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Ask Alton Brown How Food+Heat=Cooking
This week's Slashdot interview guest is Alton Brown, host of the popular cable TV show Good Eats. This is a "reader request" interview in the wake of the surprisingly popular Slashdot review of Alton's book, I'm Just Here for the Food. Please post your questions below. we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated to Alton, and post his answers when we get them back.
If you and Emeril were doing battle in Kitchen Stadium, Who would win? ;-)
What would be the best way for someone to cook say late at night when he's just coding all he really can, but does not want to wake anyone up?
I'm rather tired of bowls of corn flakes.
Winmac.
Mac. You can kill me. But two more will take my place.
I very rarely hear other cooking shows, critically analyze different cooking lore and legend. How did you start getting interested in the science behind cooking? Did you learn it just because it helps you makes better food, or have you been a long-time cooking geek? (see normal /. definition of geek) Do you use the Internet very extensively for research about the science of cooking?
If you were to arrive in a new city, without any knowledge of local dining, where would you eat and why?
What is your favorite sit-down resteraunt and What is your favorite fast food resteraunt? If you were on death row what would you choose as your last meal?
I've noticed that some people seem to be naturally better cooks than others.
I've know several people that follow a recipe very exactly. The food they create just doesn't turn out very good.
Personally, I'll use a recipe as a guideline and use rough estimates. Most of the time, my meals turn out pretty well.
It's as if a intuitive sense is needed.
How does someone learn/teach this skill?
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
As a vegetarian, I'm compelled to ask this: Have you seen a trend in recent years of more vegetarians, or more dishes made without meat? Time magazine had a recent cover story about this, and my feeling is it's becoming a more important part of everyones lives, yet whenever I catch a cooking show on TV it lacks making many vegetarian dishes.
:)
I sort of compare it to Microsoft talking to a lot of my friends: there is a lot of misinformation out there, and you simply don't need to support a "big evil company" just like you don't need to eat the flesh of animals.
Mod this as you feel appropriate
Here's what I want in a meal. If I'm like other geeks, and I think I am, they'll be interested too:
- Easy to prepare in bulk, hard to screw up
- Made from cheap ingredients I can purchase in bulk and that keep more-or-less indefinitely
- Leftovers are robust and reheatable in the microwave
- Healthy and tasty
My best recipe so far is two gallons of chili made in a big slow-cooker. Do you have any other suggestions?
Do you keep a database of your recipes or do you use the old fashion method of dead trees?
So, I'm a student here in the U.S., eating way more fast-food than I should, watching a population around me that is fatter than what we have in Europe. What do you think about the so-called junk food, and the people that eat it? Are you or would you get involved in campaigns that aim to educate people about what they eat?
I myself am a decent enough cook, however, I don't know how to teach her to cook, as I am a horrible teacher.
So, my question to you is this...
How can a pretty bad cook learn the essentials of good cooking?
What are the main differences in the types of yeast used for making bread, versus the types of yeast used for making beer? Could someone, for example, take a beer yeast culture and make a decent sourdough from it?
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
From the /. review:
Back to the grill, he's removed one of the plates on the side of his grill and fitted it with a piece of tailpipe. Then, when he's grilling, he sticks a hair dryer in the tailpipe and uses it to whip the coals into an inferno. Which might explain why he gets his oven mitts from the hardware store in the form of welding gloves. When talking about ovens, he describes how he builds an oven out of firebricks, and how he uses a large terra cotta pot to cook a chicken in his oven. It's all in the name of even heat distribution. He's also not above rewiring his electric skillet to provide a greater range of temperatures. You know you've read something good when the author includes a mini-disclaimer to the effect of "if you try this at home kids, I and the publisher are not responsible."
Okay, well, he's apparently fairly cool.
As for the question: how does he come up with these rather novel cooking methods? Is it trial and error (and, if so, what errors)? Does he have any sort of physics background? Or does he just wake up at 2am and think what a wizard idea it would be to use a hair dryer as a catalyst for his cooking?
