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  • Ah, it's so crunchy.

  • Salty, too.

  • I'm almost done.

  • Ah, okay.

  • Now, I have energy.

  • Hey everyone, I'm Alex, thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on how to talk

  • about food.

  • So today, I'm on a picnic, and I'm going to give you a lot of adjectives and words that

  • you can use to talk about the taste, the flavor, the character, the sound of food.

  • Now, this vocabulary is going to be very useful because we all eat, right?

  • We know that.

  • So, you can use it when you're having food in a restaurant when you're having lunch with

  • your friends, when you're having breakfast, when you're having dinner, anytime you're

  • eating, you can use this vocabulary to describe the food that you're eating.

  • It's a very common, human experience.

  • So, let's go and start looking at some flavors of food.

  • So first, we have the word "sweet".

  • So, we're going to do some pronunciation in this video too, so repeat after me: sweet.

  • So, anything that has sugar in it, so think of milk chocolate, right, that is very sweet.

  • Desserts like cakes and cookies are usually sweet.

  • Next, repeat after me: sour.

  • Think of a lemon, right?

  • I have a lemon here, and if you stick around to the end of this video, I am going to take

  • a bite of this lemon, so lemons make your face go - mm - right?

  • If you go to Chinese restaurant, sometimes you can get sweet and sour pork, so sometimes

  • you have sweet and sour mixed together.

  • Next, we have bitter.

  • Okay, so bitter is something like medicine or dark chocolate or black coffee, it's not

  • a very great flavor.

  • Most people don't like bitter food.

  • Think of, again, syrup that you take, or if you have Aspirin or Tylenol, these things

  • are bitter.

  • Dark chocolate, like 80% dark chocolate tastes very bitter.

  • Next, bland.

  • Now, I love potatoes, but if you put no salt in the potatoes, or nothing else in the potatoes,

  • and they're very boring to eat, they have no flavor, they are bland.

  • So, think of anything with no spices that has no salt and has no taste, no flavor, it's

  • boring, it's - repeat after me - bland.

  • So, obviously, bland has a negative meaning, but sometimes you want something that is normal,

  • regular, and you can say "plain".

  • So, if something is plain, this doesn't have a negative meaning.

  • Sometimes you want to eat a plain donut, for example, with, you know, no frosting or syrups

  • or anything, just regular, normal, nothing special, but still good.

  • Okay?

  • Next, I put spicy.

  • Now, I put a star beside spicy, because I don't think of spicy as a flavor, really,

  • it's more of like a temperature of food, so think of like jalape�o peppers are very

  • spicy, hot.

  • So, a lot of Thai food is very spicy, okay?

  • Szechuan cuisine is also very spicy.

  • Mexican food, a lot of Mexican food can be very spicy and maybe you have a lot of spicy

  • food in your cuisine as well.

  • From Poland, we don't do spicy.

  • I'm used to spicy now, but when I was growing up, we didn't have spicy food, just potatoes,

  • meat, vegetables, usually plain stuff, and maybe some salt, but that's about it.

  • Next, we have salty.

  • So, I love salty snacks.

  • When we started this video, I had a little salty cracker, so stuff that has salt, like

  • chips, are very salty.

  • Sometimes, you want to lick your fingers because it tastes good.

  • I'm not going to do that on camera because it's very rude, so next, savory.

  • So, repeat after me: savory.

  • So, when you think of savory, it kind of links with salty and spicy, could be mixed together.

  • It's the opposite of sweet.

  • So, think of like, a creamy soup that is a little salty and you just feel very comfortable

  • when you're eating it and - mm - it's very savory, it just, it's dancing on your tongue

  • because it's salty, it's nice, it tastes good, and it's not sweet, so when you think of savory,

  • think of like, salty, sometimes mixed with spicy, okay?

  • Alright.

  • Next, let's look at some tastes and textures of food.

  • So, we have first, repeat after me: crunchy.

  • Think of the sound when I was eating the cracker - crunch, crunch, crunch - right?

  • So, this is crunchy food.

  • Crackers, which I have here, are crunchy.

  • If you have a fresh apple, right, and it's hard when you bite it - crunch - it's going

  • to be crunchy, okay?

  • So, think of the sound, right, of like breaking glass together as being crunchy.

  • Linked with crunchy is crispy.

  • So, chips are also crispy.

  • Fried chicken is crispy.

