Cooking Vocabulary Quiz
Test your cooking vocabulary in English with our free quiz. Practice kitchen utensils, cooking techniques, and culinary vocabulary.
Start the Quiz →What This Quiz Covers
Cooking vocabulary is one of the most useful and practical areas of everyday English. Whether you are following a recipe, watching a cooking programme, working in hospitality, or simply chatting about food, knowing the right words makes a real difference. This quiz tests 20 key cooking words at A2 and B1 level, covering kitchen equipment, cooking verbs, food preparation terms, and descriptions of texture and taste.
Questions cover utensils and equipment (colander, whisk, spatula, ladle, grater), cooking methods (simmer, sauté, roast, poach, steam), preparation verbs (chop, dice, mince, peel, grate), and food texture words (tender, crispy, creamy, chewy, flaky). Each word appears in a natural sentence context so you learn how it is used in real recipes and food descriptions.
This quiz is ideal for learners who want to follow English-language recipes, improve their English for work in catering or hospitality, or simply expand their everyday vocabulary around one of the most universally relevant topics.
What You Will Learn
- The names of common kitchen utensils and equipment in English, and the specific function each one performs in food preparation.
- The difference between key cooking method verbs: when to use boil, simmer, poach, steam, fry, sauté, roast, grill, and bake in descriptions and instructions.
- Precise food preparation verbs: the difference between chop, dice, slice, mince, and julienne — and when each is appropriate.
- Food texture and taste vocabulary used in recipes and restaurant descriptions: crispy, tender, creamy, tangy, savoury, and bitter.
How to Prepare
The best preparation for this quiz is reading English-language recipes online or in cookbooks. Pay attention to the verbs used in method steps and the adjectives used to describe finished dishes. You can also practise with our Flash Cards exercise to memorise key cooking words before taking the quiz.
For related vocabulary practice, try the Relationships Vocabulary Quiz or the Music Vocabulary Quiz — all part of the LexFizz everyday vocabulary series.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Boiling means cooking food in water at 100°C (212°F), producing vigorous bubbles. It is used for pasta, rice, and hard vegetables. Simmering means cooking in liquid just below boiling point (around 85–95°C), with gentle bubbles. It is used for soups, stews, and sauces to develop flavour without breaking food apart. Poaching is cooking in liquid at an even lower temperature (around 70–80°C), used for delicate foods like eggs, fish, and chicken breast to keep them moist and tender.
Chopping means cutting food into rough, irregular pieces of any size. Dicing means cutting food into small, even cubes — usually around 6mm to 12mm. Mincing means cutting food (especially garlic or meat) into very small, fine pieces, almost a paste. Slicing means cutting into thin, flat pieces of even thickness. Julienning means cutting vegetables into long, thin matchstick-shaped strips. These terms appear frequently in recipe instructions and are essential cooking vocabulary for A2–B1 level.
All three methods use dry heat without liquid, but in different ways. Roasting means cooking food uncovered in an oven at high heat — typically used for meat and vegetables. Baking also uses oven heat but is typically applied to breads, cakes, pastries, and fish. The distinction between roasting and baking is largely traditional: we roast a chicken but bake a cake. Grilling (UK) means cooking food under or over a direct heat source — in the UK a grill is the overhead element in an oven; in the US "grilling" usually means cooking over an open flame (called a barbecue in the UK).
Frying is a general term for cooking food in hot oil or fat. It includes deep-frying (submerging food completely in hot oil), shallow-frying (using enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan), and pan-frying (using a small amount of oil in a pan). Sautéing (from the French sauter, to jump) means cooking food quickly in a small amount of butter or oil over high heat, often while stirring or tossing. The key distinction is speed and motion: sautéing is fast and involves frequent movement of the food.
A colander is a large bowl-shaped kitchen tool with many holes or perforations, used to drain water from cooked pasta, vegetables, or washed salad leaves. A sieve (or strainer) has a finer mesh and is used to strain liquids more thoroughly — for example, to remove lumps from flour, seeds from juice, or solids from sauces. Both drain or filter, but a colander has larger holes and is mainly for draining, while a sieve has smaller mesh for finer filtering. A ladle is a large, deep-bowled spoon used for serving soups and stews.
Marinating means soaking food (usually meat, poultry, or fish) in a seasoned liquid mixture called a marinade before cooking. The purpose is to add flavour and, in some cases, to tenderise the meat. A marinade typically contains an acid (vinegar, lemon juice, or wine), oil, and seasonings (garlic, herbs, spices). Related cooking terms include brining (soaking in salted water), curing (preserving with salt, sugar, or smoke), and glazing (coating with a sweet or savoury liquid before or during cooking).
English has a rich range of texture words for food. Crispy or crunchy: firm and makes a sound when eaten (crispy bacon, crunchy apple). Tender: soft and easy to cut or chew, especially meat (a tender steak). Chewy: requires a lot of chewing (chewy caramel, chewy bread crust). Creamy: smooth, rich, and soft (creamy sauce, creamy mashed potato). Flaky: breaks apart in layers (flaky pastry, flaky fish). Crumbly: breaks into small pieces (crumbly cheese, crumbly biscuit). Fluffy: light and airy (fluffy rice, fluffy pancakes).
In English food vocabulary, savoury (spelled savory in American English) describes food that is not sweet — food that is salty, spicy, or full of umami flavour. Examples: a savoury pie, savoury crackers, a savoury sauce. Sweet describes food containing or tasting of sugar. In British English, savoury and sweet are also used to categorise dishes in a meal: savoury courses come before the sweet (dessert). Other key taste words include sour (like lemon juice), bitter (like dark chocolate), salty, and umami (a rich, meaty depth of flavour).
The 20-question cooking vocabulary quiz typically takes 5 to 10 minutes. All questions are multiple-choice and present words in sentence context, so no typing is required. You receive an instant score at the end with no sign-up needed. The quiz is suitable for A2 and B1 level learners, making it a good warm-up before more advanced vocabulary challenges.
Food and health is one of the most frequently appearing topic areas in IELTS General Training reading passages and writing prompts. Cambridge A2 Key and B1 Preliminary tests also include food-related vocabulary as part of the core topic syllabus. Knowing precise cooking vocabulary allows you to describe food accurately in speaking and writing tasks, follow recipe-style texts in reading, and understand food-related listening passages with confidence. Even outside exams, cooking vocabulary is among the most practical everyday English you can learn.