I have a rather small kitchen, but love cooking. The downside is that I have a lot of gear all over the place, usually because I really need it. What would you recommend as a "required list" of tools (utensils/appliances) that people should have in their kitchen?
As a well known chef, people must assume you have a refined palate and discerning tastes ... but do you ever get a crazy cravin' for a Big Mac? Do you have a secret lust for a particular type of junk food?
A lot of your show is dedicated to the Science of cooking, and to the underlying physics of food. Your Grandmother (in a really cool episode about biscuits) demonstrated a wicked amount of Artistic Skill, the "look and feel" of food preparation. Do you have any thoughts about the balance of Art and Science in cooking?
The Good Eats Fan page (www.goodeatsfanpage.com) has a lot of information about the show, including the equipment Alton uses on the show. The url for the page is http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/References/TheEquip ment.htm
i te%3Awww.goodeatsfanpage.com&num=10) and what you are looking for are the first few links.
From there there are different pages for various types of items, including cook/bake ware, everyday equip., etc.
Since www.goodeatsfanpage.com is going slow right now, you might try using this google search url (http://www.google.com/search?query=equipment%20s
With all this talk of heating foods, I was wondering what your feelings are on the World Health Organization calling an emergency meeting to discuss the recent studies on heating carbohydrates. These studies found high levels of the carcinogin acrylamide when carbohydrates are heated in a certain way, such as by frying potatoes or baking bread.
Do you think this will affect your cooking recommendations in anyway?
Where is it approprate, and how might I use it best? Or why shouldn't I use it at all?
I read an article about Ming Tsai (the wonderful host of East Meets West) where he noted that, after his show became popular, he came under enormous amounts of pressure to open resteraunts across America a la Emerill. He turned down the offers, and I was wondering if you have come under the same pressure and what is your feeling towards opening up resterants capitalizing on your celebrity.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Seeing that all geeks love Iron Chef, I have to ask, would you be willing to go against an Iron Chef? If so, which would you pick??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Listen up brothers and sisters, come here my desperate tale.
I speak of our friends of nature, trapped in the dirt like a jail
Vegtables live in oppression, served on out tables each night
This killing of veggies is madness, I say we take up the fight
Salads are only for murderers, cole slaw's a fascist regime!
Don't think that they don't have feelings, just cause a radish can't scream.
I've heard the screams of the vegetables, watching their skins being peeled.
Grated and steamed with no mercy.. how do you think that feels?
Carrot juice constitutes murder.. greenhouses prisons for slaves!
It's time to stop all this gardening.. let's call a spade a spade.
...
I'm a political prisoner, trapped in a windowless cage
'Cause I stopped the slaughter of turnips, by killing five men in a rage
The Arrogant Worms
Best Slashdot Co
When is the entire series going to be available on DVD? Or perhaps more seriously, what plans are there to expand on the current three DVDs, which admittedly cover classics, but leave us wanting more? (I have to have a copy of the oatmeal episode, just for the haggis recipe; not that I want to MAKE haggis mind you, but that was some inspired scripting)
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Something I've found as a newbie chef is that a good 75.32% of good cooking is good shopping. What tips do you have for finding good, fresh ingredients? Where the heck do you get fresh herbs etc. in a smallish town?
Mr Brown,
I think that the most interesting part of your show to this audience is your emphasis on the science of cooking, from discussion of protein (such as in your angel foodcake episode and your recent souffle episode).
But the other difference in Good Eats is the great emphasis you place on the parts of cooking, that is the elements at a more abstract level, such as use of heat, individual ingredients (which is the topic of many of the shows) and methods of cooking (such as the right way to mix and fold).
This all makes Good Eats interesting for us geeks out there who want to understand the science, but also helps us non-cooking geeks become literate in the supermarket and kitchen.
What gave you the idea to present cooking in this way and do you have any suggestions for other resources that present food and food preparation in the same way?
- Serge Wroclawski
This is covered in the book, as well as in epsiode EA1B12, the tomato sauce one.
