Top 5 Kitchen Terms to Boost Your Confidence
EOD, ROI, WTF
It’s all about the Lingo🎙️
EOD, TCP report, circle back, core competency, Q1, boil the ocean, bandwidth, deliverables, P&Ls, ROI’s, mind meld, fiscal year, piggy back, crop circles, ancient grains, porta potties….Ok, the last few were made up. BUT. Corporate speak is alive and thriving, and I really get a kick out of it.
Never have I ever worked a corporate job. I kind of sort of dipped my toe in the pool and immediately pulled the eject button and got the smell out of there. This isn’t about corporate peeps, it’s about kitchen peeps. We have our own secret language, too, and I want you to be in on the lingo. Knowing the shorthand of a community makes you feel like you are on the inside and that you belong. Knowing even just a few core words or phrases when you are exploring a new place that speaks a different language can help you feel less like an awkward outsider and more like a local. (Nobody wants to be an annoying tourist🤷♀️). We want to feel like we fit in, like we belong, like we have been buying baguettes and pain au chocolat as part of our morning routine in Paris, our entire life.
Get comfortable with the language in a place and take your level of belonging up 1000%. Using kitchen lingo is beyond helpful when you are working butt sweat to butt sweat with someone in a hot-as-hades kitchen. It saves the day and has been known to save a finger or two as well.
Let’s dive into the Top 5 Kitchen Terms that you should be using in your home kitchen to help boost your confidence, sound like you know what you are doing, make people stop in their tracks and take note of your prowess, and because it’s fun. Anytime I can slip in a Q3, end of fiscal year, EOD, I am ALL in. I have worked in kitchens and for myself, AKA been verbally running amok, for the last 15+ years, and corporate speak makes me feel momentarily like a proper adult.
86
Yes, the number 86. You would use the term 86 when you are out of something in the kitchen. It is a fast and easy way to communicate that something is out of stock. ☠️
Examples:
Prime Rib is 86’d - Prime rib is out.
Châteauneuf du Pape is 86’d - The wine is gone.
86 broccoli - Broccoli is no longer on the menu.
86 Chad - Chad is drunk and needs to leave the bar asap!
You get the vibe. I am not positive where this term came from, and turns out nobody else is either. I found about 86 different scenarios that sounded more than plausible as to where this term was derived from. Here are a few of my favorites:
The term originated in the soup kitchens of the Great Depression, where the standard pot held 85 cups of soup, so the 86th person was out of luck.
The United States also has a Uniform Code of Military Justice that has an Article 86: Absence Without Leave, a.k.a AWOL.
Alcohol in the Old West was 100 proof. When a Chad would get too drunk, the bartender would serve him a less potent, 86 proof liquor, AKA 86’ing him.
There was a speakeasy bar at 86 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village called Chumley’s, with no address on the door and hidden exits. When the police showed up, guests were known to 86 it, or scatter from the premises immediately.
The list goes on and on!
The next text message you must send (to whomever is responsible):
86 milk
In the weeds
This one is never good to hear or say in a kitchen setting. It means that you are behind, in trouble, minutes away from a breakdown or freak out. If you are working with a good team, someone will step in and help you until you get out of the weeds, AKA are all caught up.
This happens all the time in kitchens and can be for a variety of reasons. A bunch of people came in the door all at once, lack of preparations, lack of kitchen efficiency, lack of hands, lack of supplies, just plum dumb luck on a busy night of service.
In your home kitchen, have you ever been in the weeds? Most likely yes. Maybe the stakes were not as high, and if you decided to throw up your hands and curse the day you decided to make risotto for the first time when your in-laws are set to arrive in 15 minutes and ordered a pizza instead, it’s not the end of the world.
The best way to not get in the weeds in your home kitchen is to plan ahead, be realistic, and ask for help. Think Thanksgiving prep, Christmas Eve dinner, any event involving food that is a little more than a casual affair. If, for some reason, you get into the weeds (it happens to the best of us), please take a few deep breaths and ask for help. If Uncle Jerry has to eat cold mashed potatoes cause the turkey isn’t done, he will survive.
