pounded

Pounded is the past tense and past participle of the verb pound. It describes something that has been struck repeatedly or crushed into a finer or more workable form.

In cooking, pounding is a technique used to tenderize, grind, or blend ingredients. Pounded meat is flattened and often tenderized to cook more evenly. Pounded yam, a staple in parts of West Africa, involves boiling yam and pounding it into a smooth, dough-like consistency to accompany soups. In East Asian cuisine, the traditional production of mochi—pounded glutinous rice—uses a wooden mallet and mortar to create a sticky dough. Outside meat, ingredients such as garlic, ginger, seeds, and spices are commonly pounded to form pastes or to release flavors, while grains can be pounded or ground to produce flour or meal.

Pounded can also describe non-culinary contexts where substances are crushed or shaped by force. For example, stones, metal, or other materials may be pounded to shape or reinforce them. In natural settings, waves or surf may be described as pounding a coastline, emphasizing the force and repetition of impact.

In everyday language, pounding conveys a sense of force, mass, or persistence. The term is widely used across disciplines—from culinary arts and crafts to geology and meteorology—to denote repeated, forceful action and the resulting altered state of the object involved.