Recipe Vocabulary

Now that we’ve gone through the common actions and phrases that we need to describe how to prepare a particular food we can actually get into a real example before we do that.

I want to just cover for simple words that I think you probably already know but I just want to make sure these are very very clear.

Before we get into the example these are recipe dish servings and ingredients.

OK so very quickly the recipe is basically how to make that particular food whatever it may be.

It includes the actions descriptions of the actions as well as how much of each particular thing that you need.

That’s what a recipe is.

So how much I need and what I need to do with that amount of each thing.

Pretty simple.

That’s usually the hard part.

It’s basically like a computer program.

Do this and then do this with this much and then do this with this much.

OK.

So you just follow it step by step and it usually includes some of the phrases that we were just talking about after that’s done.

When you finish that or when it’s golden brown ad then it will say an amount for example a tablespoon a teaspoon a cup and different countries have different ways to measure things that are needed.

In America we often use cups we use tablespoons.

We don’t usually use for example grams so much or or milligrams.

We don’t use that as often.

OK then we have ingredients ingredients are the things that we actually put in what we’re making the vegetables the meat the spices all of the things that we need all the stuff.

Those are the ingredients.

So the ingredients go into the recipe and once we do the recipe then we have finished preparing a particular dish.

So dish can be a little confusing one meaning of dish is something like a plate or a a bowl but one meaning of dish is a particular type of food.

So we’re going to talk about the dish.

We’re going to talk about is stir fried tomato and eggs.

It’s a classic Chinese dish.

And maybe your country wherever you may be from has classic dishes things that everybody knows and maybe everybody knows how to cook those dishes or maybe at least many people know how to cook those dishes.

Some people just cannot cook and that’s OK too.

OK.

Now when you’re preparing dishes using a recipe with ingredients you need to know how many people you’re going to have.

And the reason that you need to know that is because you may need more or less ingredients OK.

So the way that we count how much we need to make is usually by using the word servings.

We might say three servings of this if you make for example a box of brownies or cake on the box on the back it says four servings.

That generally means that it’s enough for four people.

Now the way that that’s exactly calculated and measured is not so clear.

But generally speaking we’re talking about how many people are going to eat.

How many people need to eat that particular dish.

So how many servings do we need to make while 30 servings.

We need a lot of ingredients.

We need a lot of ingredients.

We’re having a huge party tonight.

30 servings of whatever you’re making.

OK.

So I hope those four words are very clear because they’re very important when it comes to describing how to make a particular thing.

OK.

Now let’s actually go into our recipe.