nice, sharp knives, not the
steak knives.
The steak knives, they are serrated.
Serrated means they have little like U marks,
little cuts in them.
Serrated knives are great for cutting tomatoes,
or steak, things like this.
But you cannot sharpen, at least as far as
I know.
You can't sharpen serrated knives, so this
is for our chopping knife or some other knives
that have a smooth blade.
I got this fun little device recently.
Do you know what this is?
Can you guess?
You put a hard boiled egg inside this.
And when you push it down, these little strings
will cut the egg.
I bought this because I saw a toddler using
this to cut hard boiled eggs, and I thought,
"My two-year-old is going to love this."
So I made a bunch of hard boiled eggs and
I peeled them, and he helped me cut them with
this.
It was a hit.
It worked well.
All right.
In this final drawer we have not many options
that you can actually see, but these are Tupperware.
We have some glass Tupperware.
Again, you could say Pyrex dishes.
Technically you could bake, not with the lid,
but you could bake something in this because
it's glass and it's meant for baking.
Usually we have a full drawer of these Tupperware
dishes but we don't have a full drawer of
them right now because we've recently been
making a lot of soup.
And as you saw in our freezer, we have a lot
of leftover soup containers.
So when we make soup, maybe chili, we make
a lot, and then put some in the freezer, and
we use those Tupperware containers to store
it.
And then the next week when we want soup,
we don't have to make it.
You just pull it out of the freezer and bam!
You got dinner.
All right.
Let's move on to the next drawer.
These cabinets are under our sink.
So you can see kind of the sink basins are
here.
And usually under the sink is where you keep
extra soap, maybe some cleaning supplies.
We have trash bags, extra trash bags, extra
little cleaning rags.
It's kind of like a cleaning section.
I'm curious what are some things that you
put underneath your kitchen sink.
This is usually where in the US you'll find
cleaning supplies.
We also have a couple appliances.
This is the blender.
We can blend soups.
We can blend smoothies.
You can blend apple sauce, whatever you're
making in there.
And also rice cooker.
Rice cookers are not common kitchen appliances
in the US, but I don't know why not because
they're so handy.
It's so convenient.
We use ours for cooking rice.
We use it for steaming some potatoes, things
that take a long time.
And it also doubles as a slow cooker.
So this is a special rice cooker that has
a slow cooker button.
You can just put whatever you want to slow
cook.
I'm not sure if this is a type cuisine that
common in other places but in the US it's
really common to cook things in a slow cooker.
A lot of Americans will not have a rice cooker
but they will have a slow cooker.
It looks pretty similar.
Usually it has a glass lid that you can take
off, but it's kind of heavy duty pot.
It's electric, and you can put usually soup
ingredient.
You can put vegetables and broth and you just
push the button.
And after eight hours, usually you go to work,
and you come home, and it's all finished,
and you didn't have to do anything.
It's so great.
So you can use it as a slow cooker.
If you've never heard of a slow cooker, I
recommend looking up some recipes with it.
It's really interesting because slow cookers
have been around for a long time but the idea
of having a good meal cooked without much
time in the kitchen has always been popular.
So a lot of people use slow cookers over all
generations.
It's a pretty cool device to have.
And the next cabinet, pretty nifty.
See how it works.
This opens and, whoa!
This spins.
When we first saw this house, I thought, "Oh,
this so cool.
I can't wait to use this."
The bottom spins, too.
This is just where we keep our dry goods.
So you saw some of the dry goods up on the
shelf.
Those are just kind of some pretty ones for
display.
We do eat those, but it just kind of looks
cool.
In here is where we keep beans, and vinegar,
and tomato paste, and rice, and all of those
things that we use for cooking but we don't
need to keep them on the counter.
A lot of people in the US will have a pantry.
This is like a closet in your kitchen where
you can keep all of these types of things.
In this house we don't have a pantry so we
have this lazy Susan is the term.
It's a rolling cabinet.
It could just be a circle that you put a pot
on and that circle spins.
That's called a lazy Susan.
You might see this at restaurants.
You might have it on your kitchen table.
But this is also called a lazy Susan.
I don't know why.
Poor Susan.
I'm sorry if your name's Susan.
You're not lazy.
It's just a term for this type of cool spinning
shelf, and it's really helpful for being able
to access a lot of stuff and make the most
of your space.
We're almost finished.
Hurrah!
These are the last drawers in my kitchen.
In these drawers we have our most used kitchen
utensils.
I'd like to go through these because they
might be similar to what you have in your
house.
First we have a simple spoon.
This is for stirring things that we're cooking.
This is a garlic press.
Put your garlic in here.
When you press it down, the garlic comes out
those holes and it's nice and fine and juicy.
It's really great.
I hate cleaning this, but it's a really handy
device.
Then we have a whisk.
This is a plastic whisk.
If you can see it, it's a plastic whisk, but
a lot of whisks are metal.
They might have a metal part here to it.
This is a soup ladle.
You can ladle.
We can use it as a verb, too.
I'm ladling the soup with the soup ladle.
This is a soup ladle.
You might call this too a soup spoon, but
you most likely hear it called a ladle.
Next, this is just a little scraper for our
rice cooker.
This came with it, and I like to scoop up
the rice with it.
This isn't so common in other American households.
But if you have a rice cooker, you probably
have something like this.
We also have a can opener.
This is a manual can opener, so you have to
do this by hand.
When I was growing up, my parents had an electric
can opener, and it was a little device that
stuck on one of our cupboards.
They attached a can to it with a magnet and
just pushed a button and it automatically
opened the can.
