to talk about how to describe food. I'm not going to talk

about the names for different types of food. I'm not going to

show you pictures of food and tell you what the food is

called. Instead in this lesson I'll help you learn different

words and phrases you can use in English to describe the food

that you're eating to describe the food that you ate maybe a

few days ago. In this lesson we'll learn a lot of words and

phrases that you can use to talk about how food tastes, how

food looks, how food behaves a little bit as well. You'll see

what I mean by that when we get to that part of the lesson. But

thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoy this

little English lesson about describing food. So my first

slide this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. A pet peeve is

something that bothers you in life. And I don't like it when

food is overcooked. When you overcooked food you cook it for

too long. If you put green beans on the stove if you boil

green beans. I like to boil them for about three or four

minutes. Or I like to steam them. When you cook them that

way they come out with a nice green colour and they're still

a little bit crispy. They're a little bit crunchy. But some

people overcooked their beans and they start to look like

this. A pale green colour. Where I think you've cooked all

of the good nutrients out of the bean. So one way to

describe food is to say it's overcooked. Um food food that's

overcooked just isn't as tasty. Um in particular I my pet peeve

is when people overcooked green beans. I like mine to be still

quite green and a little bit crunchy. Of course then we have

the other direction. Food can sometimes be undercooked.

Undercooked food is food that has not been cooked long

enough. When I eat steak I like my steak to be usually medium.

Uh some like their steak rare. But when you cook a steak rare

I consider it to be undercooked. Some people think

that's perfect. But for me I like things cooked a little bit

longer. And so if I was served steak and it was rare I would

say this is a little bit undercooked. It's a little bit

cold in the middle. Could you cook it a little bit longer. So

overcooked means you cook it too long. Undercooked means you

didn't cook it long enough. And then we have of course raw. Raw

food is simply food that has not been cooked. You might be

someone who likes seafood that is raw. You might like eating

fish that's raw. You might eat a lot of raw vegetables and raw

fruits. It's quite common to eat raw vegetables and raw

fruits. You don't have to cook all of those things. Um and

some people do really enjoy eating raw fish. So raw simply

means that the food has not been cooked. It has not been

boiled. It has not been fried. It has not been baked. It has

not been roasted. It has not been I think those are all of

the ones I can think of for how to prepare food. I'm sure

there's more. And we also just have the word fresh. So fresh

food is usually used to refer to food that is relatively

recently delivered to the grocery store. Is that a good

way to say it? So fresh fruit and vegetables means that they

are ripe. They are ready to eat. Um and you definitely want

your food to be as fresh as possible. So how would I

describe this? I should describe this in a better way.

Fresh food like if you buy fresh vegetables they probably

were like in the farmers field two or three days ago and they

were quickly brought to the grocery store. If you have your

own garden you can go out and cut fresh vegetables whenever

you want. That's probably the best way to get fresh

vegetables is to have your own garden. And then we have of

course burnt. Burnt food is food well it's way past being

overcooked. It's overcooked to the point where it starts to

turn black. The best example I could think of is toast.

Sometimes you leave toast in the toaster too long and it

gets burnt. Sometimes you leave something in the oven for too

long and it gets burnt. Burnt food does not taste good. When

I was a kid if I burnt my toast my mom would make me scrape the

burnt part off with a knife and eat it anyways. Because she

didn't Want us to waste food. So food that is burnt usually

has a charred look to it. It has black on it because the

food has cooked so long it has burnt and it has turned black.

Some people like burnt toast. I think my grandfather on my

mom's side liked eating burnt toast. I don't like burnt

toast. I don't mind if it's a little bit burnt but not like

this. This would be too much for me. And then we have by the

way all of these words for describing food it's quite

random this lesson. You never know what the next picture is

going to be. We also have food that is crunchy. If you can

imagine eating celery when you bite celery it's usually

crunchy. When you eat a carrot it's usually crunchy. When you

eat this kind of peanut butter it's crunchy because there's

whole peanuts in the peanut butter. So when food is crunchy

it actually makes a sound when you bite down on it. When you

chew it. So anything Like I mentioned celery, carrots,

crunchy, peanut butter, any of those kinds of things. We

actually say they make a crunchy sound or they make a

crunchy sound. You could use both words. But when you eat

something that's kind of hard and you need to chew it a lot

and it makes kind of a sound. By the way you should you

should always chew with your mouth closed but either way

some food is crunchy. And then of course some of the basics we

have food that is sweet. Any food that you describe as sweet

has a lot of sugar in it. Candies of course are very

sweet. Um candy bars are sweet. Chocolate bars are sweet. There

are a lot of foods in the world that are very very sweet. In

fact in North America a lot of foods are quite sweet. I

personally think we put too much sugar in a lot of our

food. I think that sweet food is yummy. Ice cream is sweet by

the way as well. I really do ice cream. Um which yes let me

move on. I've soon as I start talking about ice cream I could

do a whole lesson on ice cream and that might be kind of

boring. We also will describe food sometimes as being salty.

