Speaking English in the Kitchen!

This video has everything you need to feel totally confident speaking English in the kitchen. I’ll teach you verbs, vocabulary and pronunciation.

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Video Transcript:

There’s so much great vocabulary in the kitchen, from objects to food to verbs. Today, we’ll pull together many different lessons relating to the kitchen. First up, some important verbs. Sear, chop, dice, crush, fold.

There are so many vocabulary words, actions, verbs that we do in the kitchen cooking. D o you know how to fold in an ingredient? There’s 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 does fold in the cheese mean?

He folds 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 to 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’s the best place to get a slice around here? Everyone would know 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 Steven 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.

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 cutup is someone who’s trying to be funny, always making jokes. He’s such a cutup. You can also cut in to something.

I’m going to take the drumette, bend the wing down, and cut in.

Chop. When you cut with a 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 wood, like what you would do with an axe 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 smaller pieces.

Let’s chop up some onion.

There’s 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 board games, you know that dice are six-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.

Okay, largest to smallest, we have chopped, diced, minced.

Mince. I am 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 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 or 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 Schitt’s 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 this to mix things without crushing. We do this with light ingredients, like some egg whites that you’ve whipped. So to fold something else into something, you put the light thing 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 where we’re being a lot more gentle. Mix. Mix in. Mix up. Wait. 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. A non-cooking use. You could say we beat the team by two 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 into them to make them fluffy.

 I’m going to add salt to one of them and beat it. And the other..

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 want to just 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 that they don’t burn in one spot. Move them around or:

And you want to just 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 it to kind of start looking translucent. But back to break up. Outside of cooking, we use 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 a noun. The breakup 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 homogeneous 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’s so thoroughly combined and broken down. Fun fact, pulvis is the Latin word for dust. So, you’re turning a solid into a 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, then we’re just going to blend the [_ ] out of it, pulverized 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 the flavor of something across 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. Herb 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 the 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 and you want to get the balance of flavor 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, then 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 these 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 it’s 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 of 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 an enclosing layer. Chef Hila uses coat in passive voice here to show us that all of the pieces of chopped onion need to be completely covered in the oil as it sautes.

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 for the thing called a grater. You can get lots of 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, a verb to compress or squeeze or squish.

I’m just going to kind of crush it up a little bit, bruise it so the oils release.

We use this verb another way. If you want to say that someone is doing an amazing 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’s 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 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. We 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 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’re going to spread them out on the cooking sheet.

Roasting, another cooking verb. Something you do in the oven or over fire for 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. H, it’s so hot. I’m just roasting. Scoop. I am fairly certain that the noun came first here. A scoop or a scooper is utensil like this handle deep bowl to remove something from a container like an ice cream scoop. In a process known as verbing, the noun can also be used as a verb to scoop. I’m scooping some ice cream for us.

I’m going to scoop about a third of a cup, I would say.

As a noun, we also use 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 when you pop the top off of a bottle of champagne, or when you hear your bones pop as you stretch. In the northern part of the US, 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 a verb.

You 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 followed where this is step one. Preheat. This is to heat something like an oven or 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 a recipe. Bake. To cook food using dry heat without direct exposure to a flame. To specify a temperature and duration, we say bake at degrees for 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, so on. You want to crisp the edges of the bacon or bake the casserole until the top is lightly crisped.

Okay, let’s go in the opposite direction now. Cool. This is to bring the temperature down.

But we’re going to let this cool for about 5 minutes before…

That usually just means to remove from heat, not necessarily to put it 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 water 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° F. 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. Oh, you don’t need to thaw it.

Thought. The opposite of freeze. To bring something frozen back to a warmer temperature. Room temperature.

Oh, you don’t need to thaw it.

There are several ways to thaw frozen food. Leave it on the counter until it comes 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 5 minutes because everything’s already cooked. You’re just trying to get the cheese to melt.

Melt. To make something a 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 may 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°. 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 at the bottom of the pot. Then the food rests in the upper pot and the steam comes up through 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 pot pie. It was so good. That called for steeping dried porcini mushrooms.

And I have mint that I’m just going to steep in it once it’s done.

Remember this clip?

You don’t want it to brown, but you want it to kind of start looking translucent.

Here, Hilah is sautéing rice. Sauté is to cook food quickly with a little bit of fat over a 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 to 550°. 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, 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?

Yep. Going to be smoked for about 7 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 you’re cooking meat. David said he didn’t need to sear it, but he was going to smoke it. When you smoke something, you expose it not just to heat, but smoke to flavor the meat. This is how he does it.

Couple 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 the coals.

Grilling is really usually about direct heat. So the meat being right over top of the coals. Barbecue is more indirect heat. So the smoke is going to kind of waft around past it. And then you’ll see the smoke kind of like pass over to that side and the air kind of starts 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. And I would say it was not just smoked, but it ended up a little bit 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 off the heat. 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 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.

Okay, 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.

I’m Rachel. I have a background in opera singing, and I’ve been teaching the American accent to non-native speakers for over 20 years. Scan this QR code or go to rachelenglish.com/free to get my free course, The Top Three Ways to Master the American Accent. It will blow your mind. It will give you totally new ideas on how to get the sound you’ve always wanted. 

In this English lesson, we’re going to study real English conversation as I bake cookies with my friend Laura.

Wow, it must be good, guys.

I’m Rachel and I’ve been teaching English and the American accent on YouTube for over 15 years. Get my free course, The Top Three Ways to Master the American Accent at rachelenglish.com/free or follow the link in the video description.

The first thing we do is gather and prep. That’s short for prepare. Prep our ingredients.

So here, yes, I I wrote the double out for everything because otherwise

Sometimes you forget.

You forget. Yes. Okay.

So, we’re doubling the recipe. And I wrote out double the amount of ingredients that we would need. If we were going to make less cookies, we might have the recipe. That is, cut it in half. Even though that word is spelled with an L, have, it’s pronounced just like the word have. I’m going to double the recipe. I’m going to have the recipe.

