Episode 0143

Hello everyone and welcome back to English Pod. My name is Marco.

And my name is Catherine.

I am. I have to have meat every day, so that's why I usually go to the butcher.

All right, so vegetarians be warned. Today's dialogue is all about eating meat and where to go to get meat. So as Marco said that place is called the butchers.

So we're going to be visiting the butcher and we're going to learn all the different types of meat you can find there.

Great. So, uh, we don't have anything to preview, but before we get started, just like to mention that you're going to hear a lot of different kinds of words and we'll be back in a minute to talk about what they mean.

Hi, what can I get for you?

I'd like half a pound of ground beef, please.

Good choice. Our ground beef is extra lean, if you know what I mean.

Could I also have half a dozen pork chops and two pounds of boneless chicken breast?

No, no, no, chicken breasts at the moment. But we have some nice chicken thighs.

No, that won't do. I'll take the smoked ham you have here.

Okay. Is there anything else?

Is this salami and bologna you have here?

Yes. It's very fine meat. Made it myself.

Sounds good. Okay, that's it.

Wait. We have T-bone, ribeye, and sirloin steaks. They are very fresh. Just came from the slaughterhouse.

Okay, that'll be 34.50.

All right, we're back. So this butcher was kind of creepy in the beginning.

I think that's usually the conception that you have of butchers because they always have a knife, and they're always covered in blood, but it's not human blood, right?

So, um, so, but we actually took a look at a lot of different types of meat that the woman was ordering. Uh, so why don't we take a look at these now in language takeaway?

Okay, so the first is a classic cut. This is something that we had at my house about once a week growing up. It's called a pork chop.

Pork chop.

Mhm. So, a pork chop comes from the animal, the pork, or pig.

Yeah, we actually don't say pork to mean the animal, pork just means the kind of meat that comes from a pig. So, big difference there when we're talking about food, we say pork.

Oh, wow. And, uh, what about a pork chop? So what exactly is that?

Chop is usually just on the bone, and, uh, oftentimes it's fried. Um, or baked I guess, but, uh, it's just a piece of pork on the bone, and, uh, a chop, you just imagine a knife chopping something.

All right, so a pork chop, very good. And after pork chops, we were ordering some ground beef.

All right, so ground beef is another important one. Ground beef is beef that's been chopped up and pushed through a machine that kind of pushes it out in very, very small bits and pieces. There's no bone.

So, uh, ground comes from the verb to grind. So to grind up meat to make it very, very small pieces.

What a Oh, yeah, exactly. So, ground beef, you grind up beef. What other things would you grind?

Oh, you could grind your teeth. Some people do that when they're sleeping, they grind their teeth. Um, you can grind, um, you have pepper grinders. You know, pepper sometimes come in balls and you have to grind them to make them smaller and broken down.

Very good. So, that's ground beef and from the verb to grind.

Uh, now we are buying some boneless chicken breasts.

All right, so boneless, as you have guessed, means without bones, and, uh, chicken breasts are usually just, uh, really nice, juicy, kind of tender cut of meat from the chicken, from the kind of underside of the chicken where obviously, uh, yeah, they have it. It's not a wing, it's not a leg, it's just a chicken breast.

All right. So, boneless chicken breast. Now, usually it is boneless, right, when you buy it at the supermarket.

Yeah, yeah.

Next up, we've got some, uh, classic deli counter favorites. These are our cold cuts.

All right. So, cold cuts. Now, this means that they are cold?

Oh, well, yeah, they're cold, but, uh, I think cold cuts, the most important thing to remember here is that they're mostly like, uh, kinds of salami or, um, cured meats. So these are salt cured or, um, they're dried meats, and you usually have them on sandwiches. So like a salami sandwich.

So like cured meat, you mean that meat has it hasn't been cooked?

Oh, no, it's not been cooked, but it's treated in a way that allows it to last for a very long time. So they look like long, long tubes of meat.

Or they look very dry.

Look very dry, like beef jerky, for example.

All right. So, cured meat. Now, for example, we have salami and, uh, bologna.

Bologna.

Now, it's interesting because bologna is actually spelled B. O. L. O. G. N. A., so you would say bologna, bologna or something like that.

Well, I think it comes from the Italian Bologna. Um, but, uh, it's, uh, definitely a change that happened in the English language when it came over from Italy, but bologna is a kind of meat that's, yeah, it's got a very funny looking name.

I just speak Italian, so.

All right, so you have salami, bologna, and, uh,

Pastrami.

Pastrami. What about ham? Is that is that considered a cold cut?

You can have ham in the cold cuts section because, uh, ham sometimes comes in tubes that you slice. Uh, but ham is also just a normal kind of pork. But ham is cured, you know.

