Why do Finnish recipes say “tehdään” instead of “do”?

Finnish home recipes and cooking videos lean on a special verb form known as the impersonal passive: tehdään (“one does / let’s do”), tarvitaan (“one needs”), leikataan (“one cuts”), heitetään (“one throws”). It avoids the direct command style of English (“chop the onion”) in favor of something gentler: “the onion gets chopped.” The form is one of Finnish’s signature features and shows up in cookbooks, news headlines, and group plans.

In this clip, a Finnish home cook walks through making air-fryer nachos from old tortillas. “Tehdään natcoja” (“let’s make nachos”), “leikataan ne neljään osaan” (“cut them into four pieces”), “heitetään kulhoon” (“throw into a bowl”). The whole recipe stays in this neutral group voice.