Cooking Vocabulary: 150+ Kitchen and Culinary Terms

Step into any kitchen and you step into a second language. Some of it is borrowed from French brigade culture, some comes from old household words, and some is pure technical shop-talk built for precision under pressure. If you have ever paused mid-recipe to figure out what "blanch for thirty seconds" really demands, or watched a cooking competition and wondered why the judges keep saying "mise en place," a solid cooking vocabulary is the fix. This guide works through more than 150 words across techniques, knife work, baking, sauces, tools, and seasoning — enough to read a recipe, talk shop at a farmers market, or hold your own at culinary school.

Core Cooking Techniques

Techniques are verbs — they tell you how heat meets food. Learn the verbs and most recipes stop sounding like a foreign language.

Cooking with Dry Heat

Sauté

Quick cooking in a thin slick of hot fat, with the food tossed or stirred so it browns without steaming. The French verb sauter means "to jump," which is exactly what happens when a cook flicks the pan.

Roast

An uncovered oven method using radiant dry heat, usually for cuts of meat or whole vegetables. Surfaces brown through the Maillard reaction, which gives a roasted chicken its signature savor.

Bake

Also an oven-based dry-heat method, but the word is reserved for items that undergo a structural change as they cook — breads, cakes, pies, casseroles, and the like.

Grill

Direct cooking over an open source of high heat (charcoal, gas flame, or burning wood). Grilling leaves the bar marks and smoke aroma that mark a summer dinner.

Broil

Essentially grilling flipped upside down: the heat element sits above the food inside the oven, blasting the top for fast browning. Useful for finishing gratins or putting color on a steak.

Sear

A deliberate, short, high-heat attack on the outside of a piece of meat to build a crust and layer on flavor. Searing usually precedes a longer, gentler cook such as roasting or braising.

Stir-Fry

A rapid technique rooted in Chinese cooking. Small, evenly cut pieces hit a blazing-hot wok with a splash of oil and are kept in constant motion until just done.

Deep-Fry

Full immersion in oil hot enough — typically 350–375°F (175–190°C) — to crisp the surface and cook the interior before the food has time to get greasy.

Pan-Fry

A middle ground between sautéing and deep-frying: enough oil in a flat pan to coat the bottom generously, medium-high heat, and occasional flipping rather than constant stirring.

Cooking with Moisture

Boil

Water at a full rolling 212°F (100°C at sea level), tumbling with large bubbles. Pasta, potatoes, hard-cooked eggs, and a quick blanch all call for a true boil.

Simmer

A quieter stage, around 185–205°F (85–96°C), where small bubbles break the surface lazily. Stocks, soups, stews, and most sauces live here.

Poach

Gentler still — liquid held at 160–180°F (71–82°C) with barely a shiver on the surface. Eggs, delicate fish fillets, and fruit for compote are natural candidates.

Steam

Cooking above (not in) simmering water, so only vapor does the work. Vegetables stay bright green, fish stays moist, and dumplings cook without falling apart.

Blanch

A two-step shock: drop food into hard-boiling water for seconds to a couple of minutes, then plunge it into an ice bath. Blanching sets color in green beans, peels tomatoes cleanly, and half-cooks vegetables for later use.

Combination Methods

Braise

Sear first in hot fat, then cover with a splash of liquid and cook slowly under a lid. Braising is what turns a stubborn chuck roast into something you can cut with a spoon.

Stew

A close cousin of braising, but the food is cut into bite-size pieces and fully submerged in liquid. The result is a single unified pot of sauce-and-solids.

Knife Work and Cutting Terms

A recipe only works as well as the cuts going into it. Uniform pieces cook evenly; ragged ones cook badly. Here is the vocabulary every cook eventually owns.

Dice

Even cubes. Traditional sizes run from large (¾ inch) through medium (½ inch) and small (¼ inch) down to brunoise (⅛ inch).

Mince

Very fine, slightly irregular chopping — smaller than a dice and less concerned with geometry. Garlic, ginger, shallots, and fresh herbs are typically minced.

Julienne

Matchstick-shaped strips about ⅛ inch square and a couple of inches long. Julienned carrots, peppers, and zucchini are the backbone of stir-fries, slaws, and summer rolls.

Chiffonade

Stack leafy greens or soft herbs, roll the stack into a tight cigar, and slice across it to produce fine ribbons. Basil chiffonade scattered over a caprese is the classic use.

Brunoise

The finest standard dice at ⅛ inch, produced by julienning first and then cross-cutting. A brunoise of carrot and celery adds tidy color and texture to consommés and refined sauces.

Chop

A looser, rougher cut. Pieces are roughly the same size, but precision is not the point — tomatoes for a rustic salsa or onions for a long-simmered Bolognese, for example.

Slice

Flat, broad pieces of even thickness. The cut for tomatoes on a sandwich or beef for a stir-fry.

Bâtonnet

Chunkier sticks, roughly ¼ inch square and 2–3 inches long. A restaurant-style French fry starts as a bâtonnet.

Tournée

An old-school seven-sided football shape cut into dense vegetables like potatoes, carrots, or turnips. Notoriously difficult, it still shows up on culinary school practicals.

Bias Cut

Slicing at an angle to the length of the food, which enlarges the surface area and looks more elegant. Scallions, carrots, and baguette slices are often cut on the bias.

The Language of Baking

Baking is measured, chemical, and unforgiving — and its vocabulary reflects that. These are the words you will trip over in any serious recipe.

Leaven

The act of making a dough or batter rise by introducing gas into it. Leavening agents fall into three camps: biological (yeast), chemical (baking soda, baking powder), and mechanical (steam, whipped air).

Proof

The last rise of a shaped yeast dough before it goes into the oven. A fully proofed loaf has expanded to its target volume and holds a faint indent when you press it gently.

Knead

Working a dough — pressing, folding, stretching — to develop its gluten. Proper kneading is what gives bread its chew and structure.

Fold

A careful combining move: slide a wide spatula down through a lighter mixture (say, whipped whites) and bring it up through a denser one, turning the bowl as you go. The goal is to blend without beating out the air.

Cream

Beating butter — often with sugar — until it turns pale, fluffy, and almost doubled in volume. Creaming is how cookies and cakes pick up the tiny air pockets that give them lift.

Blind Bake

Pre-baking a pastry shell with no filling. Pie weights or dried beans keep the crust from puffing up or sliding down the sides while it sets.

Gluten

The stretchy protein web (glutenin plus gliadin) that forms when wheat flour meets water and gets worked. Welcome in a chewy bagel; unwelcome in a tender pie crust.

Fermentation

The process by which yeast eats sugars and gives off carbon dioxide (for rise) and alcohol and acids (for flavor). A long, cool ferment produces far more interesting bread than a fast warm one.

Caramelize

Heating sugar — whether pure sucrose or the natural sugars inside onions or carrots — until it browns and takes on a nutty, faintly bitter depth.

Dough

A stiff, workable mixture of flour, liquid, and whatever else the recipe calls for. Doughs are kneaded, shaped, and rolled; they are not pourable.

Batter

The pourable or droppable cousin of dough — thinner, wetter, and meant for muffin tins, cake pans, or hot griddles.

Sauces, Stocks, and Liquid Bases

Classical French cooking is built on liquids, and its sauce vocabulary has crossed into most professional kitchens worldwide.

Stock

A savory liquid extracted by gently simmering bones, aromatics, and vegetables in water for hours. Chicken, beef, veal, fish, and vegetable versions all form the base layer of countless soups, sauces, and grains.

Broth

Similar in spirit but built from meat as well as (or instead of) bones, which gives it a lighter, more direct flavor. Broth is also typically seasoned enough to drink straight.

Roux

Equal parts fat and flour cooked together, used to thicken sauces. White roux is barely colored; blond roux has a nutty tint; dark roux — the kind that anchors a Louisiana gumbo — can be as deep as chocolate.

Mother Sauce

One of the five foundational sauces of classical French cuisine, each a launching pad for dozens of variations: béchamel (milk plus white roux), velouté (light stock plus blond roux), espagnole (brown stock plus brown roux), sauce tomat (tomato based), and hollandaise (an emulsion of egg yolk and butter).

Reduction

Simmering a liquid so that water evaporates and flavor concentrates. Ten minutes of reduction can turn a thin pan juice into a glossy, spoon-coating sauce.

Emulsion

A steady blend of two liquids that normally refuse to mix — oil and water, classically — held together by vigorous whisking and often an emulsifier like mustard or egg yolk. Vinaigrette, mayonnaise, and hollandaise are all emulsions.

Deglazing

Pouring wine, stock, or water into a hot pan so that the caramelized crust of cooked bits on the bottom — the fond — dissolves into the liquid. That liquid becomes the seed of a pan sauce.

Pan Sauce

A fast sauce made right in the pan the protein just came out of: deglaze the fond, reduce, swirl in cold butter or a splash of cream, and pour.

Tools of the Kitchen

Mandoline

A flat slicer with an adjustable razor-sharp blade. It produces paper-thin, perfectly uniform slices — and it earns its reputation for sending cooks to the emergency room if they skip the hand guard.

Dutch Oven

A thick-walled, tight-lidded pot, usually enameled cast iron, that holds heat like nothing else. It is the vessel of choice for braises, stews, no-knead breads, and long-simmered beans.

Chinois

A tall, conical fine-mesh strainer. Press a sauce through one and whatever comes out the other side will be silky.

Ramekin

A little oven-safe dish for single-portion work — soufflés, pots de crème, baked eggs, and crème brûlée under a kitchen torch.

Mise en Place

French for "put in place." It names both the practice of prepping every ingredient and tool before you turn on a burner, and the physical array itself. Skip it at home and dinner drags; skip it on the line and service collapses.

Sheet Pan

A flat rectangular metal tray with a low rim. Half-sheet pans have become the unofficial home-cook workhorse for roasting vegetables, baking cookies, and assembling one-pan meals.

Immersion Blender

A stick-shaped blender that goes into the pot rather than the pot going into it. Ideal for smoothing a soup in place, whipping up a quick mayo, or blitzing a small batch of smoothie.

Seasoning and Flavor

Umami

The fifth taste, joining sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. It reads on the palate as deep, savory, almost meaty, and is carried by glutamates found in parmesan, soy sauce, cured ham, ripe tomatoes, and mushrooms.

Season

Adjusting the flavor of food with salt, pepper, acid, herbs, or spices. "Season to taste" is a recipe's polite way of saying: keep tasting, keep adjusting, stop when it sings.

Marinate

Soaking food in a flavored liquid — the marinade — that usually contains an acid (citrus, vinegar, yogurt), oil, and aromatics. Time in the marinade both flavors and, in some cases, tenderizes.

Brine

Submerging food in salted water, often sweetened and spiced, before cooking. A wet brine keeps lean proteins like turkey breast and pork chops juicy through the oven.

Cure

Preserving and seasoning meat or fish with salt, sugar, and sometimes nitrates. Bacon, pancetta, prosciutto, and gravlax all begin with a cure.

Zest

The thin, brightly colored outer layer of a citrus peel, crammed with aromatic oils. Grating off only the colored part (not the bitter white pith) gives a recipe citrus flavor without the sharpness.

Bouquet Garni

A tied bundle of herbs — classically parsley stems, thyme sprigs, and a bay leaf — dropped into a stock or braise for flavor, then fished out before serving.

Mirepoix

The workhorse flavor base of Western cooking: diced onion, carrot, and celery sweated in fat, usually at a 2:1:1 ratio. Soups, stocks, and red sauces almost all start here.

Words Borrowed from the French

Professional cooking speaks a lot of French, because professional cooking was largely organized in French kitchens. These terms show up constantly on menus and in cookbooks.

À la carte

Ordering dish by dish from the menu rather than choosing a prix fixe or set-menu arrangement.

Au gratin

A dish finished with a topping of breadcrumbs, cheese, or both, then browned under a broiler to a crisp golden crust. Potatoes au gratin are the textbook example.

Sous vide

A modern technique — the term means "under vacuum" — in which food is sealed in a plastic pouch and cooked in a temperature-controlled water bath for long stretches. The method is prized for its edge-to-edge doneness on proteins.

Flambé

Setting alcohol alight in the pan to burn off its raw edge and put on a show. Bananas Foster, cherries jubilee, and Steak Diane all finish flambé.

Confit

An old preservation method. Food — duck legs, most famously — is salted, then slow-cooked submerged in its own fat, and stored that way. The finished meat pulls apart at the touch of a fork.

En croûte

Wrapped in pastry and baked. Beef Wellington is the celebrity version; salmon en croûte is the weeknight one.

Coulis

A smooth, strained purée used as a sauce. Raspberry coulis streaked across a cheesecake plate is the dessert-menu classic.

Jus

The light natural juice that meat releases during cooking, often spooned alongside a roast rather than thickened into gravy.

Prep Work Terms

Render

Slowly coaxing fat out of a piece of meat over low heat, leaving behind crisp cracklings and a pan of liquid fat worth saving for roasting potatoes.

Score

Cutting shallow slashes into the surface of food. Bakers score loaves so steam escapes cleanly; cooks score a ham so glaze works into it, or a duck breast so fat drains out.

Truss

Tying a bird or roast with kitchen twine so that legs, wings, or flaps stay tucked in and the whole piece cooks at an even rate.

Temper

Two meanings. In savory cooking, it is the slow warming of a delicate ingredient — say, whisking hot stock into beaten eggs — so it does not seize or scramble. In chocolate work, it is a careful cycle of heating and cooling that produces a glossy snap in the finished bar.

Rest

Letting cooked meat sit off the heat for a few minutes. During the rest the juices redistribute through the muscle fibers, so they stay on the plate instead of running off the board.

Deglaze

See Sauces, Stocks, and Bases above — splashing liquid into a hot pan to lift the flavorful browned bits.

Measurements in the Kitchen

Measurement precision matters most in baking, but every cook benefits from knowing exactly what a recipe is asking for.

• Teaspoon (tsp) — about 5 mL
• Tablespoon (tbsp) — about 15 mL (equal to 3 teaspoons)
• Cup — 240 mL (16 tablespoons)
• Fluid ounce (fl oz) — roughly 30 mL
• Pint — 2 cups (480 mL)
• Quart — 4 cups (960 mL)
• Gallon — 16 cups (about 3.8 liters)
• Ounce (oz) — a weight, close to 28 grams
• Pound (lb) — 16 ounces (about 454 grams)
• Pinch — what fits between thumb and forefinger, roughly ⅛ teaspoon
• Dash — a loose term for a touch more than a pinch

How to Actually Remember This Vocabulary

• Cook the words. Pick a recipe that uses a technique you do not know — a sous vide egg, a chiffonade of mint — and do it once. Muscle memory pins vocabulary in place better than any flashcard.
• Watch chefs talk while they work. Cooking shows and YouTube demos pair the word with the action and the pronunciation all at once.
• Dig into etymology. When you know that "sauté" literally means "to jump" or that "braise" traces back to hot embers (braise), the terms become easier to keep straight.
• Label what is in your drawers. A sticky note on the mandoline or the chinois keeps the name in front of your eyes until it sticks.
• Read food writing, not just recipes. Memoirs and long-form essays use this vocabulary in context, which beats reading a glossary.
• Expand your broader English vocabulary. Kitchen words overlap with chemistry (Maillard reaction, emulsion), geography (regional styles), and history (brigade roles, guild traditions).

A working cooking vocabulary turns cookbooks from instruction manuals into conversation. You stop decoding and start cooking. Recipes get clearer, techniques start to connect, and a whole shelf of menus suddenly reads like plain English. For more guides on words that matter, head back to dictionary.wiki.