Grammar: In the kitchen – uncountable nouns

Grammar: uncountable nouns
Lower level English (A1-B1)

Oh no there’s nothing in the kitchen and I’m very hungry.
There’s no bread, milk or coffee in the cupboard. I only have a little salt and some sugar. I need to go shopping. I think I’ll buy some rice and some chicken and some butter. If I buy some stock, I can make some soup. Just a moment, I have a big problem. I have no money. That’s really bad news!

Very often you have the choice of using countable or uncountable ways of talking about things. Here are some examples:

‘bread’ not ‘breads
some/a little/no bread or a slice of bread

‘milk’ not ‘milks’
You can say some/a little/no milk or a bottle or carton or pint of milk.

‘rice’ not ‘rices’
You can say some/a little/no and a packet of rice

‘butter’ not ‘butters’
You can say some/a little/no butter or a pack of butter

‘money’ not ‘monies’
Have you got any money I could borrow?

‘chicken’ not ‘chickens’
‘chickens’ is possible but it means a whole chicken not a piece or slice of chicken

‘coffee’ not ‘coffees’ when you mean the beans or granules because these are uncountable. But you can say ‘2 coffees please’ when you are ordering 2 cups of coffee because here coffee is countable!

‘soup’ not ‘soups’ when you are talking about the kind of food eg Would you like some soup or perhaps some salad? But when you are ordering you can say ‘2 soups please’. You can also say a packet or tin/can of soup.

‘news’ is an uncountable noun but we can make it countable by saying ‘a piece of news’. For example ‘I’ve got two pieces of exciting news. I’ve passed my exams and I’m getting married!’

With uncountable nouns, we can use:
some
any
a little
a lot
much
no