Essential Spanish FOOD VOCABULARY (You'll NEED This Every Day)

Hola mi gente y bienvenidos a Spring Spanish. Me llamo Paulísima, my name is Paulísima and I'm one of the Spanish teachers at Spring Spanish. Let me tell you something. I just had my lunch and todavía tengo hambre. I am still hungry. And that's because I only had a very small ensalada, a very small salad. Can you tell me what are your favorite foods? And can you tell me that en español? Well, if you can't, then my friend, you have come to the right place because en este video vas a aprender all the vocabulary that you need to feel at ease when you are reading Spanish menus, when you are buying your groceries en el mercado o en el supermercado, in the market or in the supermarket, or just when you're talking to your friends about what happens to be my favorite subject in the whole world, la comida. ¡Empecemos! Let's start con el desayuno, with breakfast. A typical thing that you can have, it's quite universal, huevos, eggs. And you can have your eggs fried, fritos or estrellados. I love that word because estrellados means both smashed and star-studded. Isn't that poetic? You can have your scrambled eggs with something else. For example, huevos con jamón, eggs with ham, huevos con tocino, eggs with bacon, or huevos con salchicha, eggs with sausage or actually, hot dog. For breakfast, you could also have cereal, or you can have hot cakes, which are pancakes. These are actually mini hot cakes, yeah. In Mexico, we call pancakes, hot cakes. Another thing that you can have for breakfast is of course, fruta, fruit. Here I have plátano, banana. It's also called banana in some Latin American countries. I have a durazno, a peach. And I have a few nectarinas, nectarines. What about drinks for el desayuno? Well, you can have un vaso de jugo de naranja, a glass of orange juice, or you can have un vaso de leche, a glass of milk. Obviously, like everybody else in the world, I can't start my day without una taza de café. What else can you have for breakfast? Well, this is super universal. Pan, bread, and you can spread some mantequilla, butter. And also, you can spread some mermelada on it, marmalade. If you put the pan in the toaster, that is pan tostado or tostada, yeah. In some countries in Latin America, they call it just tostada, a toast. Now, let's jump to el almuerzo or la comida. Now, we typically start el almuerzo or la comida with a sopa, soup. It's also called caldo. A caldo is specifically a clear broth-based soup. So you can have, for example, a sopa de pollo, chicken soup, or a, let's say, caldo de pescado, a fish soup, or el caldo de res, a beef soup. And I kind of like them all except el caldo de res because I'm sorry, Mom, I really, I just, I can't. Because you gotta eat it super, super fast. Otherwise, la grasa, the fat gets like solidified on top and it's like really, I don't know, I just can't. So you will have typically a meat-based lunch. You can have, like I said, you can have pollo, chicken, res, beef, cerdo o puerco, pork, and you will have a side. If you are in my beloved Mexico, for example, a typical side would be frijoles negros, black beans. Also, another very typical one would be this. Can you see it? Oh, yes, you can. That is some arroz blanco, white rice. Your lunch will come with verduras or vegetales. They both mean vegetables. But I think in Mexico, yeah, and some other countries too, we use the word verduras more. Some of the verduras that you can have in your meal will be papas, potatoes, or this one, camote, sweet potato. Now, when you order your lunch, you will have some verduras in it, most likely. And even if you don't see them, they will be there, you know, because we use verduras to season a lot. So, for example, typical things that you can have in a Latin American comida would be tomate, tomato, cebolla, onion, chile. This is an habanero one, by the way. And you can have also ajo, garlic. Now, fun fact. We call each piece of a garlic un diente de ajo, which literally means a tooth of garlic. I just love that. I just love that. It's so cute. A tooth of garlic, un diente de ajo. Now, we can also have una cebolla morada, which literally means purple onion, but we mean red onion. More about how to use the proper color for each noun, because sometimes it changes. You can find more about that in a video, of course, in here in the Spring Spanish YouTube channel. It's a great video, by the way, by one of the other teachers. Now, what about some bebidas, some drinks that you can have with your lunch? Well, you can have my favorite of all times, cerveza, beer, or you can have a chiqui copa de vino. Okay, here, pay attention with the word copa de. Remember when I told you about the drinks that we