Hello!

Survival skills! Well, for me because I don’t cook much!

Today we are going to see 3 useful phrases for understanding the instructions on ready-meals in English.

Here is my new video about this! There are correct subtitles available on YouTube.

Click here to watch my video on ready meal instructions on YouTube.

3 Phrases

Remove the sleeve and cook from chilled.

This means take the dish out of the cardboard around it.  Sleeve means the arm part of your clothes and also the plastic or card rectangle around a product.

Pierce the film in several places.

Pierce means to break through something, for example when you pierce your ears for earrings. The film is the transparent fine plastic.  So to pierce the film in several places take a fork and break the film with the points.

Ensure the food is piping hot before eating.

Ensure means make sure. Piping hot means very hot.  Make sure it is very hot before eating.

The origins of  the expression “Piping hot”

Piping hot originally comes from describing very hot food making noises like sizzling or whistling as the air escapes the food.  Piping is playing a flute or bagpipe.

One written case of it was in 1601. In Pliny’s “Historie of the World”.

Chaucer used it in 1390 in his story “The Miller’s Wife”.

The expression is still being used lots in present everyday English and on Ready-meals.

By the way the Tika Masala was pretty good!

See you soon!

Kim