Fingers crossed you don’t have to use this one often, BUT if you do, don’t keep it in. Say to loud and proud! 🌾
Dinner is in 30 minutes, and I am in the weeds!
Heard
Understood. Got it. Copy that. Okay! All of these are acceptable things to say back when someone throws out an order in the kitchen. It is the best way to acknowledge that you well HEARD what was being said to you. It’s quick and to the point, as all these terms are, and it makes you accountable that if you mess something up, it wasn’t because you didn’t hear it, it was for some other reason.
This would solve a lot of miscommunications in your home kitchen. Acknowledge and move on!
We are out of mayo.
Heard.
I am inviting the Johnsons over for dinner on Friday.
Heard.
86 milk!
Heard.
The catch is, you can only say heard if you actually hear it. Heard is you taking accountability. Yes, you. 🙊
Behind
This is THE most important term of all time and the one I use out in the real world the most. It has countless applications. Oh, and its meaning is literal. Behind means I am behind you. Kitchens can be a tight squeeze, and everyone has their specific jobs to do, moving and grooving all over the place, often with containers filled to the brim, hot items, sharp objects, a tettering stack of dishes maybe?!
It is one simple word, and it is a MUST in the kitchen. It has saved so many almostdisasters. Do you have to yell it? Kind of. You need to say it with authority and presence. Don’t meekly whisper it or mumble it, cause we can’t hear you! Yelling it might be over kill but I definitely get a little uppity when I am saying it in the heat of a bustling kitchen. Better to be too loud than too quiet.
Real-world applications:
Scenario A: You are in the grocery store, scouring the shelves for the items on your list, and someone is crouched down, peering at the label for creamed corn. You would say behind as you move past her. It ensures that if she were to wildly pop up from her canned corn crouch that you would not be hit in the nose with a skull or a flying limb.
Scenario B: You are cutting up some veggies to go into a nice cozy soup you are making to pair with this fall weather. Your sister Janet is standing by the sink washing her hands. You are trying to clean up your areas before you move on to another task, and you need to carry the knife from the counter to the sink area. You say, sharp behind. This indicates to Janet that you are behind her with a knife…not in a creepy way, but in a please don’t make any sudden movements or you might be impaled kind of way.
Using the term behind is versatile, and I encourage you to get creative with it. Hot behind, knife behind, and most importantly, cat behind!!! 🐈
FIFO
An acronym for First In First Out. This is a hill I will die on and is 100% transferable to home kitchens. When you have just come back from a shopping trip and you are restocking the fridge, pantry, spice cupboard, or anything, you need to rotate the stock so that the older goods are moved to the front and the newly purchased items are at the back. This ensures that things are not going to go bad.
This takes extra work. I will be the first one to say it. You have to take out all the canned black beans, put the new ones in, and then put all the other cans back. It is worth the effort. Groceries are expensive, and we want you to get the most out of them.
Real-world applications:
Scenario A: Your underwear drawer. Yup. You do a load of laundry and then fold your precious underwear. You do NOT just put them on top of the ones still in the drawer. You take those out, put the freshly washed ones in the drawer, and then put the others back on top. Stock rotation🩲.
Scenario B: You are almost to the bottom of your glass container that you keep your basmati rice in. Being the good Samaritan that you are, you dump the remaining rice into a bowl, then fill the container with the fresh bag of rice, and then you add the leftover rice back into the container on top. First in, first out, and the rice container is not left empty. Your future self thanks you for that.
Y’all. That was SO much fun for me. I hope you teach your family these terms immediately and have some fun in the kitchen, and hopefully prevent an accident or two. There are more terms that I will most definitely share with you in the future. Lots of kitchen terms are French, what do you say we have a language lesson and learn more kitchen terms just for the heck of it! Mais oui😘
Cheers,
Nicole | Butter Cult