Good question, but we only have 10, so let's ask something he hasen't covered.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
I watch your show quite a bit, and one thing, and in one show (the souffle one) you mention that most plastic has a similar structure to fat, so fat has a tendency to stick to it. My question is where do you get your scientific info? Do you have a background in science to find this out yourself, or do you have friends who have a chemistry background that gives you chemical reasons why cooking is done the way it is?
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Given that your show has covered subjects ranging from eggplant (which most children hate) to gelatin (c'mon, there's always room for Jell-O!), you obviously have a wide variety of foods that you enjoy to prepare and eat.
Are there any specific foods, however, which you expressly *DO NOT* like? Where the preparation is particularly odious, or where the cooking itself is tedious, or where you just plain don't like the taste?
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Hello! I actually watched your very first show about steak here in PBS, it was the first thing in my life that made me interested in cooking. Every time I watch an episode of Good Eats, I always end it wanting to go cook something.
I had a technical question, we always see these shots coming out of refrigerators and ovens. Do you actually have little windows in the back of your appliances or are those props built up for the shows? I always assumed they were props but you never know. Also, is that really your house you shoot in? I love the Magritte hate with chicken painting.
I love cooking, and I love eating. What is your take on how often / how much to eat? There's the traditional "3 meals a day" we all grew up with, and various other toughts on the subject like the "six small meals a day" and "one huge meal in the AM, and just a few snacks the rest of the day"
What's your take... how often do you eat a day, or do you not "plan" eating, and just eat whenever hungry or at non-structured intervals?
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Dear Alton,
I just came back from a trip in the great hinterlands of Minnesota, so this question is spawned from recent culinary experience:
If you were sent out to the middle of nowhere and had some time to prepare for the trip, what sorts of equipment would you take along and what dishes would you prepare? For the sake of keeping it simple, let's say you had to cook a brekfast and dinner over a campfire. What would you make to really wow your fellow campers using as few ingredients and as little equpiment as possible?
Thank you,
-AP
This question is probably better worded as:
I've just graduated from college and have moved out into an apartment. I really want to take the time to cook good food, but I don't have all the equipment. I'm also nearly broke paying back my college loans. I've put away $300 to start building my dream kitchen. What do you recommend I purchase so that I can make some good eats? I already have the stove and microwave. What else?
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Alton - I can't help but notice that your kitchen has quite a bit of high-end Viking appliances in it. I'm in the process of designing the kitchen for my new house, but doubt if my budget will allow for such high-end appliances. What features of the Viking appliances are the most important to you, and which are just "nice to haves?" For example, after the millionth cleaning of the undertrays on my range, I'm sold on the idea of sealed burners. I also find it difficult to get a low enough heat on my burners to simmer a delicate sauce, so I'm sold on the idea of at least one low-BTU burner. What else should I be looking for in my Viking-like but not quite Viking appliances? And are there benefits to going with a cook top and wall oven as opposed to a range? One more: I'm considering going with a gas cooktop and an electric convection wall oven - thoughts? Ok, one more: any thoughts on Advantium "cook with light" ovens?
Karma: Professionally Doomed (mostly affected by inability to keep opinions to self)
I applaud episodes like "Good Milk Gone Bad" and "The Other Red Meat" that focus on lower fat and cholesterol foods. But many of your recipes call for butter, oil, cream, and other less than healthful foods (even bacon grease!). What do you think about some of the substitutes out there, or using ingredients like applesauce to replace butter?
Thank You
Chris
Now... on to, perhaps, one of the more unusual questions you might receive. This question deals directly with how heat affects food.
Specifically... I live on the slopes of an active volcano. One of the things we like to do for fun is cook game hen and pork loins in the hot lava itself. First, let me describe our process, and then our question.
To cook a game hen we first season and then wrap the hen in about 10 Ti (or banana) leaves. These protect the hen from actually burning.
Next we find an active surface breakout of lava. We use a shovel (we also are wearing kevlar gloves that can withstand 2000 degrees of heat) and get a good shovel full of red lava. We place this on the ground a distance from the flow. We then position the Ti-wrapped hen in the middle of the blob of lava and cover it with another shovel full of lava. We try to leave a small opening to the Ti leaves, for steam to escape (or we can potentially have a steam explosion).