  • Any food that you fry in oil, okay, if you make it with oil and the outside is hard,

  • like a little hard, like the outside of the chicken skin if you fry it in oil, this is

  • called crispy.

  • It's also why in British English, potato chips are called "crisps", right?

  • So, they're called crisps, they're crispy.

  • Crispy food is usually crunchy, okay?

  • So, if you come from a country that has a lot of fried food, where you fry your food

  • or deep fry your food in oil, that food is probably crispy and crunchy.

  • Next, I hate this texture, so mealy.

  • So, repeat after me: mealy.

  • So, mealy is an apple or a tomato and they're a little too soft.

  • You bite it and it's not fresh.

  • It's not crunchy.

  • It kind of tastes like you're eating sand from the beach, okay?

  • So, if something is mealy, it's soft and sandy.

  • It's not a good texture in your mouth.

  • It tastes like you're eating sand.

  • So, I hate mealy apples and mealy tomatoes.

  • You probably do, too.

  • You want a fresh apple, a nice crunchy apple, right?

  • Next, mushy.

  • So, it just so happens I went to my mom's house today and I got clementine.

  • This clementine is a little old.

  • When I press it, ugh, it's a little too soft.

  • Ugh, it's very soft.

  • So, if something is mushy, like it's not hard anymore, it's not fresh anymore, it's too

  • soft, it's mushy.

  • Now, you can also pronounce this, some people say "mochy", okay, so you can say "mochy"

  • or "muchy", and it feels like Play-Doh, like I could make something with this.

  • So, this is a mushy clementine.

  • I am definitely not eating that.

  • Next, soggy.

  • Now, the most common food I think of when I think of soggy is cereal with milk.

  • So, obviously when you have cereal, you put milk, after about 30 seconds, one minute,

  • perfect time to eat, right?

  • It's not too crunchy, it's not too wet, but if you are a slow eater and you leave your

  • cereal for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, you come back and you look at it, ugh, and the

  • milk is dripping from the cereal, it's soggy, okay?

  • It's not good anymore.

  • I mean, you can eat it, but it's wet, alright?

  • The milk is inside the cereal now, and it's too wet, okay?

  • Next, let's do, yeah, we'll do tender.

  • So, tender usually you use this when you're talking about meat.

  • So, if meat is soft, well cooked, and you know, you put it in your mouth and it just

  • melts in your mouth, it is tender.

  • So, a tender pork chop, or a tender steak, a tender piece of chicken, like it's not too

  • hard, not too tough, it's soft and tender.

  • So, you want your meat, if you eat meat, to be tender.

  • You don't want it to be hard, so think of soft meat, okay?

  • So first, repeat after me, and actually repeat this word first: soggy - tender.

  • Okay.

  • And let's repeat the next one: juicy.

  • So, many vegetables and fruits can be juicy, so this tomato, I'm not going to bite it now,

  • but I can feel it, like it's the right amount of ready to be eaten.

  • So, if I bite this, I'm going to make a big mess, have lots of juice on my mouth, this

  • is a juicy tomato, okay?

  • You can also have many juicy fruits, juicy grapes, juicy peaches, alright, anything that

  • you bite and you have water coming down your chin, this is juicy.

  • It's very juicy, full of juice, right?

  • Alright, next, we have, repeat: fatty.

  • So, this one is easy to guess, I think.

  • You have the word "fat" and if something has a lot of fat, like if you have a steak, for

  • example, and you have more fat than actual meat, you can say "Ugh, this steak is too

  • fatty.", so usually meat is too fatty, alright?

  • If you get a bad cut of meat, it is fatty.

  • And linked with fatty, we have oily and greasy.

  • So, let's repeat those words with me: oily - greasy.

  • You see the word "oil", right?

  • So, if you say "Ugh, this food is oily", okay, or "This food is greasy", usually if you have

  • fried food, you fry food in oil, if you put too much oil or you don't cook it the right

  • way, it will end up oily and greasy.

  • So, think of if you order a pizza, I remember this pizza place I used to order pizza from

  • all the time, when I ordered the pizza, the bottom of the box, you could see the oil underneath

  • the box.

  • They used so much, I guess in the cheese and when they were making the dough, I don't know

  • what they were doing, but the bottom of the box had a lot of oil and grease, so the pizza

  • was greasy.

  • You could think of a greasy hamburger, for example.

  • A lot of people say "Alright, after you - if you drink too much, if you go to the pub after,

  • it's good to have some greasy food."

