ESL Cooking Reading

There is an ESL cooking reading passage and questions on this page that will let you practice using some of the cooking vocabulary. When you do the reading and questions on this page you will be able to work at a speed that is suitable for you so you can learn as much as possible.

The ESL cooking reading passage on this page will help you learn the cooking vocabulary.

When you read the following passage on this ESL cooking reading page you should try to understand as much of it as possible. This means that it is ok for you to stop and look up the meanings of the words. By doing this you will be able to make sure that you understand as much of the passage as you can. If you do not understand the passage fully you might not be able to answer the questions that follow the passage correctly. When you need to look up any of the cooking words that you do not understand you can use the ESL cooking vocabulary page.

Then when you are ready you can try to answer the questions that follow the ESL cooking reading passage. If you are not sure of the correct answer you can try looking at the passage again to find it. After you have answered all the questions you can use the get score button to see how many you got right and what the correct answers were.

ESL Cooking Reading Comprehension Passage

Modern Cooking

We all need to eat to keep fit and healthy. Young children cannot grow tall and strong unless they eat a well-balanced diet. This means a selection of foods that provide protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamins and mineral elements.

Some foods can be digested raw but other foods are heated and cooked to make digestion faster. Salad leaves, cucumber, tomatoes, vegetables such as carrots, and fruit do not need cooking. However apples are an example of fruit that can be eaten raw and also cooked. Stewed apples, apples baked in the oven and apples in pies and topped with crumble are ways of eating the fruit. When food is cooked, it is heated.

Before people had electricity and gas, they cooked on wood and charcoal fires. A fairly recent addition to cooking is the microwave. This speeds up the cooking time. Fan ovens are also more efficient. Barbecue cooking outside in the garden on a warm day in summer, is very popular. In the kitchen, utensils are used to contain the food, and they vary from open pans to pans with lids, frying pans, steamers, pressure cookers and woks.

Before supermarkets sold ready cooked meals that just require re-heating, it was the tradition that men left the women in the home to prepare and cook food. Now both men and women share the tasks in well-designed kitchens. In restaurants, the chef, a few years ago, was nearly always male. Today however, there are as many female chefs as men.

There has been a great revival in the way food is cooked, mainly in part due to seeing a lot of cooking programmes on television. These are often presented as competitions like Master Chef and the Great British bake-off. Also people travel more to foreign countries and return home with exotic and interesting recipes. The availability of ingredients in the supermarkets also encourages experimentation.

The kitchen is now the 'hub' of the house. The family, friends and visitors when waiting for a meal to be prepared all gather in the kitchen and help to prepare the dishes or watch others doing the cooking. The utensils available to aid the food preparation are plentiful. Different types of knives for example. Aprons and oven gloves help to protect us from spills and heat when taking hot dishes from the oven. 

Some people love cooking, planning the meal, assembling the ingredients and then preparing the food. Others however prefer to open a tin of food and hot up the contents.

ESL Cooking Reading Comprehension


Reading comprehension questions that go with the above reading passage.

1) Why do we need to eat a well-balanced diet?
        A) To keeps us fit and healthy and helps children grow.
        B) To help us balance on wet surfaces.
        C) We need a balanced diet to help us live to be 100.
        D) We can live well without a balanced diet.
2) Which food mentioned in the passage can be eaten raw?
        A) Dates
        B) Oranges
        C) Brazil nuts
        D) Apples
3) Where do people most often cook using a barbecue?
        A) Inside the house.
        B) In the garden
        C) In the garage.
        D) In the kitchen.
4) Where can you buy ready prepared meals for heating up at home?
        A) At airports.
        B) On the beach.
        C) In supermarkets.
        D) Only in London.
5) What is the main reason for using a microwave?
        A) To shorten cooking time.
        B) To teach young children how to cook.
        C) To melt icecream.
        D) To make food much smaller.

Score =

Correct answers:



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