Speaking English: How to Say EVERYTHING in the PANTRY!

This video is a deep-dive on everything you’ll encounter in an American kitchen pantry and how to say it. I have included the IPA for every new vocabulary word so that you can get it exactly right.

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Video Transcript:

Welcome to the Rachel’s English vocabulary lesson: Pantry edition.

I’m Rachel and I’ve been teaching English on YouTube for almost 20 years. Check out rachelenglish.com/free to get my free mini course, The Top Three Ways to Master the American Accent. It will blow your mind.

Let’s go over some foods. Alright, let’s start at the bottom shall we?

Cereal. Now, it’s absolutely the worst thing to send your kid to school with only having eaten something like this but we do it. We do it, it is so hard to break the habit. And I don’t feel good about it but it happens. So here we’ve got cereals, we’ve got granola, we have oatmeal. Who here loves oatmeal? I kind of do. But I have to put brown sugar in it. Um, and then this protein powder. This is basically dehydrated peanuts which you can add to smoothies for a delicious peanuty taste and some protein.

Okay, that’s the bottom. Now you see I have everything labeled. I like to be pretty anal about organization.

Anal this word is so weird in American English. It’s a very normal everyday word to describe someone who like me, really cares about neatness, tidiness and organization. But it has six different meanings all relating to the anus, also known as the butthole.

I like to be pretty anal about organization, and then you know, you put it up and then maybe a month later it’s a total mess. We’re kind of in total mess, the total mess phase right now, but this one says nuts seeds and dried fruit. Let’s see how accurate that is. I’m seeing some dried fruit.

We’ve got soft and juicy mango.

Craisins, that’s dried cranberries.

Pitted prunes. So far the science’s pretty accurate. I have a lot of dried fruit in here.

I bet I also have raisins. Oh, pitted dates. More fried fruit. Dried, dried fruit, not fried, that would be kind of good. Here are the raisins that I was sure we had.

And then we have nuts galore. We have salt and pepper pistachios, roasted salted peanuts, we’ve got walnut halves and pieces, almonds dry roasted and salted. Chopped pecans. We’ve got pine nuts. We’ve got raw pistachios. I used these to make this amazing caramel nut tart. I think I have to put these down or I’m going to drop them all.

Dried apricots, more dried fruit. And then it’s according to this I’m also supposed to have some seeds in here and I do. I have chia seeds. Do you ever, I used to make baby food when I had babies and I would put this in to thicken it up if it got a little bit too runny if I put too much liquid in. What’s this? Nothing, nothing interesting.

Okay, that was drawer two. Moving on up. Now, according to this we’ve got pretzels, crackers chips and snacks. Let’s see. Crackers, check. No chips. Well no, that’s not true. We do have chips, no this is popcorn. Popcorn’s supposed to be up there we don’t have any chips and that’s a win for me because I try to keep chips out of the house. We have this Inca corn snack from Trader Joe’s which I just love. No one wants this, you’re not going to eat this right? You are?

That’s Stony’s.

Oh, okay. Let’s see, we’ve got some Takis. Stony just loves Takis, he loves the Blue Heat.

Peanut butter filled pretzels. This is absolutely one of my favorite snacks. Chex mix, I got to say I love that too. Is this the bold and zesty flavor? No, okay it’s regular but still good.

Some candy because you know, it’s good to have a little something sweet every once in a while. Nutella, this is empty, I’m throwing it out. More candy, what’s this?

Chocolatey cats cookies. Did Stony put this in the shopping cart?

He asked about that one.

Never had these before. And some chocolate, Girl Scout cookies. We love supporting our local Girl Scout troop. I think I need to add like cookies and candy to this label down here. Okay next. We’ve got pasta, we’ve got tuna, we’ve got popcorn. Popcorn, check. Lots of pasta, we’ve got penne pasta, spaghetti, lasagna noodles. We’ve got rotini, made with extra protein. We’ve got rotini, made with red lentils. We’ve got Israeli pearl couscous. We’ve got tuna, just like I said we would find. There’s also more chocolate in here. This chocolate, oh wait, what’s this another shape? Rigatoni. Did I say that one already?

We have orzo too, don’t we? Where’ the orzo end up?

In the chicken soup.

Got all used up. We’ve got some popcorn, this is my absolute favorite pasta, that’s sauce, that’s not homemade. I prefer homemade but if you can’t make it homemade make it Rao’s. This video brought to you by Rao’s. Just kidding.

Alright, pasta check. Don’t you like how organized I am?

Moving on up to pantry number two: rice, barley, cornmeal, lentils, beans, couscous, quinoa, alright, we’ve got some broths in here. Some bone broth and some chicken broth. Backup maple syrup because we love to have sourdough pancakes on the weekends.

I use the term backup here because we already have an open one that we keep in the refrigerator. This is backup. One we can use when that one runs out. Let’s see. We’ve got polenta. I love Polenta. If you have a good Polenta recipe that you love to make with Polenta, send it to me.

More couscous. Pearl barley. This goes in David’s vegetable soups.

Let’s see, I have to get on my tiptoes here.

When you get up on your tiptoes you have to do this to reach something.

Let’s see i have to get on my tiptoes here.

Brown rice, yellow split peas. Yep, that counts. That should be here. Now, what does this say? Masoor Malka.

Red lentils.

Where did you get that?

It’s from my West Philly spot.

