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| Hi, everybody! |
| Welcome back to Top Words. |
| My name is Alisha, and today, we're going to talk about 10 common food adjectives. |
| So, let's go! |
| 1. salty |
| The first adjective is "salty." |
| So we use "salty" to describe a food which has a strong saltish, salt-like taste, so salt, that white stuff. You may have table salt or kosher salt or sea salt, all different kinds of salt. If the taste of salt is very strong in your meal, you can say it's "salty." |
| "That chicken is very salty." |
| Or "I don't like salty foods." |
| Or "Things which are very salty dehydrate me." |
| Or "Be careful or it will get too salty," for example. |
| "Salty" refers to the taste of salt. |
| 2. sweet |
| All right, the next adjective is "sweet." |
| "Sweet" is a word we use to describe something that has a sugar-like or a sugary taste. This can mean actual sugar like white sugar or brown sugar. We can also use "sweet" to talk about foods which are naturally sweet like fruit, for example. So apples or oranges or pears, peaches, these are foods which are naturally sweet. We can say both processed sweetness is sweet and we can say natural sweetness is sweet. We use the word "sweet" to describe all of this. We can use it to describe desserts as well. Sauces too, anything is fine. Anything that tastes a little sugary, we can use the word sweet to describe that. |
| So, for example… |
| "I don't like sweet foods." |
| Or "I really like eating sweet food at the end of the day. |
| Or "What's your favorite sweet thing to eat?" |
| Or "This apple is really sweet. It's great." |
| 3. savory |
| The next word is "savory." |
| "Savory" is a word we use to describe something that has a strong flavor, but it is not sweet. So it's not necessarily, maybe it's not salty. The flavor isn't overwhelming. There's not too much flavor, but there's a very clear and strong flavor that is not sweet. There's not a sugary flavor. So, it's specially used for meat because we use seasonings a lot for the outsides of meat. |
| So we could say… |
| "Oh, this roast chicken is really savory." |
| Or we could use, like for sauces too, which often have many different spices and herbs and things, we could say… |
| "That sauce is really savory." |
| So something which has a strong flavor, but it's not, maybe, it's not so sweet, we can use the word "savory" to describe that, "savory." |
| So, "Yeah, that steak was so savory. It was delicious." |
| 4. slimy |
| The next word is "slimy." |
| I don't like slimy foods. That is true. "Slimy" refers to foods that are, they're not quite liquid, they're not like water, but they're not solid either. They're in this in-between area. So, if you cut them, for example, and you pull them apart, you might see, like the stringy pieces or like almost like liquid. This weird, like, almost like fibers, but they kind of fall down. It's… the noun form of that is slime, we say. It's this kind of gross, a little sticky feeling substance. So foods that have that texture are slimy foods. So for example, raw egg is slimy, or okra is slimy, or some fermented foods are slimy. These are foods that have a slimy texture. So, some people like myself, it's really hard for us to eat slimy foods. |
| So we could say… |
| "I don't like slimy food." |
| Or "I need to eat something else with slimy foods." |
| Or "Eww, that's so slimy. I don't want to eat that." |
| 5. decadent |
| The next word is "decadent." |
| "Decadent" is a word we use often to describe desserts. So, "decadent" means like self indulgent, like it's more than we need. It's maybe unreasonable, how luxurious this thing is. We use it a lot for very-high calorie foods and often for very sugary and sweet foods. |
| So, I could say… |
| "My favorite dessert is a decadent chocolate cake. |
| Or "Oh my gosh, that meal was decadent. It was so beautiful." |
| Or "I can't believe how decadent that wedding cake was. It was amazing." |
| So, something that's just over the top, is too much, is a little crazy, is self-indulgent, just selfish, we can say, "It's decadent." That's a decadent food. |
| 6. bland |
| The next word is "bland." |
| We use "bland" to talk about a food that has very little flavor or no flavor. Some foods are naturally bland. They naturally don't really have flavor. Other foods, however, we use bland to create a negative connotation, to create negative meaning. |
