What is a Home Cooked Meal?

 

 

What is a home cooked meal? Food prepared at home. Learn what the word MEAL means. Also learn how to make coffee and how to prepare eggs in English. Enjoy :)

Useful & Related Episodes

Episode 126 – 10 Words Used To Describe Tastes and Flavours – Part 2
Episode 124 – Food and Drinks – English Vocabulary Part 1
Episode 065 – Flower and Flour (My Experience with Homophones)

 

Transcript

Hey guys, you are listening to the English Made Simple podcast, this is episode number 1-2-8, number one hundred and twenty eight, numero ciento veintiocho.

Well hello there, what’s cookin’ good lookin’? Welcome to the English Made Simple show, my name is Milena from www.englishmadesimple.net. And I trust you’ve been well, keeping out of mischief I hope.

Great! So what’s cookin’ amigos y amigas?

In other words, what’s up? What’s happening?

And you guessed it guys, today’s topic will be about kitchen vocabulary.

Let’s learn some useful words, words that we need to know when we are in the kitchen cooking, or preparing food.

Just a quick question….

Do you know how to prepare eggs in English?

Do you know how to make coffee in English?

Do you know how to cook in general?

Great! You will learn all of this very soon.

However, my husband thinks I am probably not the best person to teach you about the kitchen vocabulary because I am not a great cook. I don’t spend time in the kitchen.

Did you know that if you use the word COOK as a noun it becomes a Job Title – someone who cooks, is called a cook, they can also be called a chef – spelt as C H E F. in Spanish this is cocinero.

I do like a home-cooked meal. When someone else makes it that is…

This is a good phrase to know by the way. A home cooked meal.

Meal is another word for food, but it actually is so much more than food.

According to Weon Inteligente or the online dictionary, meal – spelt as M E A L – is an occasion when you eat food, for example breakfast or dinner, or the food that you eat on that occasion. It is a countable noun, meaning you can have 1 meal or you can have many meals.

For example:

I had breakfast this morning, breakfast is the most important meal of the day for me.
Lunch would be the main meal of the day but for some dinner is the main meal of the day.

That’s when you eat the most.

When you pig out, when you are eating a lot like a pig. This is slang.

When you go out to eat at a fancy shmancy restaurant – like a 5 star restaurant – they would serve you a 3 course meal or a 5 course meal. Actually it doesn’t really have to be a fancy restaurant it can be any restaurant that has something written on their menus like – a 3 course meal – so you get the Entrée or the Starters – you know something small to eat – then followed by the Main Meal and lastly Dessert – This is a 3 course meal.

My mum knows how to prepare really yummy meals. That’s another example.

Delicious meals.

In English we can say ‘Yummy or delicious’ to mean qué rico! Which is Chilean for yummy.

But I ‘d like to give you my definition of the word MEAL, because I don’t really like what the Weon Inteligente said.

To me, the word ‘meal’ is more like a combination of different foods, a variety of foods served as one portion. To me, this makes it a meal.

Like for example, for breakfast – you don’t just eat eggs you have to eat it with something.

That’s my definitional of the word, ‘meal’ So I just wanted to clarify that.

And now speaking of breakfast, let’s learn some useful verbs when preparing breakfast.

I normally have coffee with my breakfast. Do you? I love coffee. I am addicted to coffee.

Do you know how to make coffee? I hope so!

To make coffee we have to boil the water first. That’s your first verb – to boil. To boil water – In Spanish this is hervir agua.

You can use the kettle to boil the water. Kettle in English or un hervidor o una tetera in Spanish.

If you are not a fan of coffee then you can make yourself a cup of tea, again you will need to boil the water.

And if you like to eat eggs in the morning, there are different ways of preparing eggs. You can also boil the eggs, or you can fry them, or scramble them or poach them.

To fry eggs – you put them in a pan with a little bit of oil and you fry eggs – in Spanish this is huevos fritos – normally you serve it sunny-side up.

‘Sunny side up’ is a term, or an expression means the yellow part of the egg, which is called yolk – or in Spanish this is yema – when the eggs are cooked sunny side up it means the yolk is up, it’s showing and you can see it on the plate.

It looks like the Sun – sunny side up. That’s the phrase that I often hear in the cafes. Sunny side up eggs.

Scrambled eggs have to be mixed or folded either before they go into the pan or while they are in the pan, while you are preparing them.

‘Scrambled eggs’ in Spanish is – huevos revueltos.

Cool, and another way to prepare eggs is by poaching them!

Poached eggs in Spanish is – huevos pochados. Because it’s really hard to explain the poached eggs, I will share a recipe from Jaimie Oliver, in the Facebook group, I think this will best describe poached eggs.

I think this is the healthiest way to prepare eggs as you don’t use any oil.

You will learn more verbs in the recipe that I will share with you in the Facebook group. You will learn new terminology.

Cool bananas!

My favourite meal in the morning is poached eggs with smashed avocado.
Smashed avo – that’s Australian abbreviated name, ‘smashed’ a fancy name to mean mashed avocado.

‘Smashed avocado’ is an Australian terms – avocado mixed with feta cheese and maybe some herbs, you can put a bit of mint, some different herbs hmmmm delicious.

Now I know what I am going to have for breakfast tomorrow! I am getting hungry!

So let me explain…to mash, the verb to mash.

To mash is another verb to know here – in Spanish this is moler. Palta molida o aguacate molido– smashed avo.

Mashed avocado or smashed avocado whichever you prefer.

You can also make mashed potatoes and make a puré. Before you mash the potatoes you have to boil them first. Ha, remember? That word boil again.

I hope you are getting all of this.

There is a lot more to learn here, many more useful verbs to know.

Today’s episode was perfect for expanding your vocabulary. I hope that was useful.

So just to recap, we learnt what home cooked meal is, we learnt 5 different verbs – all regular verbs– to boil, to fry, to scramble, to poach and to mash.

If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with your friends who may also find it helpful as well! And secondly: If you haven’t already subscribed make sure you subscribe to this show on iTunes, it will really help me spread the message and reach 1 million people.

And I would also love it if you leave a REVIEW in iTunes, so that I can continue delivering awesome shows to help you learn English.

Awesome!

It’s been a pleasure amigos y amigas, you’ve been an amazing audience, let’s chat next time.
Until next time, hasta la proxima!

Learn English With Milena

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