Alton Brown: Cook Like a Scientist by Questioning the Status Quo | Big Think

Cook Like a Scientist by Questioning the Status Quo
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's the most important ingredient in cooking? If you think it's love, give yourself zero pats on the back. According to Alton Brown, it's scientific enquiry. The most important ingredient in every meal isn’t salt, or pepper, superb olive oil or the freshest produce. It’s not even love – sorry, Grandma. The most important thing you can put into your food is relentless questioning, says Good Eats chef and presenter Alton Brown. This old adage says it best: rules are made to be broken. And sometimes, unlearning is as important as learning.
Having studied at the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, VT, Brown learnt classic, tried and true methods of cooking. But why do we so readily accept cooking methods? They work, but there are very few other fields where we’ll settle for ‘this works’ and leave the methodology unchanged for hundreds of years, if not more. Innovation has skirted cooking for a long time, so Brown started to question what he’d been taught and experimented with his own methods for the most basic conventional food wisdom, like how to sear the perfect steak, boil pasta, and make pie dough.
How did he do this? By approaching cooking like a scientist. In its truest form, food isn’t made up of ingredients, it’s made of particles. So he switched an apron for a lab coat and got thinking about what his food was actually made of – the muscle fibers of meat, the dense protein and starch of dried pasta, the wheat within pie crusts – and found new, better ways to cook them.
In this video, Brown explains how to cook each of these staple food items through the lens of scientific enquiry. It echoes the mission of Heston Blumenthal, a British chef who once tried to re-invent classic French dish 'duck à l'Orange' MacGyver style by stuffing an orange-flavored smoke bomb inside a duck. It didn’t go well, but you can’t fault him for innovation. Brown’s food hypotheses are a little more down to earth, and will break outdated circuits in your cooking habits for the better, without the fireworks.
Alton Brown's most recent book is EVERYDAYCOOK: This Time It's Personal
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALTON BROWN :
Alton Brown’s flair in the kitchen developed early with guidance from his mother and grandmother, a budding culinary talent he skillfully used later “as a way to get dates” in college. Switching gears as an adult, Alton spent a decade working as a cinematographer and commercial director, but realized that he spent all his time between shoots watching cooking shows, which he found to be dull and uninformative. Convinced that he could do better, Alton left the film business and moved north to train at the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, VT. Soon after, Alton tapped all of his experience to create Good Eats, a smart and entertaining food show that blends wit with wisdom, history with pop culture, and science with common cooking sense. Alton wrote, produced, and hosted the show for 13 years for The Food Network.
Brown has written eight books including “EveryDayCook” (Ballentine Books, 2016), “I’m Just Here for the Food” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2002), which won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Cookbook in the Reference category, in 2002 and the massive three volume companion to Good Eats, each of which made the New York Times best seller list.
Good Eats was recognized as a Peabody Award winner in April of 2007, a distinguished prize presented for excellence in broadcast news, education and entertainment. In 2011, Brown was awarded his second James Beard award, this time for outstanding television host. Cooking Channel airs the series approximately sixteen times each week.
Brown’s newest show for Food Network is Cutthroat Kitchen, a slightly twisted game show that Brown refers to as “evilicious”. He has also mounted a traveling road show called the “Edible Inevitable Tour” which will be launching on its first national tour in the fall of 2013.
Brown lives near Atlanta, Georgia. He likes flying airplanes, riding motorcycles and can hold his own on both guitar and saxophone. He has a Nobel acceptance speech all ready and in his wallet.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT :
Alton Brown: I am constantly surprised by the number of cooking rules, accepted cooking concepts that can and should be broken. And even in the time that I've been making shows about food I've had to face my own lack of imagination.

[mandude]

I'm so happy to see Alton Brown on big think.

