Home/Vocabulary/In the kitchen
A215 words5 phrases

In the kitchen

Cooking from a Spanish recipe means reading verbs in an unfamiliar form and knowing the names of things you would otherwise just point at.

Quick answer

Corta la cebolla muy fina.

Chop the onion very finely. Recipes use the plain command form, so corta, añade, mezcla.

The words

SpanishEnglish
la cocinathe kitchen
la sarténthe frying pan
la ollathe pot
el cuchillothe knife
la cucharathe spoon
el tenedorthe fork
el platothe plate
el vasothe glass
la neverathe fridge
el hornothe oven
la recetathe recipe
la cebollathe onion
cocinarto cook
cortarto cut
freírto fry

The phrases you will actually say

Corta la cebolla muy fina.Chop the onion very finely.
Pon el horno a doscientos grados.Set the oven to two hundred degrees.
¿Me pasas un cuchillo, por favor?Could you pass me a knife, please?
Guarda la leche en la nevera.Put the milk in the fridge.
Esta receta es de mi abuela.This recipe is my grandmother’s.

Worth knowing

A Spanish recipe is written in the tú command form, so you meet verbs stripped to their bare stem: corta, pela, añade, remueve, deja reposar. Watch the ones that go irregular in that form, since poner becomes pon and hacer becomes haz. Two words are false friends at the table: el vaso is a drinking glass, never a vase, and la copa is the stemmed glass you use for wine, so ordering una copa in a bar means a glass of wine or a spirit. Appliance names split by region: Spain says la nevera, Mexico el refrigerador and the Southern Cone la heladera. And la sartén is feminine in Spain but you will hear el sartén across much of Latin America.

Practice

Practise your in the kitchen words

0/8 matched — tap a Spanish word, then its translation

Check yourself

What is "un vaso"?

Practise this away from the screen

The Beginner Pack puts the guide, the travel phrasebook and 1,000 words on paper — $29 instead of $40.

3 PDFs · instant download · free updates

See the Beginner Pack — save 28 %