Like a smoked ham.

Mm, very good. And, uh, well, now moving on from the cold cuts, we're going to concentrate on steaks.

All right. The T-bone steak, I think, is one of the most popular ones.

Definitely.

Um, it's a steak that's pretty big, right?

Yeah, well, yeah, it can be. And it has a bone inside that looks like a T.

All right. So, um, you're saying, Marco, that the T-bone is named after the shape and the look of this steak?

Yeah. T-bone steak.

All right.

And as well as our next one is also a ribeye.

Okay, so the ribeye, I think, actually has a piece of the rib in it. So the rib is the bone and there's a circle, which is kind of a, it's, it's, the piece of meat is sliced off the rib and the circle's actually part of that rib. So there's a little bit of bone in it. Um, but it's not as bony as the T-bone.

Right. So, it does have one small bone that kind of looks like an eye because you can see through it.

I had a friend who ate a four kilo.

Really?

Sirloin steak, uh, yeah.

No, there's a kind of steak called Bistecca alla Fiorentina in Italy. It's the, the Florentine beef steak. And it is, it can be about a kilo of meat.

Wow. I bet you can't even move after that.

All right, so that's all the, the meat related words that we have for you today. So why don't we move on now to Fluency Builder, where we're going to take a look at some of the phrases in this dialogue?

We're going to look at the phrases if you know what I mean.

If you know what I mean.

I do know what you mean.

So, you can use it for sarcasm, right? Or you can use it to kind of insinuate something, right?

Exactly, yeah. So, here's what you're saying. You're saying there's a double meaning in what I want to say. So there's two things I could say, and I'm not going to say it outright, but, you know, this thing that we can't really say.

So, it's kind of like a double meaning, but you're trying to be subtle.

Or, um, she's eating for two, if you know what I mean.

Wink, wink. So, now, why don't we take a look at some other examples of how we could use if you know what I mean in different circumstances when you're trying to insinuate something?

She's eating for two now, if you know what I mean.

Tim hit a home run today, if you know what I mean.

Jim and Laura are going their separate ways, if you know what I mean.

All right, we're back. So, um, now that that's clear, why don't we move on to our next phrase?

So this one is a counting phrase, and for those of you who have heard the word dozen before, it might not be so new. The phrase is half a dozen.

Half a dozen.

So that means half of 12.

12. So a dozen is 12. Um, and it's, I'm not really sure when this started being used in English, but a dozen is 12, and half a dozen is then six.

Mhm. Now, there's another phrase, or another saying that's very common, a dime a dozen.

He's a dime a dozen.

Mhm. So that means you can get 12 of the same type of guys for 10 cents.

Right. So, they're easy to find.

They're easy to find.

The dime a dozen.

All right, very good. And moving on to our last one. Um, when they were talking, they said something about the meat being lean, extra lean.

Okay, lean, this does not mean, uh, lean on a door. This is not like resting on something. This is actually a a kind of, um, way to describe food. And so food is lean if it's not got much fat. It's not fatty.

Okay. So, if it's lean, it doesn't have much fat.

Exactly. So I prefer to eat lean meats, so I often eat, um, birds and poultry. So, chicken, I like it pretty lean, and if it's got fat on it, I'll cut the fat off.

Oh, okay. Like the skin. The skin is fat, right?

Yeah.

All right, so you can have lean beef. It doesn't have much fat around it.

Yeah, and in America actually, on the, the packages at the supermarket, it often says the percentage of meat that you have. So it's 95% lean or 98% lean.

So that means you have 3% fat in there.

Exactly. Or two percent.

My math skills are amazing. All right. So, um, now that we've finished with all of these words on Fluency Builder, let's take a look at our dialogue for the last time.

Hi, what can I get for you?

I'd like half a pound of ground beef, please.

Good choice. Our ground beef is extra lean, if you know what I mean.

Could I also have half a dozen pork chops and two pounds of boneless chicken breast?

No, no, no, chicken breasts at the moment. But we have some nice chicken thighs.

No, that won't do. I'll take the smoked ham you have here.

Okay. Is there anything else?

Is this salami and bologna you have here?

Yes. It's very fine meat. Made it myself.

Sounds good. Okay, that's it.

Wait. We have T-bone, ribeye, and sirloin steaks. They are very fresh. Just came from the slaughterhouse.

Okay, that'll be 34.50.

All right, we're back. So, uh, Catherine, are you a big beef or meat eater?

Oh, yeah.

But it was delicious. I'm of, uh, in Ecuador, we are very used to having some meat product every day with our food.

Yeah, well, it's the same in the Midwest, actually, from where we're from. Uh, it's the same in the Midwest because people in the Midwest generally think that if you're not eating meat, then, you know, what are you eating? Bread? Corn?