[iankrasnow]

I like this video, because Alton Brown brings up something I've noticed recently in watching a lot of chef videos who have their own methods for very simple recipes and techniques. Just look up scrambled egg videos, and there are literally dozens of different methods. Gordon Ramsay claims you should never pre-whisk eggs and you should season only after they are fully cooked. Most others recommend pre-whisking and seasoning them. There is also the difference between the American, English, and French style for scrambling eggs, which all use the same ingredients and result in a vastly different product, and even for each of those styles, there are vastly different methods for achieving the same product. Some recommend making French scrambled eggs in a double boiler, others do it in a flat pan on low heat, with a whisk.

Another example is in taking care of your knives. Some recommend honing a blade every time you use it, others recommend only doing it every week or less. Gordon Ramsay says you should move the knife backwards across the steel in a stropping motion, every other guide I've seen recommends moving the knife forwards across the steel like you're trying to shave a layer off it. One knife expert says that knife honing steels are complete bullshit, and you should use a leather strop instead.

There's tons of contradictory advice in the cooking world, and the only way to cut through the bullshit is to test the different methods out yourself and be scientific about it.

[DustinRodriguez_]

If I could only send back 2 words to myself as a child, that would be all I would need. 'Question everything' encapsulates everything you need to live a happy life, be a good person, cook good food, everything.

[aModernDandy]

I tried the pasta method- even though everything in me rebelled against putting pasta into cold water. Well, it came out great! I used less water, less time and i suppose there'd also less energy! Amazing!

[toobnoobify]

You forgot to mention techniques like sous-vide which are completely changing the way we prepare food with precision cooking. They allows us to better quantify and reproduce the procedures, bringing cooking a little closer to science, one meal at a time.

[theladysamantha]

Alton Brown made me a better cook than one or any book ever has. I always asked "why?", like an insipid 2 year old... Why do you have to cream the sugar and butter before mixing other ingredients to make cookies? Its all going together anyway, right? But because Alton Brown explains the CHEMISTRY of cooking, I had big "ah ha!" moments and this not only made me cook like a scientist, but also jump started my love of chemistry! Thanks for the knowledge and the inspiration Alton Brown!

[madisonsmall]

I now run a food truck because of this amazing person I was addicted to his show as a child and now I own a restaurant 🥰

[Menuki]

Ok, drop cutthroat kitchen. This is the cooking show I want to see

[carlstawicki]

THIS is the Alton Brown I'm a huge fan of and not that Food Network gameshow goofball.

[micky]

"Waiter, I want a double vodka on the rocks...On second thoughts bring me 2 frozen pies..."

[NotContinuum]

Alton Brown doing what he does best: teaching.

[DavidZanter]

I don't know specifically about pasta. But I do know back in the day (19th century) when pots were made of soldered tin ware. If you ever boiled water you had to fill the water to the top to prevent the solder from melting and destroying the pot.

[Dumass]

I boil pasta in alot of water if it's dry spaghetti, because it's easier then using a small pot. Otherwise i pick the smallest pot possible. I think that's the origin for the rule aswell.

[XNaturalPhenomenonX]

For the love of god! Get this man on the show more often! This was by far one of my favorite episodes.

[cbernier]

On Good Eats he said to use a lot of water even more then the package says. He changed.

[wuboAF]

Ah yes, food and science: my two favorite subjects.

Thanks for the tips! Will have to try that vodka pie crust idea next time.

[mikethomas]

Excellent video! I could definitely use this as a reference.

[SuperFreeEducation]

with the pasta woulnt you have to take care of it more in cold water so it doesn't stick to the pot?

[Eszra]

I love this man. Can someone give him a big budget show please. He deserves it.

[richardbaldwin]

The pasta theory is wrong for two reasons.

(1) If you cook pasta like spaghetti in a small amount of water it can all stick together. This makes it cook unevenly.

(2) Cooking pasta is more than just rehydrating it. It contains raw flour that needs to be cooked to remove the raw flavour. This is especially noticable with fresh pasta. It's the same as when you thicken a sauce with flour.