Oh, also it says that we want to sift. Do you have a sifter?

No.

Okay. Do you have one of those?

I use a call a very fine–

Fine mesh sieve. Siv sieve. I don’t even know.

Siv sieve, could be either one.

Mhm. I don’t say it enough to really bother with figuring it out.

You know what? Let’s look it up. Let’s get the official pronunciation.

So, I looked this up. I only found one pronunciation. It’s IH like sit. So, it’s siv, not seev. Sieve.

Okay. Flour. Two and 3/4 cup plus one tablespoon.

Flour. Just like halve sounds like have, flour sounds like flower. The two words have the exact same pronunciation even though they’re two different words with different spellings and different meanings. Words like this in English are called homophones. I have a long video that goes over a list of many, many common homophones in English. I’ll link to that in the video description.

Okay. I said two and 3/4 cups. Do you guys buy your flour in bulk?

No, we could. We could at the co-op, but we don’t.

I buy these 50-pound bags from webrestaurantstore.com.

50 pounds?

Yeah. And even though I keep it in the garage in a bin, even though it’s like sort of pricey to have it shipped, the overall cost is like half buying 5 pound bags at the grocery store.

Pricey is another way to say kind of expensive or a little expensive. Okay, I did two cups. Now I’m doing a three quarter cup. And then I’m going to do one tablespoon.

I’m going to go ahead and say let’s skip the sifting because it’s not even the flour. It’s just the baking soda and the baking powder.

We’re going to skip the sifting. We’re not going to do it. Leave that step out. Do you ever get a little lazy like this when baking or cooking? If you love to bake as much as I do, put your favorite thing to bake in the comments.

Okay, soda. We need so many different sizes. So, one wait, this is powder. Okay, so powder. I need one and a half. Oo, good thing I caught that. Almost messed that up. Okay, soda.

Since we’ve measured all our dry ingredients, now we need to get the wet ingredients. Butter, peanut butter, vanilla.

Peanut butter is my favorite food.

Oh my god, it’s so good. That’s a good brand, too. That’s not that full, Laura. It’s two-thirds cup.

You want it like bulging over?

I’m just I’m seeing that rim there.

So, this is me being very particular about the measurements. I said, “I see that rim there,” which to me says it’s not full enough. Laura asks if I want it bulging. Bulging is when something is too big for its container. I don’t really want it to be bulging over. I just want it to be perfectly lined up with the top.

All right.

Bulging over. So many good vocab words.

How’s that? Does that meet your standards?

Yeah, I feel better about that. I mean, we just said it’s our favorite food like.

True. Let’s not skimp.

Skimp means the same thing as scrimp, which means to use sparingly, to be restrictive, not to use much. If you love peanut butter, you don’t want to skimp on peanut butter.

75 grams of egg white. I think I’m going to have to crack one egg white for like five grams and then we’ll just put it in with the other egg and we’ll fry it up for a kid.

Fry up is a phrasal verb that just means the same thing as fry. Let’s fry up some potatoes for dinner. That’s the same thing as let’s fry some potatoes for dinner. Fry up.

75 Exactly.

Did you notice how I said exactly? You’ll almost always hear that word with no T sound. Exact-ly, exactly. 75. Exactly.

Are you kidding me?

No. This is perfect.

That never happens.

Okay. Then it actually went up to 76 right after I said that.

Are your parents big bakers slash cookers slash–

Totally not. Neither of them likes to do either of those things.

Neither and either. These two words have two different pronunciations in American English. Neither. Neither and either. Both pronunciations are common.

Totally not. Neither of them likes to do either of those things.

So, do they eat a lot of like takeout or–

Yeah, they also eat a lot of um, like cheese and crackers and hummus and veggies, like snacky meals.

Now, we’re working on the buttercream filling. And then we’re going to sprinkle it with 3 tablespoons of water. So yeah, it’ll be it’ll be about a cup total of content.

Ugh, one over 43.

This is something that just happens when I’m with Laura. Random rhythms, made up songs, dancing. They just happen.

Spontaneous dance party.

We measure the dough to make sure we’ve rolled it out at just the exact right thickness. We cut our circles. Then it’s time to pipe.

What are you doing?

No, I just meant like–

What’s that?

Oh, we’re filling the bag with the frosting. I just meant like give me a Yeah, give me a something. Oh, just got on your shirt. No, just use your finger and get a little flip off. Good. Right. Peanut butter frosting.

Let’s fill these babies. Let’s use the piping bag and pipe in our frosting.

Pipe is a noun. Something you smoke out of or a cylinder for moving water, gas, steam. As a verb, it has lots of meanings. One of them is what we’re doing here. Forcing dough or frosting through a pastry bag.

 Ooh, that’s satisfying.

 Putting them on. Okay, David, please try it and tell me what you think.

Wow, that’s special.

So special, right?

I’m taking mine after Tony.

Okay, Sawyer, have a bite.

This is my first bite of the cookie. Now, Laura.

I already had a little nibble.

She started.

Oops.

Wow. It must be good, guys.

It’s really peanut butter.

The cookie is less crispy than I thought it would be.

It’s a little crumbly.

Mhm.

The frosting though. And the flavor of the cookie. Yeah. And like the peanut pieces in there.

Yeah.

That’s nice.

Yum.

Wow. What fun it is to get together with Laura every year and try new recipes.

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. All right, 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 and 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 Rayos. 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 mala red lentils.

Where did you get that?

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 are beans, lentils, and peas.

We’re just We really like legumes in this family. Lentils 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. Mmm.

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. Bread crumbs in case you’re ever making meatballs. Enough seaweed to feed an army.

Olives. I just love olives right now. And we also have calamata, 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?

 

Okay, time to make the caramel sauce.

Caramel.

They’re all okay. They’re all okay.

Mhm.

Okay.