| If a food that should have a lot of flavor does not have a lot of flavor, we can say, "That's bland. That's really bland." So if I go to eat like, I don't know, Thai food, for example, and it should have, maybe a strong spicy taste, but there's nothing, I don't taste anything, I can say, "Woah! This was really bland. Why is it so bland? That's strange." |
| If, however, you're eating a food that you expect to be bland and therefore, it is bland, you don't really need to make a comment. Like, I could say, "Oh, Tofu is bland, but it's healthy." So, we don't expect to have any flavor and that's pretty normal, we can say, "It's bland. It's pretty bland" and it's sort of a neutral comment. But you can say, "Oh, this is bland" to make a negative comment about a food that you expect to have a lot of flavor, so "bland." |
| Also, be careful with your pronunciation, "bland," make the L sound very clearly. Not "brand," "bland." Okay, so bland foods, little or no flavor. |
| 7. sour |
| The next word is "sour." |
| We use "sour," anything that makes us feel like maybe your face kind of squeezes like a little bit when you eat this thing. It's hard for many people to eat sour foods. There's like an acid taste in your mouth, almost. Some people really like sour candy as well like this very acid plus sweet sort of taste. Many people really like that. Sour foods for example are like citrus fruits or like lemon is very sour or grapefruit is rather sour. It's very, like, strong acid taste. We can say, "It's sour. That's a sour food." |
| So, depending on your preferences, maybe, you can eat really sour things or you can't eat sour things at all. I like sour things. They're okay every once in a while, but super sour, not so good like umeboshi. |
| Yeah, that's sour. |
| Yeah. I think it's dried plums like in Japan are very sour, umeboshi. I can't do it, I can't do it. It's just crazy. |
| So sour, sour. |
| In a sentence… |
| "I have a hard time eating really sour things." |
| 8. bitter |
| Okay, the next word is "bitter." |
| Bitter refers to something that has, like "sour," maybe, it makes our mouth kind of like squeeze up a little bit. It creates the same feeling in our mouth as sour, but "bitter" doesn't have that acid feeling. Bitter doesn't feel like that bright, like a citrusy sensation in our mouth. Bitter is sort of like, you feel it more like the back of our mouth, I feel like. |
| So foods for example like spinach or like maybe bitter beer like beer with lots and lots of hops is quite bitter, or like burned sugar is extremely bitter. So, these have, like, kind of a deep, a deeper flavor to them. Sour has, like, a very bright acidic flavor. "Bitter" is kind of like a deep and sort of dark like kind of almost unpleasant feeling if it's extremely bitter. Bitter foods, yeah, like arugula, I think, is another one. Kale, I think, is also quite bitter. So these are things that are, that are not unpleasant, but they have a strong kind of vegetative taste, I suppose you could say, so "bitter," bitter. |
| So, in example sentence… |
| "Many people enjoy drinking very bitter beers these days." |
| 9. raw |
| The next word is "raw." |
| "Raw " means uncooked, not cooked at all. Something that is raw has not been exposed to any cooking technique at all, so just as is. So like, we can say raw meat or raw chicken or raw vegetables. So, no cooking, no preparation, nothing has happened to that, to that food. It's just raw as it is. |
| So some people like to have food as raw as possible. Sometimes, raw food is dangerous. For example, eating raw chicken is very dangerous because of salmonella. So, "raw," raw means uncooked, totally not cooked. |
| "Raw chicken is really dangerous." |
| 10. burnt |
| Last word is "burnt." |
| "Burnt" means cooked too much, cooked too much. So you put a piece of bread in the toaster, it becomes toast, but it's black, you say it's burnt. Burnt is the adjective form. |
| "My toast is burnt." |
| "Eww, I don't want to eat burnt cookies. Gross!" |
| Or like, "Oh! Burnt popcorn smells terrible." |
| That's a popular one, burnt popcorn, I think. |
| But "burnt" is the adjective form, "burnt." It's burnt. Eww, gross. |
| So this one… |
| "My steak is burnt!" |
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