The Thermochemical Joy of Cooking 275
daeley writes "Wired has a feature on Alton Brown, host of FoodNetwork's Good Eats and favorite chef of geek foodies everywhere: The Thermochemical Joy of Cooking. AB has his own website, of course, and his own blog, of course. (If you are familiar with Alton's distinctive delivery, you can hear his voice as you read. My only complaint is that he doesn't write anywhere near often enough.) He's also been interviewed on Slashdot. From the Wired article: 'Brown, 41, is a culinary hacker, the poster boy for a movement that's coming to a boil in kitchens across America. The essence: Cooking is a science, not an art, informed by chemistry, physics, and biology. "Everything in food is science," Brown says. "The only subjective part is when you eat it."'"
Not a very profound assertion (Score:1, Interesting)
Never really got into cooking shows until... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's when I met the stylings of AB - he got me to love to cook. Granted, I always liked to cook, but after watching his show I *love* to cook.
For some reason his style just matches what I like - he talks about something and it sticks in your head. And because he shows the science behind the food, when you make a new dish, you can almost tell the outcome before you start - you know how eveything will react!
Plus, I dig the dry humor, how he refers to the ingredient list as "hardware" and soft(wet)ware", the camera angles you don't see on a regular cooking show - even the corny acting I like hehe.
What ingredients go together... (Score:3, Interesting)
eg: tuna & cheese, beef & tomatoes, carrots, onions & celery (aka "mirepoix"), etc.
Is it the balance between bitter & sweet? Or is it just "magic"
(ps: you should all try root beer & orange juice...now that's a mix that tastes great but looks awful)
TDz.
Re:Not a very profound assertion (Score:5, Interesting)
Cooks wish they were biologists.
Bakers are, in a sense, biologists. They know that yeast in bread and rolls thrive in warm temperatures, and that the ideal temperature for yeast activity is between 120 an 130 degrees F. Heat the dough to 140, and the yeast dies. Salt will kill yeast if brought in direct contact with it as well. And yeast loves sugar - so much so that if you leave the sugar out of bread, the yeast will start breaking down the complex sugars in the flour, which in turn changes the flavor of the breads.
Bakers must know the environmental conditions they need to set up for yeast (a living fungus), or they will find themselves without a bakery. In this sense, they have to be biologists, albeit in a limited sense.
Alton's cause (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, Alton knows a whole lot about how to make the cooking experience more enjoyable so you can worry about the art more than the science. The best way to thaw a chicken.. put it in a bowl with barely running cold water spilling into it, rather than having it sit in the oven. See, now I can worry more about what seasoning to choose instead!
Re:I'm a Real Chemist and a Real Chef... (Score:2, Interesting)
yes, i am putting on snobby chef airs (which i really have no right to do, i'm just the sous/saucier), but i'm also speaking from the firsthand experience of trying to fuse chemistry and cooking. if that concept really does it for you, try baking - that branch of the food arts really is a science, everything has to be weighed out just right and mixed in the proper order and fashion, or the proper reactions won't take place and you get a limp, flabby cake or gooey, chewy bread. i'm actually surprised i dont' see alton in the bake shop more...
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
ahh, but curdling isn't as simple as that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cooking is an art (Score:2, Interesting)
hmmm, have you ever did a titration ? Just adding drops of an acid substance into a solution which contains an indicator can make the solution turn let's say red with ONLY ONE DROP.
That looks like magic to me ;-) And this kind of thing happens a lot (not magic, science, my drop thing) in cooking...
Re:I'm a Real Chemist and a Real Chef... (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference is that in cooking, if you make a mistake adding ingredients, you can usually compensate by adding a different ingredient to counteract it.
In baking if you screw up, you usually have completely destroyed the chemical reactions you need to have happen, and so you have to throw it all away and start over.
(There is, of course, art in baking, too, but that usually comes into play in the finishing of the item, *after* the baking is done.)
Re:I'm a Real Chemist and a Real Chef... (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's kind of like, I'd love to own a Picasso. I like Picasso. If I could own a Picasso one day, that would be swell. But I don't want to paint like Picasso. It's like the really great chefs are artists and it's like, I'm going to go to the restaurants and enjoy it. I don't want to cook like that at home and I don't want them to publish books that tell me how because you know what? You can't! You can't. You can not do it. They can write that stuff down, you're still not going to be able to do it. That's why, I think Joseph? [sic, Thomas?] Heller, amazing chef, French Laundry, out in Napa, amazing guy. I can't cook any of the stuff in his book because it's not enough to have it written down. It isn't enough. No more than it would be enough for Picasso to have written How To Paint A Picasso book. That's what we're talking about.
There's a level... It's like, I don't call myself a chef. I'm not a chef. I don't have the creative chops to call myself a chef. Can I hack out a decent meatloaf? Well, yeah, because I understand the meatloaf and yackety-yak. But I am I going to create a great dish? No? I'm not going to create a great dish. Those guys have that artistry and I wish they'd just do it and sell it and let those of us that want to eat it and enjoy it and stop writing cookbooks. Because I know more people that have given up on cooking because they couldn't make Charlie Trotter's friggin' Rabbit Reduction sauce. It's so intimidating. It infuriates me that those guys feel like they don't make enough money already that they have to make the rest of us feel bad with their cookbooks. So, I don't buy them. I don't buy those cookbooks. I very rarely buy cookbooks, to be frank.
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Thirst for knowledge (Score:3, Interesting)
AB is about entertaining information, food and cooking just happen to be the subject. I would like to see more spinoffs with this style on discovery or TLC (Which should change its name to THRDC - The Home Repair and Decoration Chanel).
I also highly recommend "Unwrapped" for those like me with the crayon making fetish.
Re:finally! (Score:3, Interesting)
There's science behind everything, but I don't think cooking is a science. It's a skill that combines a bit of science, a bit of art, some trial and error, and lots of practice. For example, I've been trying for a while to create a decent phad thai. The science part might tell me not to let the noodles cook too long, but it's not going to tell me what the end result is going to taste like. Each time I make it, I modify the sauce to try to achieve what I want, but it will take me a few more tries, maybe a lot more, before I really know this dish. Even following recipes may not get you what you want, because each one is different.
I used to watch my grandma or my mom cooking when I was a kid and then I tried to emulate them. My grandma never used a recipe, and I'd watch her throw in "a little of this, a pinch of that" and I wanted to do the same. When I was about ten, I begged my mom to let me try making chocolate chip cookies without a recipe. She was worried I'd be wasting ingredients, but she finally let me. It turned out pretty good too, for a first try. They were a little hard, but edible. I've had lots of cooks in my family. My great grandfather, my grandma, two of her siblings, and one of my cousins have all owned restaurants at some point in their lives.
I guess I'm starting to ramble, but I really like Alton Brown. I didn't realize he'd been interviewed on Slashdot, all I knew of him was from watching his show. I like him because his humor is right on my level, and my wife agrees he's entertaining. She also expects me to do most of the cooking :-). Sometimes I get a little tired of that, but if she cooks then I have to do the dishes, and I'd rather cook almost any day.