  • So like, chicken wings and hamburgers and French fries with a lot of oil can also be

  • greasy.

  • Just ugh, you need to wash your hands with soap after that.

  • Okay, and we're almost finished, so let's go to talk about like the character of some

  • food.

  • So, we have these kind of go together: rich.

  • So, repeat after me: rich.

  • Decadent.

  • Heavy.

  • So, food that is rich is usually made with a lot of butter, a lot of cream, and it has

  • a lot of calories, right?

  • So, this is food that is heavy, that makes your stomach feel bleh, like you're so full,

  • because it is so loaded, so packed with these creams and butters and sugars.

  • Now, basically, this is food with a lot of calories.

  • Decadent, usually we refer to desserts, like big chocolate cakes, as decadent.

  • It's too much, it's too rich, it's too full.

  • Heavy, like hamburgers with French fries and gravy, that is a heavy meal.

  • Okay?

  • So, think of these words in kind of one family.

  • Rich, decadent, heavy, calorie rich foods like, foods that are heavy with calories.

  • Right, next: ripe.

  • So, ripe, we refer to fruit as being ripe most often.

  • So, if fruit is ripe or a vegetable is ripe, it means it is ready to be eaten.

  • So, yeah, this is a ripe apple, it is ready to be eaten.

  • If you have a banana, if the banana is green, it is not ripe.

  • It is not ready to be eaten.

  • When the banana turns yellow, okay, the banana is ripe, it's ready to be eaten.

  • You can take it from the tree and you can eat it.

  • Like this tomato, I'm going to eat this probably by myself later because yeah, this is a good

  • tomato, it's ripe, it's ready, okay?

  • So, next: light.

  • So, if you, you can have a light dessert.

  • Something that doesn't have a lot of sugar or cream and it tastes just hmm, you don't

  • feel it when you eat it, right?

  • You can have a very soft cake.

  • So, a soft cake, you can say "Ah, this tastes very light", not heavy, not loaded with cream

  • and calories, it's light, it's nice.

  • You don't feel guilty after eating it.

  • Alright, next: burned.

  • So, burned you can kind of tell if you have fried food and the food on the outside is

  • black from too much fire, you cooked it too long, you put too much oil and it's on high

  • heat, it is burned.

  • So, repeat after me: burned.

  • Alright, and we have two more.

  • We have undercooked and overcooked.

  • So usually, you can do this with many things, but usually we talk about meat as being undercooked

  • or overcooked.

  • It's - if something is undercooked, it means you didn't cook it long enough.

  • So, for example, chicken.

  • If you cut a piece of chicken and you see inside the chicken is pink, you can also say

  • the chicken is raw, r-a-w, raw, or it's not cooked properly.

  • It's undercooked, okay?

  • Something is overcooked usually when it's burned, if you overcook something, it is burned.

  • Think of a steak.

  • I will go back to steak because I like steak, so if you eat steak, and you cook it and you

  • leave it on the barbeque or inside, you know, your oven for too long, it becomes black or

  • it becomes very hard, very tough, not tender, it is overcooked, okay?

  • That's a lot of vocabulary today, guys.

  • So, I hope that you will take the words you learned today and apply them when you're eating

  • out with your friends, with your family, or by yourself, you can practice vocabulary by

  • yourself, right?

  • This is a juicy apple.

  • This is a sour lemon.

  • Whatever.

  • Okay.

  • Now, if you want to test your understanding of all the material we learned today, as always,

  • you can check out the quiz on www.engvid.com and also, don't forget, you can check me out

  • on Facebook, on Twitter, subscribe to my YouTube channel, hit that little bell and leave a

  • comment for me.

  • Do you prefer salty snacks, or do you prefer sweet snacks?

  • Do you like spicy food?

  • Tell me what you like.

  • Tell me what you don't like, and we can have a conversation and continue talking forever

  • and ever as long as you keep commenting, I'll do my best to reply to as many of you as possible.

  • Until next time, thanks for - ah, I said I was going to eat a lemon, didn't I?

  • Now, I've never done this before.

  • I've only eaten oranges and clementines.

  • I put lemon in my tea sometimes.

  • I put it on fish occasionally, but I've never eaten a lemon just like this.

  • Whew.

  • I'm getting nervous now.

  • You ready?

  • I'm just going to take one bite.

  • It's juicy and very sour!

  • Very sour!

Ah, it's so crunchy.

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