I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

Today we're going to talk about kitchens.

Let's go.

No matter where you live around the world, all houses have something in common.

They have a kitchen.

Maybe your kitchen just has one pan and one burner or maybe you have a huge kitchen with

pots and pans passed down from your grandmother.

Whatever the case may be, there are a lot of varieties of kitchens around the world

and there's a lot of varieties of kitchens in the US.

So I can't explain all US kitchens, but I can explain my kitchen.

So that's what we're going to do.

I'm going to take you on a little tour around my kitchen and explain all of the items that

I see, all of the appliances.

Maybe there's some things that are different in your country than what are in my house,

but it's a good way to expand your vocabulary.

Because if you spend any time in your kitchen, it's a great chance to just talk about what

you're doing in English.

I'm cooking an egg in my frying pan.

I'm using a spatula.

Talk about what you're doing.

And I hope that today's lesson will give you the vocabulary to be able to do that.

If you're interested in learning other household words not just the kitchen, you can check

out this video that I made, 150 Household Items, and expressions, and verbs, in my previous

apartment.

Now we're in our new house, which is great.

Or if you want to learn more about cleaning expressions, because that's something that

we all have to do and you want to describe it in English, I made a video at my mother-in-law's

house using a lot of cleaning expressions.

I think there was 70 or 80 of them.

You can watch that video up here to expand your vocabulary.

Let's start by talking about some common kitchen appliances.

One of the most common appliances is the fridge.

Or you can say refrigerator, but this is a pretty big word so we often cut it down and

just say fridge.

Good news for you.

In the US we have giant fridges.

I've never been in any other country that had fridges as big as in the US.

Maybe that's kind of typical.

We like to make things super big.

But on the top in my fridge we have the fridge part and on the bottom is the freezer.

We'll take a look at that in just a second.

It's pretty typical that in the fridge you have different shelves.

It's a little bit bright on my camera.

I'm sorry.

And then at the bottom we call these vegetable crispers, just a crisper.

We don't use that that often but it's the crisper bin.

It's somewhere where you'll put your fresh vegetables, fresh fruit to keep them crisp,

and that is fresh, exactly the way you want them.

On the bottom of my fridge is the freezer.

Sometimes the freezer will be kind of split in half and will be on one side or the other

but mine is a top and bottom type of deal.

So on the bottom is the freezer, which is where we keep some leftover soup, some frozen

vegetables, frozen fruit, ice, ice cream.

Anything that you want to keep super cold you put in the freezer.

The second most common kitchen appliance is a stove and an oven.

In the US we call the top of this the stove or you might say the stove top.

That's where you cook things with pots and pans.

Inside the oven is where you bake things.

So usually there's a door on the oven and inside here there are some racks.

That's what we call these things.

It's a little bit hot in there so I'm not going to grab them, but there are rack.

You might see a recipe that says, "Put this on the bottom rack," or, "Put this on the

top rack when you're baking it," and that's referring to those kind of metal shelves inside

your oven.

You might here some Americans calling all of this, this whole device, the oven or call

the whole thing the stove instead of separating the top is the stove, inside is the oven.

Sometimes we just kind of use one of those words to talk about the whole device, so you

might hear that in movies and TV shows.

It's technically the stove and the oven, but you might kind of interchange those sometimes.

Some technical words about the stove top is we have the knobs.

There are knobs to turn on the stove.

And when you are baking something in here, you need to set the temperature.

In the US we use Fahrenheit.

So when I turn on the oven and I click bake, the first temperature is 350 degrees, and

that is in Fahrenheit.

If you're cooking in the US, make sure that you know if your recipe is American, if your

recipe is not from the US, if your stove is using Fahrenheit.

I've never seen a stove in the US that didn't use Fahrenheit, but I know when I've baked

things in other countries I had to convert everything and it was a little complicated.

So don't mess up your food.

Just check on the temperature.

Check on what you're using for the recipe.

That's all really essential.

One thing also, above the stove is the microwave.

This is a really typical placement for a microwave in an American kitchen, maybe in your kitchen,

too.

The reason why they put a microwave above the stove is it's a convenient location.

But also, listen to this.

What do you think that whirring sound is?

It's a fan.

So underneath here there's a fan.

I have a light on as well.

You can see that light.

And that fan is going to help to suck up all of the smells, and steam, and anything that

you're cooking here.

It's going to help that not spread out throughout the rest of the house.

So in my old apartment, we didn't have a microwave and there was no fan above our stove.

So whenever we cooked something, our entire house got so hot and it smelled so strongly

like whatever we were cooking.

Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad.

But, it's really nice to have a fan so that all the smells and all the steam can get sucked

up and the rest of your house isn't completely humid from your cooking.