This says football lentils on it. I’ve never heard of a football lentil but we’ve got them. Along with split desi chickpeas. I almost said checkpeas, it’s definitely pronounced chickpeas. More polenta, yay. Green lentils. We’re just, we really like legumes in this family.

Legumes or beans, lentils and peas.

We’re just, we really like legumes in this family. Lentil’s a legume, right?

Mhm.

We’ve got, is this purple rice or black rice?

I think it’s black.

Yum. Cornmeal, for when you make a pizza and you don’t want the pizza to stick to the pizza stone. I’ve got to start putting stuff back. The rest is just more of the same. Oh, wait, there’s one other one that I haven’t pulled out yet. Paella rice. Let’s make paella soon. Alright, now is the time where I throw everything back in.

Ready? One, two, three.

That actually works better than I thought it would.

Okay, now, got to get the chair. We’ve got vegetable oil, grape seed oil. Rice vinegar oil and vinegar, we have dried egg whites. This is a little bit of an unusual pantry item but I’ve been trying to eat more protein so I was like let’s try that in a smoothie. We’ve got crackers that are probably so stale because they were lost back there.

Reese’s Pieces, from a couple Halloweens ago. And then we’ve got more rice, we’ve got grits, I absolutely love grits. David makes the best shrimp and grits. Cacao nibs, for you know, if I ever want to make a smoothie bowl. Flax seed meal, for when I was trying out some vegan um recipes, you can make something that sort of works as an egg in baking.

Oat bran, for when I make my own granola. Unflavored gelatin powder, this is another thing I bought when I was trying out being vegan. I’m going to leave that whole bit out because I don’t even know what it is. Ouch.

More oil. David why on earth do we have this much vegetable oil?

That’s for frying.

For deep frying?

Yeah.

I hate the way deep frying makes the house smell.

Baker’s chocolate, which you would never want to eat because it’s so bitter but what do I make? I think a couple of my chocolate cake recipes use this.

Black strap molasses again for my baking adventures and Karo syrup, also for various baking adventures. I think that maybe one of the cookie icings I make calls for this.

Cream of wheat hot cereal. You know sometimes on a cold winter’s day, I just love having this for breakfast.

Coconut flakes, don’t know why I thought I needed that many. Oh wait, there’s more coconut. But these are coconut chips. Slightly different, I’m sure the recipe was like “Get chips not flakes.”

It’s empty, that’s it. Now I know you’re thinking that this is the end of my pantry and that there are no more pantry items to learn, but that’s not true. I have another area where I put pantry items, let’s look.

I also need a stool for this one or a chair. Okay, so the top is where I put stuff that we maybe don’t need quite as much. Chocolate definitely still on a grabbable shelf. But let’s see, up here we have marine collagen for joint health because I am a woman in my mid-40s and this is important. Um, this is not my favorite. Hot chocolate but the kids like it so every once in a while as a treat.

Then we’ve got all sorts of canned beans. We’ve got great northern beans we have chickpeas which are also called garbanzo beans, same thing. Look at this, this one says garbanzo beans and this one says chickpeas and it’s the same thing. Why do we have two words for it? I don’t know.

We’ve got cashew butter. I usually use peanut butter but this is really good in baking i have a cookie recipe that calls for this that’s delicious.

Breadcrumbs in case you’re ever making meatballs.

Enough seaweed to feed an army. Olives. I just love olives right now and we also have Kalamata, another kind of olive. You know sometimes when I make my sourdough bread, I put olives in it and it’s delish.

Then we’ve got various different canned tomatoes. We have whole peeled, we have tomato sauce. We have stewed tomatoes. We’ve got a can of coconut milk. I love making a good Thai curry, got to put this in there. Hearts of palm, delicious on a salad. Also when I was in Mexico City, I had an empanada with hearts of palm in it. It was so good. More broth for making soups. Curry leaf. Green chilies, fire roasted to add a little spice and another soup base, bouillon.

Now, there’s one thing that often goes in a pantry, no, two things that you haven’t seen yet. Baking stuff and spices. Let’s show you.

The bottom drawer down here has all of the baking stuff I need. Flour, which is out because I’m making bread today.

Sugars, I have light brown, regular sugar, also called castor sugar. Powdered sugar for making icings. I have dark brown sugar, I have corn starch, I have turbinado sugar. This is so good to put on top of a fruit pie.

Cocoa, vanilla, baking soda and baking powder and down here, I have other flavorings like peppermint and I also have food coloring gel. You know, it’s so fun to make Christmas cookies with really bright colors.

These are my Christmas cookies from last year. Aren’t they fun? And last but not least, where the flavor happens. By the way, if you’re wondering what’s happening here, I’m in the process of making bread and yes, I am working on a video on that topic. The spice drawer! Okay, David’s a big cook, I’m a big baker so between the two of us we just kind of have to have everything. This is mostly David’s domain.

Domain means the area of knowledge or activity, the area someone is responsible for. So, David’s domain is cooking. He makes our meals. My domain is baking. I make all of our bread, cakes, desserts, muffins, cookies and so on.

This is mostly David’s domain and yeah, he has everything. Anything you could want, he’s got it. He even has more in the refrigerator from the International Food Store in West Philadelphia.

So there you have it folks. The American English lesson on pantry staples. Now, maybe there’s something I don’t have in my pantry and you can’t believe it. What? What is it? Tell me in the comments below.

Keep your learning going now with this video, I love being your English teacher. That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.

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