Now, the question. The lava is initially at 2000 degrees when we start cooking. After about 15 minutes it has cooled to around 850 degrees (outside of the rock - we read this using an infrared pyrometer). After about 45 minutes the outside is about 450 degrees. At that point we hit the rock with the shovel to open it. Only a few of the Ti leaves will remain uncharred. We remove those and the hen is then very moist and delicious.
How is it possible, using a heat source at 2000 degrees (that granted, gets cooler over time) that it still takes 45 minutes to cook the game hen? We would have thought that the cooking would have been near instantanous - but repeated experiments at various lengths of time reveal that it takes exactly as long in the lava, as in an oven.
If you would like to view pictures of this process... click here.
Aloha
I look forward to this season's forthcoming episode on homebrewing. (Beer, guys, not electronics.)
Can you please say a few things about how you feel about beer: drinking it, cooking with it, brewing it yourself?
("Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew.")
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Many of the answers to some of the questions asked so far can be found at www.altonbrown.com and also at (especially check the FAQS on this site).
I mention this because I'd like to see slashdot add to the internet's collective pool of Alton Brown knowledge, not repeat stuff that we already known.
Not a food question, but I'm curious:
Your show seems to have production values similar to other cooking shows, but I get the impression that the same, ah, practical approach you have to cooking was taken to production. ("Ok, this is just him and some camera guy in his home kitchen.")
How many people does it actually take to produce Good Eats, how much money is that, and who exactly owns and runs which parts of that operation?
I think this is the kind of question Alton loves to answer.
Recipes always call for you to boil cold water. I'm too impatient for that. I like to start with hot water. I can imagine that an old water heater would let the water sit there for a while, and might get extra "junk" in it. I bet newer ones circulate the water better. Plus, I'm boiling the friggin water anyway. There's not going to be any live bacteria in it.
Can I please continue to boil hot water?
PS. I still want to see you do a standing back flip like Jamie Oliver.
You should check out "Alton's Essential Elements" from his web page, which is his top 25 kitchen tools. It includes a lot of the ever-famous tools from the show, including the Lodge cast iron skillet and the probe thermometer.
pronoblem
Dear Alton,
I'm convinced your show, Good Eats, is one of the best things on television. I was hoping you could tell us more about how you got the idea to shoot a show in the first place, how you decided to put a scientific slant on things, and where you would like to take Good Eats in the future?
Thank you,
-AP
For instance, why do smoked meats stay moist and tender instead of drying out? Why do smoked meats have a pink color near the surface - almost appearing uncooked? Is cooking with smoke really carcinogenous?
News for the CFD community http://www.cfdreview.com
I watch exactly two television programs. NFL Football and Good Eats.
I have three questions.
I learned a long time ago that I enjoyed cooking more than anything else. Part of that is that, being a geek, I live in a digital world, and the analog act of cooking is very soothing. While I will complain loudly at standing in a line longer than ten minutes, I've often spent HOURS on my feet in the kitchen cooking for holidays, and went to bed that night blissfully calm.
In the US today, with rampant McCuisine and dual income families, the concept of cooking has been shoved to the back burner, so to speak. Eating is something you do, not something you enjoy. Even worse, good food is, for many, something you go get, not something you do in your own kitchen.
So, riddle me these questions three...
1) What can be done about the dumbing down of american cuisine? Your show is a spectacular start, but there simply arent enough of them. You actually make other shows irrelevant. I'm no longer content to see the "How" without also getting the "why?" Short of "Good Eats 2", what can be done to teach americans what good food is?
2) You're living the life I'd kill for. You were a Video guy who left to go to culinary school. I'm a web guy who would give anything to do the same, if I could figure out how to pay the mortgage and feed the three kids in the interim. I have taken the path of self education. Your book is, quite honestly, a textbook that should be required reading for anyone who wants to cook. I'm waiting for my copy of McGee's On Food And Cooking, what other resources do you recommend for someone who is very serious about culinary education, but doesn't have the resources for an immersive culinary school?
