Lately I've been making a lot of recipes from cookpad.com (awesome site BTW if you've never tried it). I've been noticing there's a lot of terminology and sentences that I'm not familiar with and don't show up in J-E nor J-J dictionaries. For example, in this recipe: http://cookpad.com/recipe/1423798

What does 手で食べやすい大きさにちぎる mean? What exactly does it want you to do?

Also I've seen 豚モモ come up a lot in recipes and I've ascertained it to mean "pork tenderloin", but the モモ　part doesn't show up in dictionaries.

Anyone else got some good ones?

BTW I've found that cooking with Japanese recipes to be a lot of fun and helpful for learning vocab (albeit mostly cooking related) since you need to re-read it several times throughout the process. So far everything I've made from this site (about 5 or 6 dishes) has come out awesome, and I'm always sure to take a picture and make my 作れぽ。

I think it means "use your hands to cut up/rip/shred apart big pieces to make them easier to eat ."

Why you'd use your hand and not a knife, I don't know.

The more literal breakdown would be something like:
"with hands tear (it) to an easy to eat bigness(size)."
で　手　千切る（それを）に　やすい　食べ　大きさ

Here chopping of the い from 大き and adding さ turns the adjective(big) into a measure(bigness).

豚モモ means pig thighs. モモ means thighs. It can be written using the kanji 股 or 腿.

thanks for the new word 作れぽ

Wow, how rare to meet another person from Staten Island on the internet... particularly on a site about Japanese.

The way I learned all the basics of cooking terminology was to play Persona 4, and cook every time I could. All the good words are there.

Wow. Rare indeed. Looking for a study partner?

Ｄｏｅｓ　ａｎｙｏｎｅ　know of any sites that have vegetarian and/or vegan sections?

Okay here's another one. Right now I'm going to make dango (I'm going to make dango!!!) and this step has me confused.

http://cookpad.com/recipe/1424533

材料をすべて混ぜて、レンジで30秒♪
出して混ぜてチン♪をお好みの固さまで繰り返す。

I know what it means. Combine everything and nuke it for 30 seconds, and continue doing that until it's to your preferred hardness. What's with the musical notes and the チン。I know it represents the sound of the bell on a microwave (from the 80's) but I fail to see how it works in this sentence.

The word for "cooking terminology" in Japanese is "調理用語".

So maybe there are some online dictionaries with cooking-related
terms.

domokun1134 Wrote:Okay here's another one. Right now I'm going to make dango (I'm going to make dango!!!) and this step has me confused.

http://cookpad.com/recipe/1424533

材料をすべて混ぜて、レンジで30秒♪
出して混ぜてチン♪をお好みの固さまで繰り返す。

I know what it means. Combine everything and nuke it for 30 seconds, and continue doing that until it's to your preferred hardness. What's with the musical notes and the チン。I know it represents the sound of the bell on a microwave (from the 80's) but I fail to see how it works in this sentence.

I guess the writer is using the musical note to refer to the sound of the microwaving being done. チンする means "to microwave" so 出して混ぜてチン is "take it out, mix it, microwave it".

チンする no shit. Surprised I didn't notice that EDICT says exactly that. How funny.

I'd really be interested in getting some more vocab down for cooking too. Also don't make the mistake of using 成分 instead of 材料 for "ingredients".

成分 is like the parts to medicine. 材料 is for cooking lol

domokun1134 Wrote:手で食べやすい大きさにちぎる

Slightly shocked when Rikai-chan told me that ちぎる means 'to have a sexual relationship with..." lol It's obviously 千切る and not 契る, haha XD

Sheepy Wrote:I'd really be interested in getting some more vocab down for cooking too. Also don't make the mistake of using 成分 instead of 材料 for "ingredients".

成分 is like the parts to medicine. 材料 is for cooking lol

The N3 vocabulary (goi)/kanji book has a great section for that. It's the book available at the white rabbit press, if you are interested

Tori-kun Wrote:

domokun1134 Wrote:手で食べやすい大きさにちぎる

Slightly shocked when Rikai-chan told me that ちぎる means 'to have a sexual relationship with..." lol It's obviously 千切る and not 契る, haha XD

Well some food can be so good that 契る doesn't seem that far off.