MEXICAN SPANISH → ENGLISH

¿Qué estás cocinando?

What are you cooking?

Practice this phrase ↗Switch to English first ⇄

MEANING & CONTEXT

The words, and when to use them

“¿Qué estás cocinando?” means “What are you cooking?” in Mexican Spanish. Ask what food listener is preparing during a meal conversation.

Situation: Ask what food listener is preparing during a meal conversation.

Register: Familiar (tú). Gender form: neutral.

Connected conversational turns

I want to eat.Quiero comer.
“Quiero comer.” means “I want to eat.” in Mexican Spanish. This expression belongs to Wants and Needs. Request / express a need.
BeginnerHighEnglish first →Spanish first →

Every classification is a doorway

Follow any value to discover phrases that share it.

Topics

Find phrases for everyday situations and conversations. A phrase can belong to several topics.

Cooking Together Food and Eating Together Keeping a Conversation Going Conversation

Difficulty

Poquito’s learning difficulty bands reflect length, vocabulary, grammar and idiom. These are editorial estimates, not CEFR levels.

Easy

Filters

Usefulness

Essential, High and Normal describe the practical value of learning a phrase. Usefulness is independent of difficulty.

High

Conversation builder

Expressions marked as helpful for opening or extending a conversation.

Yes

Situation specific

Separate broadly reusable expressions from phrases tied to particular situations.

Yes

Your favorites and memorization

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Memorization uses your latest Spanish-first rating.

Why this difficulty rating?

Length 6 points: 3 spoken words; selected variant only.
Vocabulary 2 points: Project basic/specialized lists and word-family frequency in the reconciled deck; rarity is not obscurity.
Grammar 17 points: Individual editorial estimate retained from phrase review; accounts for structure and pronouns.
Idiom 0 points: Individual editorial estimate of nonliteral learning effort.
Reuse -2 points: Two-point credit per content family present in at least four reconciled cards, capped at ten.

Keep the conversation going

Explore related topic →

I want to eat.Quiero comer.
“Quiero comer.” means “I want to eat.” in Mexican Spanish. This expression belongs to Wants and Needs. Request / express a need.
BeginnerHighEnglish first →Spanish first →
How do you cook it?¿Cómo lo cocinas?
“¿Cómo lo cocinas?” means “How do you cook it?” in Mexican Spanish. Ask how a known food/dish is prepared.
EasyNormalEnglish first →Spanish first →
Do you want more?¿Quieres más?
“¿Quieres más?” means “Do you want more?” in Mexican Spanish. Offer another serving or more of the item already understood.
BeginnerHighEnglish first →Spanish first →
Hot or cold?¿Caliente o frío?
“¿Caliente o frío?” means “Hot or cold?” in Mexican Spanish. Ask preferred serving temperature of an understood drink/item.
BeginnerHighEnglish first →Spanish first →
This is sweet.Esto está dulce.
“Esto está dulce.” means “This is sweet.” in Mexican Spanish. This expression belongs to Food and Dining. Respond / explain.
BeginnerNormalEnglish first →Spanish first →
It’s hot.Está caliente.
“Está caliente.” means “It’s hot.” in Mexican Spanish. Warn that a physical item, food or drink is hot.
BeginnerEssentialEnglish first →Spanish first →

Technical Specs

Formality and register

How a phrase addresses someone: Neutral, Familiar (tú), or Formal (usted). Politeness also depends on wording and context; tú can be polite.

Familiar (tú)

Conversation role

What the phrase does in a conversation. A phrase can have several standardized roles, such as asking, answering or sharing information.

Ask a question

Situations

The specific setting recorded by the editorial review. Not every phrase has a named situation.

Ask what food listener is preparing during a meal conversation.

Gender forms

Explore the grammatical gender forms recorded for each phrase. Grammatical gender is different from the speaker’s identity.

neutral

Who or what gender refers to

Find whether gender wording relates to the speaker, listener, noun or object.

Not recorded

Learning collections

The fixed introductory collection and editorial Core or Expansion placements.

Core

Vocabulary families

Browse recorded word families shared by phrases. These editorial family labels may not be dictionary headwords.

cocinando estar

Vocabulary familiarity

Everyday, less common and specialized vocabulary, considered separately from grammatical difficulty.

Everyday

Reusability

Editorial score for how broadly an expression can be reused; higher scores indicate more reuse.

Coverage gap value

Editorial estimate of how much the phrase adds to the collection’s practical coverage.

Ambiguity risk

Editorial score for how strongly meaning can depend on context; higher values indicate more ambiguity.

Confusion risk

Editorial estimate of the chance of confusing the expression with another; higher values indicate more risk.

Spanish word count

Explore shorter and longer expressions using the recorded Spanish word count.

1–3

Usefulness score

The detailed editorial usefulness score, distinct from the three usefulness labels.

Difficulty score

Scores run from 5 to 100. These ten-point ranges show the finer distribution within difficulty bands.

21–30

Vocabulary contribution

Recorded number of vocabulary-family contributions; it is not a learner’s vocabulary size.

Review dates

When the recorded editorial review was performed.

2026-10-23

Editorial quality

Recorded review status and quality classification.

Reviewed for Spanish (Mexico)

Source batches

Editorial import batches where source information is recorded.

photo-batches-01-15-2026-10-23

Review methods

How the recorded editorial ratings were assigned. These are assessments rather than measured learning outcomes.

Individual editorial meaning/context/grammar review; difficulty-v2 vocabulary/reuse recomputed against reconciled 1414-card deck. Supplemental ratings are editorial estimates, not recall or CEFR measurements.

Difficulty rubric versions

The version of the editorial difficulty rubric used for a phrase.

Introductory speakers

The speaker roles recorded for the fixed introductory dialogue.

Not recorded

Length difficulty factor