Mhm. This tasty word can be pronounced three ways. Caramel, caramel, or caramel. Each pronunciation is accepted, and you will find all three of these pronunciations listed in the dictionary. Here’s what it says. Whisk in a medium saucepan. Now, it doesn’t say oh, over medium low heat.

Okay.

Okay.

I’ll do that.

Okay.

Notice how we respond to each other. Mkay and okay. These are both common variants of the word okay. This word is used a lot in conversational English. It can be used to say I understand, I’m listening. Which is how Laura and I both use it here.

Over medium low heat.

Okay.

Okay.

I’ve read a part of the recipe and we’re both saying I understand that. Then she offers to take care of it and I say okay again, here, meaning I understand.

I’ll do that.

 Okay.

We also use it for yes.

Will you add the sugar?

Okay.

Over medium low heat.

Okay.

Okay.

I’ll do that.

Okay.

Here’s what it says. So we do this until the sugar is dissolved. Then we add the butter, which I put out on the counter over here.

 A whole stick.

 Mhm.

 Just light on the butter.

Yeah. It’s, you know, it’s not This, this pie is not very high in calories. So, that’s nice.

False.

False. I’ve said something here that’s not true. It’s false. I’m not being serious. The pie is very high in calories. Listen to the different ways you can say I’m not being serious.

False. I’m joking. I’m being facetious. I’m just kidding. How else could you say that?

 She’s joking.

Did you already say that?

I did say that.

I’m pulling your leg.

I’m pulling my leg.

Yeah, I’m pulling your leg. It’s a high in calorie pie.

Okay, so um I’m just joshing you.

Where does that one come from that one?

I’m just joshing. You could say that. I’m just joshing. Dang. Don’t get upset. I’m just joshing.

I’m joking. I’m being facetious. I’m just kidding. I’m pulling your leg. I’m just joshing. All of these things mean what I’m saying should not be taken seriously or literally. I could have also said, “I’m just playing or I’m playing.” The word just in all of these phrases can be used, but doesn’t have to be used. A note on the pronunciation of the word just. If it’s followed by a word that begins with a consonant, the T will usually be dropped. For example, I’m just kidding. Just kidding. Straight from the S sound into the K with no T.

False. I’m joking. I’m being facetious. I’m just kidding. I’m pulling your leg. It’s a high in calorie pie. I’m just joshing you. Where does that come from?

Don’t use that one.

You want to grab the stick of butter?

Yeah.

So, every fall for what, how many years have you been doing this?

Well, we’ve lived here since 2010 and it probably started–

No way. Here?

No way. Here? No way. What does that mean? That means I can’t believe what she’s saying. I don’t think it’s true. And it turns out I misunderstood. I thought she meant she had been living in that house since 2010, but she meant she’d been living in the town since then.

Well, we’ve lived here since 2010, and it probably started in Northampton.

Sevenish years.

Six or seven years.

I said sevenish years while Laura said six or seven years. Ish something you might hear put at the end of a word to show approximation.

Sevenish years.

Six or seven years.

Yeah. Every fall I come up to Laura’s house and we have a fall baking weekend. And actually we’ve made lots of videos from the fall baking weekend. So I will put a link to that playlist in the comments below. Also right here. Just click the eye. They’re really fun.

They are.

At least we have fun.

We have fun.

We keep on working on the sauce for that pie. Adding butter and then adding cream.

 Okay. Are you ready to whisk? I think I’m supposed to add this really slowly. Am I supposed to keep whisking or of stirring?

There. We’re both unsure of what the recipe says. We both use the phrase supposed to. We both reduced this phrase to supposed to. We reduced it from three syllables to two. This is really common. The s and t can either be pronounced st, supposeta or zd, spouzda.

I think I’m supposed to add this really slowly. Am I supposed to keep whisking or stirring? All right. Here we go. Whoa.

Whoa.

Steam bomb the camera.

Okay. So, now we’re slicing the apples. We’re using a machine to make it a little easier. Are you going to put them in here then?

 Yeah.

Okay.

There are always lots of reductions in American English. Let’s look at the ones I just used. We are contracts to we and is often pronounced were in conversation. It’s really fast and it sounds just like this word were. I use that contraction twice here. So now we’re slicing the apples. We’re using a machine to make it a little easier. Are you going to put them in here then?

Yeah.

Okay.

You going to put them in here? Then some more reductions. The word are at the beginning was dropped. We need that word to be grammatically correct, but it is sometimes dropped in spoken English. Going to became gonna the th was dropped in them. Put them becomes put. Put them. No th and a flap t to connect the two words. Put them. Put them.

 Are you going to put them in here then?

Yeah.

Okay.

Alright. Watch this. Do its magic. Love it. They come out the bottom totally thin sliced. Let’s put the lemon juice in.

Let’s put the lemon juice in. The word let’s is really unclear. It’s very common to drop the beginning and basically just make the ts sound. Let’s put the lemon juice in. T. That’s, it’s and what’s can also make this reduction. We we’re just putting the t s sound in front of the next word. See this video for further examples and explanation.

Let’s put the lemon juice in. And the baby’s up. Okay, let me go get him.

Let me go get him. A couple reductions here. Let me becomes lemme, and the h is dropped in him. Dropping the h in this word is a really common reduction. When we do this, it sounds just like when we dropped the th in them. Get him becomes get’em. Just like put them was put’em. The flap t links the words and the reduction of them and him are the exact same sounds schwa and m. Get’em. Put’em.

Okay, let me go get them. Can you look right there? Say hi. I just had a nice nap. Can you say hey everybody? You want to try that? Hey everybody. You want to try? No. Okay.

Can I go ahead and put the apples in there?

Yeah. Dump them in.

Dump them in. Them is reduced again. Dump’em. Dump’em.

Yeah. Dump them in.

I’m going to take you down to daddy.

I’m going to take you down to daddy. I’m going to got reduced. With our most common words and phrases, we tend to do the most dramatic reductions. Muna. There’s almost an idea of I in front of it, but not really. I’muna, I’muna take you down to daddy. I made a video where I go over this reduction and more examples. Click here or in the description below to see that video. I’m going to take you down to daddy.