The last common item in an American kitchen is a dishwasher.

I love the dishwasher so much.

In our old apartment, we didn't have a dishwasher and we bought this tabletop dishwasher.

It was so amazing.

If you live in a place where you're always hand washing dishes, I respect you a lot because

that is tough work, especially when you're cooking a lot.

We cook a lot at home.

When you have kids, it is not easy to spend time doing the dishes by hand.

So you can do the dishes by hand or you could use a dishwasher.

Yes, thank you, dishwasher for existing.

So inside the dishwasher there are racks.

You might recognize that word from the oven.

Inside the oven there are oven racks and there are racks in here as well.

Something you might notice is on some dishes, on the bottom ... This one doesn't say it.

It might just say dishwasher safe, but on some dishes they might say top rack safe only.

For example, we have these cool little bamboo bowls that we use for Theo, our two-year-old,

and we use them, too.

There's some plates to go along with it.

These are our dirty dishes.

But when I bought these, it said top rack safe only.

That's because there's also a bottom rack.

And this rack usually gets a little bit hotter, and it's going to have a little more pressure.

It's just going to be a little bit more intense for whatever you're washing.

So some things might say top rack safe only.

And if I'm not sure, sometimes I just put it on the top rack just to be careful with

it.

Next, I'd like to just simply go around the kitchen and talk about what's out on the counter,

the things that are visible, and then we're going to go into the cupboards and into to

drawers and discuss what's in there.

It could be appliances, could be things you eat with.

It could be food.

Let's start on the counter.

So this is the counter.

Simple word.

Or you might call it the countertop.

This is where we prepare food.

It's where we set out food.

This countertop is kind of unusual.

Usually you'll see laminate counters, which we'll take a look at over here.

You might be able to see a little bit right here.

Kind of like a plastic-type surface.

Or you might see granite countertops.

That's stone.

It's really nice.

But this is a wood block.

The family who lived in this house before us, the woman was a professional baker so

she had this wooden block to replace the old countertop and now we get to use it, which

is pretty cool.

So it's kind of unusual to see a big wooden block like that but usually you'll have a

big counter where you can prepare food.

And this is one is especially big, which is wonderful, because in our old apartment we

had a small counter space for preparing food and now we can prepare everything, which is

great.

The next thing that you'll see on this counter is a fruit stand.

We have some fruit hanging out here and some fruit bowls.

Then, Dan's precious coffee maker.

If you've been watching my channel for a while, you know that I don't drink coffee but Dan

loves it.

So we'll get to what I have over here.

So we have the coffee maker.

Your coffee maker might look a little more traditional than this, but this is Dan's special

thing.

Then we have the paper towel stand.

Sometimes this paper towel stand might be underneath a counter and it kind of attaches

to the bottom of the counter and you can roll it out underneath a shelf, something like

that, but ours just is a standalone paper towel rack.

And at the sink we got a couple other things, so let's go take a look.

This is our sink where we wash things, where we fill up water.

All of those great things happen.

At most sinks you'll see dish soap.

It's quite clear.

Liquid dish soap.

It's easy to understand.

This is what you're going to use when you're hand washing dishes.

You do not, do not, want to put dish soap into your dishwasher.

If you put dish soap, and it usually says something about ... Yes, dish soap for hand

washing dishes that uses biodegradable, bio-based formula, blah, blah, blah.

So it says hand washing.

That's your key.

If I put this in my dishwasher, our house would be covered in bubbles.

So please don't do this unless you want to have some fun experiment.

There is specific soap you put in the dishwasher.

It might be a little pod like this or it's ... Usually we buy just powder that you put

in the dishwasher.

It's a little box that has dish washing soap.

So make sure that you use dishwasher soap.

It's for washing your dishes in the dishwasher in the right place, and you use this in the

right place.

Little friendly word of warning.

So usually at the counter, when you're washing dishes, you'll find some kind of towel.

We don't use sponges, but you might find a sponge.

This is like a reusable, cool little microfiber towel.

We have a bunch of these, and that's what we use to hand wash dishes.

You might also find ... This is called steel wool.

It's just a little piece of metal mushed up together.

You can use it to kind of scrape some hard spots on pans or pots.

You'll also see a faucet.

This is the faucet.

And hot water, cold water.

We're so lucky we're living in the 21st century we can just have hot and cold water whenever

we want.

It's amazing.

Our sink also has this cool little thing.

I wonder if this exists in your country.

I'm going to turn on the water, and then I'm going to turn this.

Whoa.

Isn't that cool?

I'm amazed.

This is just like a little sprayer so you can spray the sink out or you can spray a

dish.