Cooking Verbs in English: Chop, Dice, Sieve and Whisk

Someone explains that the secret to a good Yorkshire pudding is sieving the flour "from very high up", so the lumps go and the air gets in — then admits, "I still can't do that." Someone else can't be bothered to peel oranges, so she chops them into quarters and sucks at them instead. That's the raw material for this unit: fifteen cooking verbs, heard first in unscripted speech with the key word beeped out, then checked and drilled.

What you'll hear in this episode

The episode is built around two sets of short clips. In each one, a cooking verb has been replaced by a beep, and your job is to guess it before you hear the clip again in full.

In the first set, Kim talks about potatoes — a roast dinner without the meat, roast potatoes, and a baked potato "baked in the oven, preferably a gas oven" with homemade coleslaw. Katie explains why she prefers to steam vegetables rather than boil them: steamed, they "stay nice and crunchy and tasty", while boiling can overcook them and lose "the goodness into the water". Kim then gives a method for halloumi — slice it thinly, fry it until golden brown — and signs off with "that's my top tip for Halloumi".

The second set moves to grate, dice, stir, sieve, sprinkle, pour and whisk. Kami describes grating cheddar and parmesan until you have "a giant pile of just delicious cheese", dicing peppers small enough to scoop onto a chip, and stirring cookie dough as a child in the hope of licking the spoon. She says she's "still learning to cook", and that a little cinnamon sprinkled on toast or oranges "just gives it a little bit of a…a kick". Later she explains whisking egg for a tortilla de patatas until the yolk has completely gone.

Between the clips, the teaching sections check each meaning and give you a beep to repeat after.

Quick facts

Episode	3.26 — Cooking & Recipes
Pack	Vocabulary and Pronunciation 3
Level	3
Duration	20 minutes 17 seconds
New vocabulary	15 cooking verbs
Workbook	Included in the all-in-one pack

What you'll learn

The first skill here is guessing from context. You don't hear the verb, so you have to work it out from everything around it — "in the oven", "thinly", "until the yolk is completely gone". That's exactly what you do when a real conversation moves faster than your vocabulary.

The second is pronunciation, and the notes are specific. In connected speech we often don't really say the /t/ in roast, as in "We're going to roast some beef". Steam takes a long /iː/. The h in whisk is silent. Stir has an /ɜː/ sound, not the vowel many learners reach for. The three consonants at the start of sprinkle get built up in stages — /s/, /sp/, /spr/ — and slice is built the same way from /s/ and /l/.

There's also a small grammar point that saves you a lot of trouble on menus: many of these verbs become adjectives by adding -ed — chopped, sliced, fried, steamed, boiled — which is why you see "grated parmesan" and "roast potatoes" written on the same page.

Vocabulary from this unit

to dice /daɪs/ — to cut into small squares. Used for the peppers in the salsa clip.
to grate /ɡreɪt/ — to slide something up and down against a piece of metal with holes in, so that it is cut into small thin pieces. The cheese clip.
to sieve /sɪv/ — to use a container with small holes in to remove big pieces or lumps from a substance. The Yorkshire pudding flour.
to whisk /wɪsk/ — to mix quickly with a metal tool so that lots of air gets into the mixture. The tortilla egg.
to sprinkle /sprɪŋkəl/ — to put small bits of a powder or similar across a wide area of a surface. The cinnamon on toast.
to steam /stiːm/ — to cook with the heat and gas from hot water by placing above boiling water.
to peel /piːl/ — to cut the skin off a vegetable or fruit. The oranges.
to stir, to pour, to roast, to bake, to boil, to fry, to slice and to chop complete the set of fifteen.

In the workbook

The workbook for this unit is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack (€39). It opens with the introduction and the two listening tasks, then prints both versions of every clip — the beeped version and the full transcript — so you can read exactly what Kim, Katie and Kami said once you've had your guess.

After that come the extra materials. The vocabulary glossary gives all fifteen verbs with phonetic transcription and a plain definition. Practice 1 is a set of recipe instructions with gaps, first letter given: chop the vegetables, dice the potatoes, slice the onions thinly, bake the cake then sprinkle sugar over it, sieve the flour, roast the chicken. Practice 2 is a quick yes/no check on whether each verb actually works — can you roast bread? can you sprinkle eggs? Practice 3 is a pronunciation matching task, pairing sieve with sprinkle, slice with dice, grate with bake and steam with peel. Full answers are printed at the end.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Is the audio free?

Yes. The English conversations are free to download. The workbook that goes with this unit comes with the paid pack.

Is the conversation scripted?

The clips are unscripted — you can hear the hesitations and false starts. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

Do I need the workbook to follow the episode?

No, but it helps. The guessing tasks work perfectly well by ear; the workbook gives you the transcripts, the phonetics and the three practice exercises.

What level is this?

Level 3, from the Vocabulary and Pronunciation 3 pack.

How long is it?

20 minutes 17 seconds, split into two listening tasks and two pronunciation drills.

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