Alright.

All of them?

Let me read ahead. Yeah. All of them.

Okay.

I love how when you start paying attention to a particular reduction, you constantly hear it. Did you catch the reductions of them here? We’re talking about the apple slices.

All of them.

Let me read ahead. Yeah. All of them.

Okay.

All of them. Nice them reduction, Laura.

All of them.

Mhm.

I like it. Linking with the V.

Okay.

Then we mixed the apples in with the other dry ingredients. We packed the apples into our pie shell and drizzled on the caramel sauce, which got too thick as it cooled. We overcooked it. And finally, we make the lattice top for the pie. I had some problems and I kept messing it up.

I put it What? What is wrong with me? I am like really screwing up.

Really screwing up. Screw up is a phrasal verb which means to do something the wrong way or to do a bad job with something. I screwed up the pie crust. You could also say mess up. I messed up the pie crust.

Really screwing up. Going to have to wipe that off. Oh darn. I have to eat that caramel sauce. This is weird, Laura. Last time I made this, it seeped in much more. So when because look when I’m doing the lettuce now when I pull it up it’s like bringing up all this.

It’s thicker.

It’s weird.

I got to say right now I’m like I’m feeling embarrassed about how this is turning out.

Turn out. Another phrasal verb as I’m using it here. It means how something develops or ends. I’m not happy with how it’s going. I’m embarrassed with the end result of my pie.

I got to say right now I’m like I’m feeling embarrassed about how this is turning out.

I finished making the top and we put it in the oven. And the final scene, of course, needs to be trying the pie.

It’s out of the oven. Looking good. Laura, how are you feeling about it?

I’m feeling great.

Oh, also we made a pumpkin pie.

I’m also feeling great about that.

From scratch with the pumpkin. We made whipped cream. Big deal. And Dana made chocolate dipped macaroons. Macaroon or macaron?

To clarify, this is a macaroon. And this is a macaron, which is also pronounced macaron.

I don’t know. I’ll look it up and I’ll let everyone know. Okay, let’s cut this pie. Who wants a little bit of apple?

If you’d like to recreate this pie, it really is amazingly delicious. Please see the link in the video description below. It’s from my favorite pie book, the 4 and 20 Blackbirds book. I’m going to have a caramelly taste.

So good.

It turned out well. That’s it, guys.

Okay, so I didn’t get too much footage in the store, but did you hear what that melon was called? It’s called watermelon. Probably my favorite melon. Watermelon is a compound word, and with compound words, we put stress on the first word. In this case, it’s the word water. That’s actually a pretty tough word and I have a whole fun video on how to pronounce that word. I’ll be sure to put a link to that video at the end of this one. We have a flap t and water then the word melon. There’s secondary stress on mel. So the main stress is on wa, water-melon. Don’t let that ON ending fool you. It’s a schwa, said very quickly. Watermelon. Watermelon. Try that with me. Watermelon.

Delicious looking watermelon.

There’s a good one.

We actually bought a bunch of fruits and took them home. So, let’s go back to my kitchen. But first, let’s take a look at the word fruit. It has the fr consonant cluster, fr, fr, then the oo vowel fr and the t. The ending t will be a stop t if it’s at the end of a thought group or followed by a consonant. Fruit, fruit. It will be a flap t if it links into a vowel or diphthong. Fruit in, fruit in, fruit in, fruit in the salad.

Apple. Apple.

Apple. We have two letter P’s in this word, but together they make just one P sound. The second syllable is unstressed and it’s just the dark L, uhl, uhl, Apple. Apple. For the stressed vowel, A. You may find you pronounce it better if you lift your upper lip just a little bit. A. Back of the tongue should be lifted. Apple. Say it with me. Apple.

Apple.  

David ate our last banana. So, here’s a photo of a banana.

Banana. This word is spelled with three a’s, but we don’t pronounce them all the same way because of syllable stress. The stressed syllable in this word is the second one. Nae, which has the a as in bat vowel sound, banana. Because the a vowel comes before the nasal consonant n, it’s not a pure a vowel. We’ll relax it into the a vowel before n. Banana. Banana. Banana. Banana. The other two syllables are unstressed and use the schwa, ba,na, ba, na, na, banana. Say that with me. Banana.

David ate our last banana. So here’s a photo of a banana.

Blackberry, strawberry, blueberry. Not pictured, raspberry. So here we have three berries. Berry is a two-syllable word with stress on the first syllable. It has the e vowel followed by r. This sound combination is tricky because the r changes e a little bit. We don’t have as much jaw drop as we would for a pure e vowel. E, air, bear, bear, E. You can see I’m dropping my jaw more for the pure vowel. Berry, berry. I mentioned four kinds of berries.

Blackberry, strawberry, blueberry. Not pictured. Raspberry.

Blackberry. Strawberry. Blueberry. and raspberry. These are all four compound words. With compound words, stress is always on the first word. Black, blue, straw, raz, blackberry, blueberry. In all four of these three syllable words, the first syllable is stressed. Blackberry, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry. Notice the P in raspberry is silent. We don’t say it at all. Say these with me. Blackberry. Strawberry. Blueberry. Raspberry.

Blackberry. Strawberry. Blueberry. Not pictured. Raspberry.

A similar word to berry is pear. Bear. Pear. I didn’t get a video clip of a pear, but this is a picture of a pear. Sometimes we use the term pear-shaped to describe a body. Bigger through the thighs and hips and more tapered up top. Pear. Pear is just like bear except the first sound is unvoiced instead of voiced. BB- pear. Pear. Less jaw drop than we would have for a pure e. Pear.

