A cocina en espaol (Spanish for “kitchen”) is not complete without its essential cooking utensils. If you’re learning Spanish, labeling objects in your kitchen with their Spanish names is an easy and effective way to improve your vocabulary and feel closer to Hispanic culture.
Cookware (ollas, sartenes, or platos para cocinar) and bakeware (oven-ready baking utensils such as pans) are both food preparation tools that can vary widely in size, shape, material, and inside surface texture. They can either conduct or retain heat very well, or they can be non-stick.
Some utensils can be both cookware and bakeware, for example, a cocido can be cooked in a caldero (casserole) or in a paellera (cookware traditionally used to make traditional rice dishes such as arroz con chorizo). The difference between these utensils is their function: cookware can be heated on an open flame while bakeware can only be heated in an oven.
Whether you’re making tortilla espaola or fabada asturiana, the following list of Spanish cooking terms will give you the language you need to describe the dishes you are preparing. Practice by reading recipes in Spanish and talking to friends or family who speak the language about their cooking experiences—this will provide real-life context for this vocabulary and help you absorb it faster. In addition, consider creating flashcards with the names of kitchen items and their English translations to review them while in the kitchen. Also, don’t forget that some nouns have genders and articles—check out this post to learn more about the article el (the) in Spanish.