have at breakfast? I said vaso de jugo, glass of juice, but for the wine, we don't use the word vaso. We have a specific word for that, and that is copa. This is una copa de vino tinto, a glass of red wine. Also, attention here with the word tinto, because it turns out that in Colombia, they use the word tinto to refer to a black coffee. Like I said before, Latin America is like a super diverse region. We have some of the best cuisine in the whole world. I tell you, I'm not lying. But we also have some dishes that you can find throughout the region. Obviously, in each country, they will have their own way to do it, and their own ingredients, but I'm pretty sure that when you are out in a restaurant, you probably will find some common dishes, and I'm going to show you four. So the first one will be empanadas. Each country has their own way to do them, and they're like these beautiful, heavenly-made pastries, but they're savory, and they're like filled with meat or vegetales, and it can be either baked or fried, corn-based or wheat-based. Delicious. Second one, picadillo. And this is like a meat-based, most likely beef-based dish, mixed with tomatoes and other vegetales, otras verduras, remember? Vegetables. And it's made with either shredded or ground beef. Third dish that I want to share with you, it will be ceviche. Ceviche is a delicious seafood dish. I'm pretty sure that you're familiar with it. It is made with either fish or seafood that has been cooked in lime juice. It's just absolutely delicious, and I promise you will love it regardless of where you're having it. And the fourth dish that I want to share with you, it's really not more of a dish, but of our experience, un asado. Or in Mexico, we call it carne asada. It's like a cooked out, grilled experience where you have carne, fuego, cerveza, amigos, meat, fire, beer, friends. Life doesn't get any better than going to a Latin American asado or to a carne asada. Trust me on this one. And now maybe you're, you know, you're traveling, you've been having all kinds of typical dishes throughout the day, and for dinner you want something that you're familiar with. Maybe you just want a pasta. And you're in luck because we say pasta the same in Spanish. So pasta is pasta. Pizza is pizza. Hamburguesa, that means burger. So there you are. You can order all of these three things, hamburguesa, pasta, or pizza, and you will be fine. Now you're a bit stuck. You don't want your pizza to be with all of this carne, with all of this meat. So you want una pizza vegetariana, a vegetarian pizza. What can you put in your vegetarian pizza? Well, these are typical things that you could put in a vegetarian pizza, right? So we have espárragos, asparagus. And we have un pimiento morrón, a bell pepper, or a pepper pizza. And we also have some champiñones, mushrooms. Other things that you could put in your pizza vegetariana could be, for example, espinacas, spinach, or calabacita. Which really means little pumpkin. I love that word, calabacita. It's a zucchini. Now, remember how at the beginning of the video I told you that we have a specific word to mean to have breakfast? Well, that word is desayunar. And we also have specific words for each meal of the day. So to say that you will have lunch, we say comer. It means to eat, literally, but it also means to have lunch. And we have another word that is almorzar. And to have dinner, we say cenar. Now, let's use those verbs in some questions. ¿Qué desayunaste? What did you have for breakfast? Desayuné cereal. I had cereal for breakfast. ¿Qué almorzaste? Almorcé una ensalada de pollo. I had a salad with chicken for lunch. ¿Qué cenaron? What did you have for dinner? Cenamos una pizza hawaiana. We had a Hawaiian pizza for dinner. Because we have no shame and we put piña in la pizza. We put pineapple in the pizza. I know it's controversial. Muy bien. Now, you know a lot of words in Spanish to talk about food. And you will feel so much better when you are reading Un Menú en Español, when you're ordering food. Oh, yeah. By the way, check out my other video about ordering food en Español. It's here, of course, on the Spring Spanish YouTube channel. And if you are ready to take your Spanish to the next level, you want to keep learning, we have something really special for you. We have a free Spanish training that you can access through by clicking on the link in the description box below. And there, you can also access some free Spanish lessons that come straight from the Spring Spanish Academy. This was Paulísima. Y fue un placer estar con ustedes. Hasta la próxima. Remember to subscribe to the Spring Spanish YouTube channel, like this video, and share it with anyone interested in learning Spanish for good.