Cantaloupe. We took video of in the store pictures of. I couldn’t find that video of the cantaloupe. So, here’s an image. It has that rough skin and that sweet soft orange meat inside. Cantaloupe. This is a word that will teach you not to trust English spelling. The first syllable is stressed. It uses the a as in bat vowel. Just like with banana, it’s not a pure ah because it’s followed by n. Can relax the back of the tongue. We get that uh sound. Can, can, cantaloupe. You probably notice I’m not pronouncing the t like in the words interview and intermission. The t is often dropped after n. You just pronounce the n. Cantaloupe. Cantaloupe. You can make the true tea. Cantaloupe. Cantaloupe. But listen to how I said it in the kitchen when I wasn’t thinking about pronunciation.

Cantaloupe. We took video of in the store, pictures of.

Cantaloupe. I dropped the t. The spelling of the last syllable can also cause confusion. This is the O as in no diphthong. And the final e is silent. Lope. Lope. Cantaloupe. Try that with me. Cantaloupe.

Cantaloupe. We took video of in the store pictures of.

Cherries. Not to be confused with a cherry tomato. Cherries.

Cherry. This is just like berry except it starts with the ch consonant. Ch. Cherry. Two syllables with stress on the first syllable. Chair. The first syllable sounds just like a chair you sit in. Chair. Chair. Cherry. Say that with me. Cherry.

Cherries. Not to be confused with a cherry tomato. Cherries.

I talked about a cherry tomato. That’s a kind of tomato that’s small like a cherry. We’ll go over the pronunciation of tomato later when we study vegetable vocabulary in another video. You know, I didn’t get a good video of grapes. We have green grapes and red grapes and also concord grapes. Grapes can have seeds or not. Grapes has the gr cluster. Lip position doesn’t matter for the G. So, your lips will already be rounding for the R. Gr, gr, gra, A diphthong, PS cluster. Grapes. Grapes.

Red. Green. Both of these begin with the R or an R cluster. So again, lip rounding. Red. Green. Grapes. Red grapes. Green grapes. Concord grapes make great juice. Great jams. And I even have a great pie recipe for concord grapes. Stress is on the first syllable. K, consonant, a vowel, then the ng sound. Concord. The letter n is usually pronounced as ng when it’s followed by g or k. So the back of the tongue lifts to touch the soft pallet to make the ng sound. Concord. Then a quick unstressed syllable k sound, schwa R. Cord, cord, cord, conquered, concord grape. Red grapes, green grapes, concord grapes. Say these with me. Red grapes, green grapes concord grapes.

I have an orange and a grape fruit. Let’s slice them open. Not pictured, tangerine. There are actually lots of different citrus fruits Aren’t there too, oops. Too many to put in one video about fruits. Okay, so here you can really see the difference. First of all, size, but the grapefruit is that beautiful pink color inside. And then orange is more orange.

Orange, grapefruit, tangerine, citrus. Orange. This word is known for having nothing that rhymes with it. It’s pronounced with the O as in law vowel. And when that’s followed by R, it’s not pure. We round the lips more. We pull the tongue back more. Or, or. The second syllable is unstressed and said quickly. Or, ange, ange, ange. Super fast, IH vowel, N and then a J sound. Or-ange, orange. Say that with me. Orange.

I have an orange and a grapefruit.

Grapefruit. A compound word of two words we’ve already studied. Grape and fruit. Do you remember what we said about stress in compound words? It’s the first word that’s stressed. So, grape. Grapefruit. P is a stop consonant. And we usually don’t release stop consonants when followed by another consonant. Grape-fruit. Notice my lips came together for the P, but I didn’t P, release the air before going to the F. Grape fruit. Grapefruit. Say that with me. Grapefruit.

I have an orange and a grapefruit. Let’s slice them open. Not pictured, Tangerine.

Tangerine. a three-syllable word with stress on the last syllable. Tangerine. So, the first two syllables are said a little more simply. Tanger. Tanger. Tanger. Tangerine. Tanger. When the a vowel is followed by n like in this first syllable, remember it’s not pure. Tan, tan, tan, tanger, tanger, tanger, Tangerine. Tangerine. Tanger-ine. Tangerine.

Say that with me. Tangerine. Tangerine.

Let’s slice them open. Not pictured. Tangerine. There are actually lots of different citrus fruits.

Citrus. The S sound is in there twice at the beginning and the end. Once it’s made with the letter C and once with the letter S. In the middle, we have the tr cluster. It’s pretty common to turn the t into a ch in the tr cluster. Do you hear a ch? Citrus. C. C. Citrus. Citrus. First syllable stress. Say that with me. Citrus.

I have an orange and a grapefruit. Let’s slice them open. Not pictured. Tangerine. There are actually lots of different citrus fruits, aren’t there? Too Oops. Too many to put in one video about fruits.

Another word that I didn’t get a video for is kiwi. Unlike many words in English, this word is pronounced just like it looks like it should be pronounced. E vowel in both syllables. First syllable is stressed. Kiwi. Kiwi. Say that with me. Kiwi.

Lemon. We also have limes. Lemon and lime.

Lemon. A two syllable word with stress on the first syllable. The L is a light L because it begins the word. Then we have the E as in bed vowel. Le, Lemon. The last syllable uses the schwa though you don’t really need to think about it. You can just move from M into N. M. The schwa will happen automatically. Lemon. Lemon. Say that with me. Lemon.

Lemon. We also have limes. Lemon and lime.

Lime. One syllable using the I as in buy diphthong. This is another light L because L is at the beginning of the word lie. Lie. Then the M consonant. Lime. Lips come together. Lime. Try that with me. Lime.

Lemon. We also have limes. Lemon and lime.

Mango. Let’s cut this one open. Mangoes are really hard to cut because they have that huge pit in the middle.

They’re really sweet. This one’s organic.

Mango, pit, organic. When we learned the word banana, I said how the a vowel is not pure before an n sound. Nan. The a vowel is also not pure before an ng consonant. A pure vowel would sound like this. A, ma, Mango. Mango. But we say mango. Mango. So before ng, the a vowel changes to a sound that’s more like the a diphthong. Mango. Mang, mang, ang, mango. So we have the ng sound, then a hard g. Mango. Mango. Stress is on the first syllable. Mango. Try that with me. Mango.

