I once had a low-beginner student from Saudi Arabia who lived with a homestay family. He wanted to cook with them—both to share dishes from his culture and to help with their cooking. But he couldn’t really, and not because he didn’t know how to cook. He did. The problem was language.
He didn’t have the vocabulary to understand what his homestay family wanted him to do. He couldn’t explain what to do when he tried to teach them how to cook Saudi dishes or understand them when they tried to include him in cooking their own dishes. Chop? Dice? Sauté? Simmer? Those words meant nothing to him, and without them, cooking together was not enjoyable. It was stressful and things invariably got burned.
You see, cooking verbs aren’t just nice-to-have vocabulary. For students trying to connect with people through food, trying to follow recipes, just plain trying to participate in one of the most universal human activities—cooking verbs are essential.
If cooking vocabulary is relevant to your students, teach it. And teach it well.
Why Cooking Verb Vocabulary Matters
Your students encounter recipes everywhere, online, in cookbooks from the library, on food packaging, and in cooking shows. They need to cook for themselves, share recipes with friends from different countries, and understand cooking instructions from roommates or even host family members. Without basic cooking verbs, they can’t follow any of it.
Food brings people together across cultures. When students can talk about cooking, they can share their own culinary traditions and learn about others’. This vocabulary opens doors to cultural exchange in ways that textbook dialogues never will.
The best part? Students want to learn it. Unlike abstract vocabulary that feels irrelevant, cooking words are immediately useful. Your students get excited about learning language they can use right away.
10 Ideas for Teaching Cooking Verbs
Here’s how to make cooking vocabulary come alive in your classroom. Pick what works for your students’ level and interests.
Start with recipes students care about. Give them simple recipes that use target cooking verbs. Have them read in pairs or small groups, discussing what each step means. Beginners get very simple recipes with basic verbs like mix, cut, add. Advanced students get more complex recipes with specific techniques such as sauté, simmer, marinate.
The key is choosing recipes students might use. Don’t use recipes for dishes they’ve never heard of and would never cook. Use familiar foods or let students bring recipes from their own cultures.
Make it hands-on when possible. If you have access to a kitchen (or can bring in a hot plate), do a cooking demonstration. You or a guest chef demonstrates a simple recipe while students follow along, using target cooking verbs throughout. This is hands-on, memorable, and fun. Students see the verbs in action, which helps them understand and remember.
If you can’t cook in class, show cooking videos and have students identify the verbs being used. Not as good as live cooking, but still effective. Cooking shows on YouTube work great. Even 30-second clips give students authentic listening practice with the verbs they’re learning.
Get them talking about food. Pair students up to interview each other about favorite cooking experiences. What dishes do they love to make? What’s a memorable meal they’ve cooked? Have students bring recipes from their culture and explain them step-by-step using cooking verbs. If students want to and time permits, they can bring the finished dishes to share.
Restaurant role plays work well too. Some students are customers, others are servers. Customers ask about dishes using cooking participial adjectives.
“Is this grilled or fried?”
“How is this prepared?” Servers answer and make recommendations. This gives students practice using vocabulary in realistic contexts.
Use games to reinforce vocabulary. Games make practice feel less like work. Create bingo cards with cooking verbs or images representing them. Call out definitions or use the verb in a sentence. Students mark the corresponding squares.
Play “I Have…Who Has…?” where each student gets a card with a cooking verb. One student starts: “I have chop. Who has slice?” The student with “slice” responds: “I have slice. Who has grill?” and so on around the room. It’s simple, fast-paced, and gets everyone involved. I have ready-made bingo and “I Have…Who Has…?” games for cooking verbs in my TpT store if you want materials that are ready to go.
Give them real reading material. Recommend cooking blogs or recipe sites appropriate for your students’ level. Have them read recipes and identify cooking verbs in the instructions. Check out simple cookbooks from the library with clear instructions and lots of pictures. Let students browse them, read recipes, and practice identifying cooking verbs.
Bring in menus from various cuisines. Have students read and discuss dishes, identifying cooking verbs that describe preparation methods. Local restaurants are usually happy to provide menus since it’s free advertising for them. Even outdated menus work fine.
Have them write with the vocabulary. Students can write recipes for their favorite dishes or traditional recipes from their culture, using cooking verbs and providing clear, step-by-step instructions. They can write reviews describing dishes they’ve tried and cooking methods used. Invite them to write about memorable cooking experiences like learning a family recipe from a grandparent, trying a new cuisine, or fixing cooking disasters.
For intermediate and advanced students, cooking show role plays are great. They work in groups to write scripts, practice dialogue, and present their “shows” to the class. You can have them record videos or perform live. The preparation process, writing scripts, practicing, giving feedback, is where the learning happens.
Make It Relevant to YOUR Students
The most important thing about teaching cooking verbs is making the content relevant to your students.
If you have students living in homestays, emphasize vocabulary they need to communicate with host families about cooking. If you have students who are interested in cooking and sharing recipes, create opportunities for them to do exactly that. If you have a food-obsessed class that loves talking about restaurants and cuisines, lean into that enthusiasm with discussions, debates, and sharing activities.
Don’t just teach cooking verbs because they’re on some curriculum list. Teach them because your students need them, want them, or will benefit from them in tangible ways.
The Bottom Line
When students can understand and use cooking vocabulary, they can follow recipes and cooking instructions, share their cultural food traditions with others, connect with roommates and host families through cooking, establish a foundation for one day understanding cooking shows and food blogs, and participate in one of the most universal human activities using English.
The key is making the vocabulary relevant to your students and giving them opportunities to use it in authentic ways.
Now go teach some cooking verbs. Your students are hungry for useful vocabulary.
That’s it from me. See you in the next post!
Want some ready-to-go cooking verb resources you can use with your students today?
These are available in my TpT store:
presentation . . . | | | . . . card sets . . . | | | . . . bingo . . . | | | . . . game . . . | | | . . . worksheets
ordering in a restaurant role play pack
Read more about teaching ESL vocabulary!
Why Vocabulary Bingo Is Your Secret Weapon for Exhausted Adult ESL Students
Teaching Home Vocabulary to Adult ESL Students
The Academic Vocabulary Gap: What Your College-Bound ESL Students Are Missing