Pretty cool.
Actually, our cat, the cat that we don't have
anymore, he's 18 years old.
He passed away a couple years ago.
But the cat that I grew up with, he loved
that electric can opener because my dad would
often open cans of tuna with the can opener.
So every time my cat heard the can opener
he would run downstairs and wait.
Please, please, I want tuna.
Please.
And usually my dad would give him some of
the juice or a little piece or something.
But that sound that electric can opener was
linked in the cat's mind with yummy food.
All right.
Next we have some more tongs.
These are shorter tongs, and a vegetable peeler.
I like this kind of vegetable peeler that
has this U shape and the peeler is across
the top.
But in a lot of houses in the US, you're going
to see a flat vegetable peeler and then the
blade kind of comes out like a knife.
I like this kind better.
I think it's easier to use, but maybe you
have something different in your house.
We have a spatula.
Actually, we have two spatulas.
This is a silicone spatula and this is a metal
spatula.
We have some more kitchen scissors.
This is another spatula, but we could use
it for stirring or scrapping.
So you might call it a scraper.
You might call it a spatula.
I think most people would probably call it
a spatula even though technically this, this
device that's flat, it's flatter, you can
flip eggs, you can flip things with this spatula,
and this one is more for mixing, like if you're
mixing some bread dough.
Or if you're mixing something, you might be
more likely to use this, but we'd still call
this a spatula.
If I think of another name for this I'll right
it here, but I'm pretty sure we just call
this a spatula.
I also have a lighter.
Hurrah!
Great for lighting candles and whatnot.
Let's go to the next drawer.
Here are all of our spices.
If you watched our other video from our old
apartment, 150 Household Items, that I mentioned
a couple times, in our old apartment, we used
to have all of our spices on a shelf.
Personally, I prefer that because you can
see the names of all the spices and you don't
have to ... All of these, all I see is the
black lid.
So I have to often pick up each one and see
what is this, what is this, what is this.
So I feel like in the future we'll probably
have a more useful way to store our spices.
Maybe we'll put them on a shelf.
But for now, they are in this drawer with
some tea and some other tea filters, other
types of drink things.
But this is where we store our spices.
Then in the bottom drawer ... This is kind
of a weird angle to show you.
But in the bottom drawer are all of our other
things that we need in the kitchen.
So there are small plastic bags.
Sometimes we use the brand name for this,
this type of bag, and we'll call this a Ziploc
bag.
This is not a brand name Ziploc bag, but some
people call it that, even though you might
not actually use that brand.
Ziploc is the brand.
But you might just use a generic or a store
brand name type thing.
So we have some plastic bags.
I have some reusable cloth bags, some reusable,
sealable plastic bags.
I like to use these for cheese because it's
just nice to have something that you can use
again and again.
There's also some extra garbage bags in here.
I'm curious, what do you think this is called
in English?
There are plenty of names.
But in the US we just call this plastic wrap.
Some people might say cling wrap.
I'm sure there are other names for this.
But putting plastic wrap on something, I've
tried a lot of different natural methods for
using instead of plastic wrap, but really,
plastic wrap is so handy.
It's so handy to use.
We also have in here aluminum foil.
Aluminum foil, and we use that whole name,
aluminum foil.
Might put this on a dish when you're baking
it.
You might put it over the dish to keep it
warm.
It's a lot of different uses for that.
I also have some wax paper or parchment paper.
Technically this is not wax paper.
You'll see in the store a different item for
wax paper but some people call it wax paper.
It's technically parchment paper.
But this is what you can put down on your
cookie sheet on your baking sheet so that
you don't have to clean it up that much.
So usually, I like to put this paper on my
baking sheet to just lessen the mess afterwards.
And last but not least are the pots and pans,
essential for cooking.
Mine are hung up really high.
Right now I'm standing on a chair.
These are up here but it's really nice to
be able to have them hung up.
In our kitchen, we don't have a specific place
where we want to put these.
As you can see, all of our drawers are full
of other things so it's really handy to have
these little hooks up here.
If somebody tall comes to our house, they
just have to watch out and not hit their head.
So we hang up our pots, little pots.
These are stainless steel pots, stainless
steel pans, and we also have a nonstick pan.
That's the coating that's on here is going
to help it to not stick.
On this side, this type of ... I'll take it
off so you can see.
This is called a wok.
You're maybe familiar with this type of item.
This is an old wok.
It's supposed to be nonstick but it is quite
old so it's not exactly nonstick anymore.
But, all of these are pots and pans.
You might also hear something like this get
called a sauce pan because it's small.
Some people call that a sauce pan.
I just call it a pot, a small pot, or a pan.
So there's simple words.
There's more complex words.
I'm sure there's regional words for these
types of things but I hope that it will help
give you kind of a base for your vocabulary.
Thank you so much for joining me for this
kitchen vocabulary lesson.
It also helped me to have an excuse to clean
the kitchen really well.
My kitchen doesn't usually look like this.
So thank you for giving me that opportunity.
I hope that this lesson helped you to expand
your vocabulary.
And now I want to ask you a question.
What are some kitchen items that I didn't
mention?
Or maybe you have some things in your kitchen
that don't exist in American kitchens.
Let me know in the comments, and make sure
that you read other students' comments as
well because you can just keep expanding your
vocabulary.
Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see
you again next Friday for a new lesson here
on my YouTube channel.
Bye.
The next step is to download my free ebook,
Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English
Speaker.
You'll learn what you need to do to speak
confidently and fluently.
Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
for more free lessons.
Thanks so much.
Bye.