In fact we often ask people do you like sweet food or do you

like salty food? Some people like to eat sweet food as a

snack. They like chocolates and candies and those kinds of

things. And some people like salty food as a snack. They

like chips. Well you would call crisps I think if you're

learning British English. Uh this is a pretzel and it has

lots of salt on it. Um but definitely we have sweet food

and we have salty food. We usually talk about our snacks

this way. Like I like salty snacks. Oh I like sweet snacks.

Are you a sweet or salty person? Oh I like salty snacks.

By the way Bob the Canadian likes sweet snacks. I have a

sweet tooth. I do like salty snacks a bit but not as much as

sweet snacks. And then we have hot food. And we use this word

to describe food in two ways. When food comes off the stove

or out of the oven it's hot. There's steam rising off of it.

If you try to eat soup right away sometimes the soup's too

hot and you burn your tongue. Okay. So that's one way to

describe hot. Or to use the word hot to describe food. But

we also use hot to describe food that's very very spicy in

the sense that it burns your tongue in a different way. Um

so spicy food in North America would be things like hot wings.

So we have chicken wings where there's lots of hot sauce on

it. So there there's hot sauces that are made from different

kinds of peppers. You can see some hot peppers here. So again

hot can be used two ways. We can use hot to talk about food

that's just hot because it just came off the stove or out of

the oven. But we also use hot to describe Food that has a lot

of hot sauce or peppers or other ingredients that just

give it a little bit of a zing when you eat it. And we also

have the word spicy. So in North America hot food and

spicy food these are kind of interchangeable. Like if I was

eating chicken wings with a lot of hot sauce I could say oh

these are really spicy wings. But spicy is a little broader

than just hot. Okay. Spicy means that there's a lot of

spices used in the food. When we eat at certain types of

restaurants who make food from certain countries some of that

food is quite spicy. Um the North American diet isn't used

to really spicy foods. So sometimes we eat foods and

we'll say whoa this is very very spicy. Mild. So one thing

that's interesting about North Americans. Not all North

Americans. But a lot of North Americans don't eat really

really spicy or hot food. So often you'll find something

like this. Salsa. A very common food item in North America.

You'll find it in the store and you'll be able to buy mild

medium or hot. And there might even be extra hot in some

stores. Um we usually buy mild salsa. This means that it does

not have a very strong it doesn't have a lot of peppers

in it and it doesn't have a lot of hot spices in it. So it

tastes very tomatoy. So we have some foods in North America

where if you're used to what you eat in your country and

it's very spicy you might come here and think wow this mild

salsa does not have very much kick to it. It's not very hot.

It's not very spicy. We also describe food as being chewy.

So you can see here this granola bar. This is a common

snack for kids to take to school in North America. And

it's chewy. It's soft and it sticks together a little bit

when you bite into it. It has a lot of syrup or sugar or

something in it. Maybe even marshmallows. But it has all

the kinds of ingredients that make it soft. And when you chew

it it just has a chewiness to it. It's like not rubbery but

it's it's definitely not hard and it's not crunchy. It's much

softer and it's a little bit sticky as well. Bland. So this

is white bread. Bland is a word we use to describe food that

does not have very much taste to it. Um another good example

would be plain white rice. If you do not add any salt or

butter or oil to your rice if you just eat plain rice it's

bland. But when you eat rice with other food it tastes a lot

better or when you add a little bit of salt or butter to your

rice. So food that does not have very much taste we would

say is bland food. We have dried foods. There are sections

of the grocery store where you can buy food that has been

dried. You can buy dried apricots, dried bananas, dried

plantains, you can buy dried cranberries, dried grapes which

are called raisins. Dried food really really nice when you go

on a hike. Because dried food doesn't go bad. I'll talk about

food going bad in a bit. But dried food has a very long

shelf life. Dried food doesn't go bad very quickly. So if you

buy something like dried cranberries. You can mix it

with some nuts and some other ingredients. Other things that

last a long time. And you can go on a hike for two weeks and

use that as one of the food items that you eat. Dried food.

Super yummy. Um if you go to any grocery store in North

America there will be a dried food section where you can buy

foods that are dried. It's not very big. But it's definitely

there. Mashed. This would be what Bob the Canadian. This was

a typical meal when Bob the Canadian was a kid. Um some

kind of meat looks like sausages here. But those white

things there are mashed potatoes. When I was a kid we

ate mashed potatoes almost everyday There were a couple

reasons why. Number one it was a very common food to eat in

Holland. So when my family immigrated here I was born here

but when my family immigrated here they continued to eat

them. Number two potatoes were very very cheap and are still

very very cheap. It's one of the cheapest foods you can buy.

So we ate a lot of potatoes because they were cheap. And we

always ate them mashed. So mashed means when you cook

something and then you you you smash it up so that it becomes