3) Your equipment recommendations, so far, have been dead on. My Magnum pepper mill is a dream, My lodge cast iron has a seasoning my grandmother would have been jealous of, and Spring loaded tongs have been a fixture in my kitchen since before you did your PBS shows. But I have yet to find a source for your Jomac gloves, and I am still patiently waiting for the Plunger and Plunger Junior to go on sale at Your Site. Hook a brother up, to steal a Nicholson line, "Where does he get these wonderful toys."?
Oh, and I'll slide in one more question. What subjects are on tap for next season?
Alton, about a year and a half ago at the suggestion of a friend's gourmet cook mother, I bit the bullet and made the upgrade from grocery store McCormick type spices and dried herbs to those carried by Penzeys Spices.
There has been an amazing improvement in everything I cook. Everything from McCormick really is bland dust next to its Penzeys equivalent. (No, I have no affiliation of any sort with Penzeys, just a recent convert).
So where do you go for your dried herbs and spices? Better yet, where do you recommend your viewers & readers buy reasonably priced quality herbs and spices?
Thanks!
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Maybe after reading a book like that, and I'm Just Here for the Food, I'll have learned enough to know that I know nothing. Only then will I be able to snatch a pebble from Julia Child's hand.
BTW, great TV show, great book!
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
I took a neuroscience class last fall and I can answer your question. There are definitely G-protein coupled receptors in the mouth for detecting more than just "salt, sweet, sour, and bitter." In fact, IIRC, sweet and bitter both rely on similar (GPC) receptors, whilst sour and salt rely on ion channels. The name of this taste is called "umami." What you're tasting is the neurotrasmitter glutamate. The dangerous part of MSG is the sodium ion, because sodium is necessary (neurons cannot fire without it) but people generally get too much of it anyway.
IIRC, neuroscientists haven't yet figured out all of the different receptors in our mouths. The basic idea is that each one provides a benefit to survival: sweet = high carb, sour = citrus (?), bitter = poisonous, salt = need salt, umami = good protein source (?), etc.
BlackGriffen
1. When trying to pan-fry things, the books recommend leaving the food in place without moving for a few minutes to develop the fond. Unfortunatly for me, I always end up with burnt bits and an hour of scrubbing my All-Clad pots. For poaching, it's recommended to cook in liquid at the target temperature, because then the food will never overcook. Can you do the same thing for pan frying, or will you never develop a fond? Or to put it another way (aka the geeky slashdot way,) what's the magic temperature for the Maillard reaction?
2. Because I'm a typical indentured serf with long work hours, I cook enough food on the weekends that I can bring my dinners to work and microwave them. But I'm having problems with Roux-based sauces, as after a night in the refrigerator, they turn to gelatenous blobs instead of creamy sauces (This may be a result of using home-made chicken stock.) What's the best way to reconstitute a sauce?
To be more precise - some chemical reactions just happen to require a lot of energy and atom-by-atom processing in order to be reversed.
You can, for instance, quite easily "uncook" a scrambled egg - by using a chicken as a bioreactor.
Simply cram lots of milk and scrambled eggs into the beak end of a chicken, wait a few weeks, and voila! Reconstructed egg proteins are extruded from the, uh... other end of the chicken.
(And what's even cooler, the reconstituted egg proteins are produced in ovoid-shaped calcium-based single-serving units. Much easier to handle than everything else that comes out of the business end of a chicken, lemme tell ya.)
Once upon a time on your website, you did a very small review of Tony Bourdain's book on Typhoid Mary and mentioned that Tony "writes better than he cooks." What was that? Is there some sort of rivalry brewing? A bad dinner at Les Halles? I'd love to hear the background story.
It's said that one should never trust a thin chef, but with all the recent attention on the failure of low-fat diets to prevent obesity and its complications, where do you weigh in on the whole low-carb way of eating?