Mango. Let’s cut this one open. Mangoes are really hard to cut because they have that huge pit in the middle.

I said pit here. And earlier I said seed when I was talking about grapes. Pit and seed. With pit, we have the p consonant, ih as in sit vowel, and the t. Ending t’s are stop t’s if they’re at the end of a thought group or followed by a consonant. Pit, seed, s consonant, e vowel, and the d consonant. Seed sounds longer than pit, doesn’t it? That’s because of the voiced ending versus unvoiced ending. The unvoiced sound t makes the word a little shorter. Pit. The voiced ending d makes the vowel a little longer. Seed. Pit. Seed. Say those with me. Pit. Seed.

Mangoes are really hard to cut because they have that huge pit in the middle.

They’re really sweet. This one’s organic.

Organic. Not using artificial chemicals when growing the fruit. A three syllable word with middle syllable stress. Just like with orange, the first syllable has a modified a vowel where the lips round more than normal, or, or, organic. The stressed syllable is just like banana, nan, where the a vowel is more like ae, ae, organic, because it’s followed by an n. Organic. Try that with me. Organic.

They’re really sweet. This one’s organic.

Peach. It’s like a nectarine, but it’s fuzzy. Peach.

Peach and nectarine. Peach is one syllable with the e as in she vowel. P. Peach. The final consonant is the ch sound. Peach. Say that with me. Peach. Nectarine. Just like tangerine. It’s a three-syllable word with stress on the last syllable. Nectarine. Notice the middle syllable is really short. There’s really no vowel sound there. Nectar. The schwa gets absorbed by the R. Nectar. Nectarine. Say that with me. Nectarine.

Peach. It’s like a nectarine, but it’s fuzzy. Peach.

I didn’t get a video clip of a pineapple, but that’s another compound word. We’re getting lots of compound words with the fruits. Stress on the first word here, pine. Pineapple. Pine using the I as in buy diphthong. Some students have trouble pronouncing this diphthong before the n consonant. Make sure you finish the movement of the diphthong before lifting the front of the tongue for the n. Pi, N, pin,. pine. Then the word apple unstressed. Pineapple. Pineapple. Say that with me. Pineapple.

Plum. Here I have four plums. Plum.

Plum. One syllable word with the uh as in butter vowel. PL cluster. Plum. Plum. A light escape of air with the lips while the tongue tip is at the roof of the mouth for the L. Pl, pl, plum. This word is a homophone with a different word plum. Spelled with a B, but pronounced exactly the same way. The B is silent. Plum. Say that with me. Plum.

Plum. Here I have four plums. Plum.

Have you ever found yourself telling someone where something is?

Rachel, where are those scripts?

I put them in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in the office. Where’s the lens cap?

I put it in a basket on the table next to the door.

These phrases are important and useful, and today we’re going to go over a bunch of different phrases you’ll want to know in these situations. Luckily, the other night I happened to find myself in my kitchen and I couldn’t remember where anything was. Let’s get started. First, we’re going to hear a bunch of different phrases where David is directing me around the kitchen.

Hey, David, where’s the silverware?

In the drawer next to the sink.

Oh, right. Perfect. Thank you. Where’s the ladle?

In the drawer to the right of the stove.

Oh, right. Perfect.

Where’s that big silver mixing bowl?

It’s above the refrigerator.

Oh. Oh, yeah. There it is.

Where’s the trash?

 It’s in the cabinet. Under the sink.

 Under the sink. Great. Thank you.

Where are the glasses?

In the cabinet to the left of the sink.

Oh, yes. Thank you. Where are the muffin tins?

In the drawer below the oven.

Oh, below the oven. I didn’t know there was a drawer there. Awesome.

David, where’s the tin foil?

In the middle drawer on the island.

Oh,

Hey, David. Where are those cookie cutters?

On the second shelf. In the middle cabinet.

Middle cabinet. Second shelf. Yes. Thank you. Sarah gave me these.

Hey, David, where are the other vases?

On the top shelf of the cabinet to the left of the stove.

Oh, okay. Oh, I can’t reach that.

David, where are the serving spoons

In the island?

Oh, no. All the way to the left.

Oh.

Okay, let’s talk about all the different phrases that were used. First, we’ll talk about phrases like in the drawer, in the cabinet, and then we’ll talk about phrases like to the left of, under the, and so on. What are the places you heard where things can be in the kitchen? We have: in a drawer, in a cabinet, in the island, and on a shelf. These are the containers. In a bedroom, you might also have a dresser or a nightstand. In an office, you might have a filing cabinet or a desk or a bookcase. When we’re speaking generically, we use the article uh, an indefinite article, which we pronounce with the schwa. Uh, it’s in a drawer. Uh, a, a drawer. I’m not saying which drawer, so I use a. But David used the definite article ‘the’. That’s because he was telling me specifically where things were. The exact drawer.

In the drawer next to the sink.

Oh, right.

In the drawer. In the drawer. Which word is the most clear in that phrase? It’s drawer. In and the are function words. They’re less important. We say them quickly and you should as well. Don’t make every word of equal importance in American English. You will not sound natural. Take in and the and pronounce them like David did quickly. In the. Listen again.

In the drawer next to the sink.

In the drawer–

In the, in the, in the. I have a video that goes over the phrase in the and other function word phrases with the. You’ll learn tips and tricks to make these phrases really quickly. I’ll put a link to that video at the end of this video. In the drawer. Okay. Drawer. That’s a pretty hard word. We start with the dr consonant cluster, D. Dr. can sound like JR, J. Drawer. Many Americans pronounce it this way. So, if it’s easier for you to think of JR, J, drawer, then do so. For the R consonant, the tongue should be pulled back and up a bit so the tip isn’t touching anything. Durrr. See that the lips flare a bit. Durrr. Next, we have the a as in law plus R consonant. Draw. I made a video on the word quarter, which also has the O plus R combination. I explained that when the A vowel is followed by R, the tongue is further back and the lips round more than when the A vowel is not followed by the R. So, it’s draw, O. See how the lips round? The tongue pulls back in the mouth. Draw. At the end of the video, I’ll put a link to the video on the word quarter. For the R at the end of the word, we actually bring the tongue up a bit more forward. Again, drawer. It should be lifted so the middle is close to or lightly touching the sides of the middle of the roof of the mouth. Drawer. Drawer. Drawer. In the drawer. Keep in the short and drawer longer and clearer. In the drawer. Do that with me. In the drawer.

