Food & Cooking English

Food vocabulary follows three practical stages: buying it, cooking it and talking about how it tastes. The cover highlights four common cooking verbs — chop, fry, boil, bake. Many staple foods, including bread, rice and milk, are uncountable, so you often count a container or portion instead.

Buying groceries

Note the word: groceries are the food you buy; the shop is a grocery store or supermarket.

Cooking verbs

A handful of verbs covers most of what happens in a kitchen.

Following a recipe

Recipes are written as imperatives — the base verb, no subject.

Note the false friend: a recipe tells you how to cook; a receipt is the paper you get when you pay. They look similar and sound completely different.

Taste and appetite

Describing food, and describing how hungry you are.

Common mistakes

"a good cooker" for a person. A cook is a person. In British English, a cooker is the appliance; American English normally uses stove.

Plurals on uncountable food. Count the container, not the substance.

Some of these do have countable senses when you mean types: a wine list may offer "three excellent wines", and a café might sell "artisan breads". Everyday shopping, though, uses the uncountable form.

"It tastes well." After a sense verb, use an adjective.

"I have hunger." Hunger uses be: say I'm hungry or I'm starving.

Quick exercise

Complete each line with one word.

1. ___ the onions roughly. (cut them into pieces, not thin slices)
2. I bought a ___ of bread.
3. My father is a great ___ . (the person, not the appliance)
4. This soup tastes ___ . (use the adjective related to well)
5. I'm ___ — let's eat! (use the strong word from the article)