Small appliances and timing
When talking about kitchen prep, you will often use adverbs of time like ya (already) and todavía no (not yet) with the present perfect tense to express what you have or haven't done.
You can also use ya no (no longer) and todavía (still) with the present tense to describe ongoing habits with appliances like the blender (la batidora) and toaster (la tostadora).
Accidental drops
Kitchen prep can be messy! To say that someone dropped an item, Spanish uses a structure that removes the blame, translating roughly to "it fell itself to me/him/her."
Use the pronoun se, followed by an indirect object pronoun (me, te, le, nos, os, les) to show who was affected, the verb caer (often in the present perfect: ha caído), and the item that fell.
Many manual kitchen tools are named after the action they perform, like the strainer (el colador) or the juicer (el exprimidor).
Some of these are compound words formed by combining a verb with a plural noun. For example, el sacacorchos (corkscrew) comes from sacar (to pull out) and corchos (corks). Similarly, el abrelatas (can opener) comes from abrir (to open) and latas (cans).
These compound nouns are always masculine, and the word remains exactly the same whether singular or plural (e.g., un abrelatas, dos abrelatas).
Measuring, heating, and peeling
Finally, round out your kitchen vocabulary with everyday tools for weighing, peeling, and cooking, such as the scale (la báscula), the peeler (el pelador), the saucepan (el cazo), and the grater (el rallador).