What about cabinet? It’s a three syllable word, but many Americans drop the middle syllable. Listen to David.

In the cabinet to the left of the sink.

Cabinet.

Cabinet. Two syllables. You can do this, too. Why not make it a little easier? cabinet. The back of the tongue comes up for the K consonant touching the soft pallet. K. Next is the a vowel. Jaw drop. Back of tongue lifted. CA. Cab. Lips come together for the B. Cab. Then the tongue goes to the roof of the mouth for the N and quickly flaps down for the vowel, then right back up for the T. Cabinet. cabinet. The second syllable should be shorter. Notice I’m stopping the air. I’m not releasing the T. Cabinet. But cabinet. This T is a stop T if it’s at the end of a sentence or if there’s a pause or break after it. It will be a flap T. R if it links to a word that begins with a vowel or diphthong like cabinet under. Cabinet under. So something can be in a drawer and it can be in a cabinet. Remember in the or in a should be really quick.

But we want to use on with shelf. Listen to David.

On the second shelf in the middle cabinet.

Just like in the, on the, or on a, should be very fast. Shelf begins with the sh consonant she. Then we have the E as in bed vowel and dark L. Shelf. Drop the jaw for the E vowel. She. The tongue lifts a bit in the middle. She. Then we have the dark L. Shel. The back of the tongue presses back to get this sound. Uhl, uhl. Shel. Notice how the jaw relaxes back up. Shel. And finally, the f consonant. The bottom lip comes up so the inside of it vibrates against the bottom of the top front teeth. Shelf. Shelf.

Something can also be on the counter. Did you see the coffee pot? It was on the counter. Note, with this word, some Americans drop the T after N, so it sounds like counter. The coffee pots on the counter. I usually pronounce it this way. Counter. Counter.

Now, we have a different set of phrases to tell the specific location. Listen to the different locator phrases that David uses.

In the drawer next to the sink.

Next to.

In the drawer to the right of the stove.

To the right of.

In the cabinet to the left of the sink.

To the left of.

In the middle drawer on the island.

In the middle.

No. All the way to the left.

All the way to the left.

It’s above the refrigerator.

Above. He could also have said on top of. On top of the refrigerator.

It’s in the cabinet under the sink.

Under.

Under is the same as below.

In the drawer below the oven.

 Below. For shelves or drawers, you can say first. Second. Top. Bottom.

On the second shelf in the middle cabinet.

On the top shelf of the cabinet to the left of the stove.

A lot of these phrases use to. Notice how David pronounces this reduced to the schwa. T, very fast. Not to. Listen again.

In the drawer to the right of the stove.

To the right. to the left. Next to American English is full of reductions like this and they’re important. So, pronounce this word with a quick schwa. Actually, these phrases had not just to but to the to the. Luckily, I have a video on that. Look for the link at the end of this video.

Notice how we only need to make one T sound in the phrase next to. Next to. Think of dropping the first T sound and connecting the two words. Next to, next to. So, all of these directions have a bigger or generic location like a cabinet, a shelf in a cabinet, a drawer, and then a more specific location like next to the sink, above the refrigerator.

Now, you practice. I’m going to ask you a series of questions and I want you to answer them out loud. If you need to pause the video while you think of your answer. If you want to, try recording yourself answering one or all of the questions, upload to Facebook or Instagram and use #RachelsEnglish so I can check it out. Okay, here are your questions. Don’t forget to practice out loud.

Where do you keep your forks?

Where are your glasses?

Where’s your largest frying pan?

Words like fork or spatula can be tricky. In this video, you’re going to see various kitchen objects, and I’ll give you the IPA for each word. We’ll talk about the syllable stress of multi-syllable words, tricky sounds, or other noteworthy pronunciations, if any, and practice each word slowly. I encourage you to practice out loud with this video. Let’s get started.

Plate.

Plate. Plate. Notice I pronounced this with a stop T. Plate. Ending T’s are often pronounced this way when they end a sentence or a thought. Stop the air. Plate. That’s what makes it sound different from play. Plate. Play.

Bowl.

Fork.

Here we have the A as in law vowel followed by the R consonant. In this case, the tongue is further back and the lips round more than when the A vowel is not followed by R. Fork, fork.

Knife.

Notice the K is silent.

Spoon.

This has the ooh vowel. Don’t start with your lips in a tight circle. Spoon. But let them be relaxed and circle in.

Spoon.

We call this a butter knife, so we know it’s not a sharp knife.

Butter knife. Butter knife. The T is between vowels, so it’s a flap T. Just a flap of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. Depending on your native language, this may sound like an R to you. Butter. Butter.

The plural of knife

is knives.

Knives. The F changes to a V just like life. Lives.

Wooden spoon. Wooden spoon. The first syllable is stressed. Wooden. Wooden. After you put your tongue up for the D, you can just leave it there for the second syllable.

Wooden.

Tongs.

Measuring cup.

The first syllable of measuring is stressed. Measuring. Dadada. Try to make those second syllables flatter and quicker. Suring, suring, suring. Measuring. Measuring.

Measuring spoon.

Mixing bowl.

Mixing bowl. The -ing ending is always unstressed. Try to make it quieter and lower in pitch than mix. Mixing. Mixing.

Colander.

Colander. First syllable is stressed here just like measuring. Colander. Dadada. Colander.

Tea kettle.

Tea kettle. The double t comes between two vowel sounds. Just like butter. It’s a flap t, not t, a true t. Kettle.

Cutting board.

Cutting board. What do you notice about the double t? That’s right. Another flap t. The -ing ending is unstressed. Cutting. Dada. Cutting.

Baking pan or baking dish.

-ing ending unstressed. Baking. Baking.

Pan. Pan is a special word. We have the a vowel followed by a nasal consonant n. So it’s not a pure a. Relax the tongue in the back to make uh, pan. At the end of this video, I’ll put a link to another video that goes over this.

Cookie sheet.

Cookie sheet. This could also be a baking sheet. Cookie. Stress on the first syllable. Here I pronounced the final T as a true T. Cookie sheet. T. Final T’s can either be stop T’s or true T’s. Most Americans will make them stop T’s most of the time.

Tupperware.

This is a brand name of storage containers, but many people use the brand name to mean any food storage container. Tupperware.

Cabinet.

Cabinet. It has three syllables, but most Americans will pronounce it with just two, dropping the middle syllable. Cabinet.

Drawer.

Drawer. This is a tough word. I have a video on phrases in the kitchen that goes over the pronunciation of drawer. See that video at the end of this video.

Sink. Faucet.

Sink. Sink.

Faucet. Faucet.

I pronounced the ending t as a stop t.

Dish towel. Dishwasher.

Dish towel. Towel. The first syllable is stressed. Dada. Towel. Dish towel. Dishwasher. Dishwasher. A compound word. Stress is on the first syllable in a compound word. Dishwasher. Dishwasher.

Glass.

Wine glass.

Mug.

Refrigerator. We usually call this fridge. Refrigerator. At five syllables, this word is the longest word in this vocabulary list. Stress is on the second syllable. Refrigerator.

The t between vowels is a flap t. Refrigerator.

Refrigerator.

Fridge.

Freezer.

First syllable stress. Dada. Freezer.

Paper towel.

Two words with the same stress. Dada. Dada. Dada. Paper towel. Paper towel.

Coffee maker.

Same stress pattern as paper towel. Dada dada. Coffee maker.

Coffee pot.

Same vowel in ca as in pot. Coffee pot. Coffee pot.

Oven.

Stove.

Pot. Lid.

Pot. Pot.

Lid. Lid.

Frying pan or skillet.

Frying. The ing ending is unstressed. So frying and skillet have the same stress. Dada. Frying. Skillet.

Ladle. That’s a tough word. Ladle.

Ladle. A tough word. It ends in the same sounds as kettle. I made a video on little, which also ends in the same sounds that might help you pronounce this word better. I’ll put a link to it at the end. Ladle.

Spatula.

Three syllables. Stress on the first syllable. Spatula.

Scissors.

Two syllables. First syllable stress. Dada. Scissors. Scissors.

Serving spoon.

Ing ending unstressed. Serving spoon.

Whisk.

Wh words can be pronounced wh-. or just W. I just make a simple w sound. W. At the end of this video, I’ll link to a video that goes over more of these wh words. Whisk.

Can opener.

Can just like pan. Relax the a into the uh. Can. Can opener. Opener. Three syllables. First syllable stress.

Thermometer.

Second syllable stress. Da da da. Thermometer. Thermometer. Flap t.

Grater.

What can you tell me about that t? Grater. Between vowels, it’s A flap t. It’s a homophone with this word, greater. That means they’re pronounced exactly the same. Grater.

Funnel.

Dada. First syllable stress. Funnel. Funnel.

Bottle opener.

The double T is a flap T again. Bottle opener.

Hood. Fan.

Hood. Hood. Fan. Just like can and pan, ae. Fan.

Blender.

First syllable stress. Dada. Blender.

Mixer. This is really heavy.

Mixer. First syllable stress. Mixer.

Tin foil or aluminum foil.

Tin foil. Aluminum foil. Aluminum. This is one of those words that is pronounced differently in British English. Luckily, my friend Vicki is here at the YouTube space and can help me with this word. In American English, it’s aluminum. In British English,

Aluminium.

Aluminum.

Aluminium.

Aluminum.

Aluminium.

Thanks, Vicki.

Baggie.

Two syllables. First syllable stressed. Dada. Have you noticed that first syllable stress is much more common for two syllable words? Baggie.

Plastic wrap.

Plastic. First syllable stress. Plastic wrap.

Hot pad. The T in hot is followed by a consonant. Make that a stop t. Hot pad. Hot pad.

Trivet.

I made that ending T a stop T. Trivet.

Spices.

Microwave. We think it’s ugly, so we keep it down here.

Microwave. Three syllables. first syllable stress. Microwave.

Okay, let’s look at all of those again. You’ll see each clip twice. Listen the first time and say it out loud with me the second time.

Plate.

Bowl.

Fork.

Knife.

Spoon.

Wooden spoon.

Tongs.

Measuring cup.

Measuring spoon.

Mixing bowl.

Colander.

Tea kettle.

Cutting board.

Baking pan or baking dish.

Cookie sheet.

Tupperware.

Cabinet.

Drawer.

Sink. Faucet.

Dish towel.

Dishwasher.

Glass.

Wine glass.

Mug.

Refrigerator.

Fridge.

Freezer.

Paper towel.

Coffee maker.

Coffee pot.

Oven.

Stove.

Pot. Lid.

Frying pan or skillet.

Ladle. That’s a tough word. Ladle.

Spatula.

Scissors.

Serving spoon.

Whisk.

Can opener.

Thermometer.

Grater.

Funnel.

Bottle opener.

Hood. Fan.

Blender.

Mixer.

Tin foil or aluminum foil.

Baggie.

Plastic wrap.

Hot pad.

Trivet.

Spices.

Microwave.

Don’t forget to head over to rachelenglish.com/free to get my free course, The Top Three Ways to Master the American Accent.

Keep your learning going now with this video and don’t forget to subscribe with notifications on. I absolutely love being your English teacher.

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