Right.

So, uh, so meat is considered a healthy part of the day, and, uh, you definitely eat it with your meals.

Yeah, and I'm sure our vegetarian listeners might not appreciate this, but, you know, it's just kind of different, uh, diets. Some people eat, for example, rice every day.

So, whereas in other countries, you wouldn't really have rice every day. Or, for example, when I was in Chile, I had a lot of potatoes.

Really?

A lot of potatoes.

Have you ever had an Argentine steak? I hear they have the best beef in the world.

Yeah, was it, is it true you can eat it with a spoon? It's so soft?

Some of the meat is very, very tender. And not if it's grilled, you can't really do that, but in other preparations, it's almost like that.

All right, so, uh,

All right. So, uh, if you have any questions, any comments, please come to our website at Englishpod.com, and, uh, we're there to answer any doubts.

And we'd love to know what your favorite foods are, meat or otherwise. So post something on our website. Hope to see you there soon.

The English Pot audio review.

Listen to the meaning, then say the vocabulary word.

Beef that has been put through a grinder.

Ground beef.

A type of meat from a large bird, similar to chicken.

Turkey.

Having a low fat content.

Lean.

Used to express the listener is aware of something that is assumed to be known.

If you know what I mean.

A type of small sausage.

Hot dog.

A cut of pork in a individual size.

Pork chop.

A type of knife a butcher uses.

Cleaver.

With the bones removed.

Boneless.

The table that a butcher works on.

Chopping block.

The meaty breast portion of a chicken.

Chicken breast.

The waxy paper a butcher uses to wrap meat in.

Butcher paper.

The upper leg portion of meat on a chicken.

Chicken thigh.

A ham which has been seasoned with smoke.

Smoked ham.

Cold cooked meat used for sandwiches.

Cold cuts.

Spicy dry sausage.

Salami.

A thick piece of beef with a T-shaped bone in it.

T-bone.

A tender cut of beef from the outer side of the rib.

Rib eye.

A piece of beef from the lower back of the cow.

Sirloin.

A slice of beef.

Steak.

The place where animals are killed for their meat.

Slaughterhouse.

Wide sausage that is sliced.

Bologna.

Let's try that faster.

The meaty breast portion of a chicken.

Chicken breast.

Spicy dry sausage.

Salami.

Used to express the listener is aware of something that is assumed to be known.

If you know what I mean.

A type of small sausage.

Hot dog.

A ham which has been seasoned with smoke.

Smoked ham.

Wide sausage that is sliced.

Bologna.

Having a low fat content.

Lean.

Cold cooked meat used for sandwiches.

Cold cuts.

A slice of beef.

Steak.

The upper leg portion of meat on a chicken.

Chicken thigh.

A cut of pork in an individual size.

Pork chop.

A thick piece of beef with a T-shaped bone in it.

T-bone.

The place where animals are killed for their meat.

Slaughterhouse.

Beef that has been put through a grinder.

Ground beef.

A type of knife a butcher uses.

Cleaver.

A type of meat from a large bird, similar to chicken.

Turkey.

With the bones removed.

Boneless.

A tender cut of beef from the outer side of the rib.

Rib eye.

A piece of beef from the lower back of the cow.

Sirloin.

The waxy paper a butcher uses to wrap meat in.

Butcher paper.

The table that a butcher works on.

Chopping block.

Now say the word and hear it in a sentence.

Ground beef.

You should be sure that ground beef is cooked well, otherwise, you can get sick.

Ground beef.

Today's special is ground beef at only 99 cents a pound while supplies last.

Ground beef.

These Italian meatballs are made from ground beef, salt, pepper, and a pinch of garlic powder.

Lean.

Tommy is on a diet, so he only eats extra lean meat.

Lean.

Look at that girl over there. She is so lean. I don't think there is an ounce of fat on her body.

Lean.

We want to make the company leaner and more responsive to the demands of the market.

If you know what I mean.

If you know what I mean.

I know what you mean. The internet is so slow. I'm not sure I'm even connected.

If you know what I mean.

Boy, John's wife is really mad at him. I guess he's really in the doghouse, if you know what I mean.

Cold cuts.

Are we all prepared for the picnic?

Let's see here. We have bread, cold cuts, mustard, silverware, plates.

Cold cuts.

Honey, don't forget to buy the cold cuts on your way home. Buy some sliced roast turkey and whatever else you want.

Cold cuts.

I would prefer a bowl of steaming noodles rather than some stale bread and cold cuts.

Steak.

Steak.

I can't finish this whole steak. It's bigger than my head.

Steak.

You can choose how long your steak is cooked. Rare steak often still has blood in it, while well done is almost entirely burnt.