The wife and I are huge fans of your show but there is one thing we notice from time to time that we've always wondered about. For instance, your country ham recipe specifies that the ham is done when the interior temp hits 140 degrees. However,
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OA/pubs/ham.htm
states that "cook-before-eating hams must reach 160 F to be safely cooked before serving." I know those bad boys have been salt cured but I would still be worried about trichinosis. Your "done" temperatures for meat are often lower than what the food safety people would have them be. This is a long winded way of asking "What is your approach to food safety?" You look pretty healthy to me so I'll assume you know something those government fussbudgets don't but I'd feel better about trying out some of your recipes if I knew what that was.
Do you ever just completely blow a dish? Experience, I'm sure, makes your mistakes different than mine; but do you ever just taste soemthing you've cooked and say "God. What did I do to that?
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Perhaps it's all the time spent watching NFL (shudder) - but how can you say American cuisine is 'dumbing down?' How can you say people don't care about what they eat? Yes, 'Colonel McBurger Pizza Taco' has sold leventy-zillion 'value meal deals', but paralleling that is an equally rapid increase in the quality and variety of food (both in restaurants and groceries). I offer the following examples of how American food is anything but 'dumbing down':
1. The post-Prohibition recovery of American viticulture, and the general improvement of wine quality in general; (no more Ripple!)
2. I can buy morels, prosciutto, tomatillos, good bread, taro root, radicchio, and organ meats in my local grocery store;
3. 'Asian Cuisine' no longer implies Mai-Tai's with little umbrellas served in a coconut shell;
4. The Food Network;
5. Williams-Sonoma is in every metro area of 100,000 or more, it seems. Yes, it's pretentious and expensive - but it's there.
6. Microbreweries.
'Dumbed down'? No. American cuisine is now at its most brilliant - and it's getting better.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Mr. Brown,
In the interest of comedy and safety could you tell us of some of your experiments that didn't quite make it to the screen or page?
seeing as this is a science and technology related site, I figured I'd try to relate my questions to this topic. Ok, so here goes.
I know that's technically two questions, but they're kinda related. Also, thanks for having such a great show, I have learned a lot from you, and look forward to reading your book!
today is spelling optional day.
I have a High-Definition system and love it, but there's one thing missing - an HD cooking show. You really seem to be into having a show that looks different than all the other cooking shows. Any possibility of making at least one demo show in HD? Marc Cuban's HD-NET would show it.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
A few weeks ago, while trying my hand at french pastry-making, I nearly set fire to my oven as an overflowing tray of oil and melted butter (don't ask) splashed all over the red hot elements, generated copious amounts of acrid smoke, and threatened to ignite. I'm sure that with as much cooking experience as you have, you've seen many hilarious kitchen accidents.
What are the most memorable accidents, or acts of blatant stupidity, that you've seen or taken part in during cooking?
What, exactly, is the science and process behind making good and wholesome gravy?
Seriously, Alton - my wife yesterday, when I mentioned that this was going to be an "Ask /." interview, told me that she wanted to pay YOU $1000.00 (US) to come over to our house to teach her how to make gravy. I am almost ready to front that amount, too.
It seems like every time we have tried to make gravy, it either never thickens, or we get paste. It seems like a simple thing to do - leave some pan drippings (and the grungy gunk too - flavor bits!), add a tiny bit of flour, mix and brown to create a nice roue (or however that is spelled), then add some milk, and perhaps a little more flour to thicken (salt, pepper, and spicing to taste).
I think we managed ONCE to create a real gravy.
So Alton, my question is:
HOW DO YOU MAKE GRAVY???!!!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Hi Alton, Can you tell us about some of your most memorable, instructive or whacky kitchen disasters?
My wife is a wonderful woman, but has a phobia about cast iron pans. I cannot seem to convince her to let a cast iron pan "season" like it is supposed to. I scrub it out with kosher salt as you are supposed to, but she insists on putting that sucker in the sink and scrubbing it with a Brillo pad to get it "clean"...totally ruining the seasoning.
What can you say to her to convince her that a well-seasoned cast iron frying pan is healthy?
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb