Master Spanish Restaurant Vocabulary and Upskill Your Staff

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Kéllyta Quijada – Spanish Tutor. “Master Spanish Restaurant Vocabulary and Upskill Your Staff.” Lingua Linkup, 15 Mar. 2023, lingualinkup.com/spanish-restaurant-vocabulary.

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Meeting other chefs and cooks at an international level always generates satisfaction. I have met chefs from many cities: Paris, Tokyo, Rome and maybe even with some guests from Copenhagen at special events. What do we all agree on? Communication within the kitchen makes everything flow smoothly. I have been in charge of at least 10 Spanish speakers, and it would have been complete chaos if it wasn’t for the decision to learn Spanish with a restaurant focus. From basic terms like how to say cooked in Spanish, to the most primordial: the cooking verbs in Spanish.

If you got this far it is probably because you need support to be in a kitchen that has contact with native Spanish speakers (whether they are part of the staff or the diners), let’s make sure everything goes as planned. The more familiar you are with these cooking phrases, the easier it will be to interact with the other chefs in Spanish and, thus, all orders will go out on time.

Spanish Kitchen Slang

Although it is well known that in the kitchen you do not speak softly, but rather everything is almost shouted to make it clear what you are asking for, it would be useless to be in an environment where there is shouting with words and terms that you do not understand. More complicated than this? That the shouting is not literal words, but slangs from the kitchen. If you don’t want this to happen to you, let’s meet a couple that will soon become familiar.

Daily Kitchen Phrases

In those cases where you are looking how to say specific phrases in the kitchen, here are a couple that can save you from having a hard time in the middle of an order, the easiest is to resort to phrases like “what are you cooking in Spanish” (btw se dice “¿qué estás cocinando?”), but let’s go with a couple more that are common in cooking and make Spanish for restaurant workers seem simple.

Cooking Verbs in Spanish

The name of our profession is also a verb, and it is not the only action that is done in every start of a new dish, here are a few verbs that are very common in the kitchen, if you have Spanish natives in your charge, or you are aiming at a Spanish-speaking target you will constantly come across these verbs. 

Keep in mind that life in the kitchen is as we know it, that is, orders, commands, the guidelines we have to give, learning the names of the ingredients together with the actions that must be done with them, is the basis and the principle with which we manage to make the whole job work. This list includes generalities ranging from cooking or cutting, to the details that are practically a mechanical movement for us, such as cleaning our workstation every two seconds. Learning these verbs is the backbone of making Spanish cooking work.

Examples:

• En la repostería debes pesar todo con exactitud  (In baking, you must weigh everything accurately.).
• Él debe mezclar la masa hasta que esté suave  (He must mix the dough until it is smooth.).
• Nunca es bueno tostar demasiado el pan para un desayuno (It is never good to toast bread too much for breakfast.).
• Rellenar el pollo de la cena con 5 horas de antelación (Stuff the chicken for dinner 5 hours in advance.).
• Agregar una pizca de sal si es necesario (Add a pinch of salt if necessary.).

Cooking Measurements in Spanish

These are the most common measurements in Spanish, each one can vary by ½, ¼, 1 ½ etc., being valid to say for a recipe “agregar al caldo una taza y media (1 ½) de vino” add one and a half (1 ½) cups of wine to the broth. Equivalences deserve more specific care -much more in our kitchens- but it is a priority to learn and understand these measurements and then move on to weight equivalences in Spanish. The advantage? You can see that there is a lot of similarity between most of the word structures.

Bonus: Frequently Asked Questions about Spanish for Cooking

If you have found yourself wondering about some of these phrases, here you can find the answers with the logic behind it. Most of the words that come from French are kept in this language both when speaking in English and Spanish, there you can have a shortcut if you find yourself needing to know a term in Spanish and its spelling even in English is written and pronounced in French. The details of pronunciation in words that have the letter “c” followed by a vowel, or the use of vowel forces, is a constant exercise in getting to notice the differences and grammatical rules.

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I know that facing challenges such as learning another language can generate stress and even more so when it is about a specific topic, but if there is a profession that knows how to handle stress and generate ideas and magnificent things, that profession is ours. Meeting other cultures is something that comes naturally to us either because we have to put together a complete menu of a new fusion or because we have exchanges in other countries, try to learn this and the rest of the lessons we have about cooking in Spanish and little by little you will be able to feel almost like a Latin chef.

Now, if what you need is to perfect yourself and make this knowledge useful and practical in a reasonable amount of time, check out our study plan designed specifically to learning Spanish for cooking.

About the Author:

Specializations: Spanish Tutors on Zoom

Bio: 28-year-old graphic designer and writer with 7 years of experience, passionate about communication in all its aspects as the main tool to forge links. I consider myself a detailed, patient, and empathetic person, so even if you consider yourself a difficult student, I will know how to guide you to reach the level of Spanish you need for whatever activity you have in mind. As a student of Literature, I always had the same love for books and their stories, as well as for the Spanish language and its formation. I believe that the best way to learn is to be passionate about what you are learning and that is what I always want to achieve with my students. I have worked with children, adolescents, and adults, so I have knowledge about the different learning stages that a person can go through and the different strategies to approach them.

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