58 Alton Brown Quotes on Cooking

Alton Brown quotes on cooking

2. Two smashed and chopped cloves of garlic. Why garlic? Hey, garlic don't need no reason.

3. on rice cookers: The problem is, this is a unitasker. And we've got rules about that kind of thing here. (throws the rice cooker out the window.)

4. Of course, we're not going to have any more fresh ingredients because we're all out of hand grenades.

9. Allow me to present.. my bean board. Like it? I made it myself. Wouldn't Martha be proud?

13. You're a French chef. Okay? Until great white sharks figure out how to catch rabies, that is going to be the scariest thing on earth.

14. The way to any woman's heart, be she witch or Wonderwoman, princess or Pocahontas, is through her stomach.

15. Behold -- the human eyeball. Okay, it's a kettle grill with a fancy paint job. Just work with me here for one second, okay, people?

18. I don't need luck! I've got.. (Good Eats theme starts playing)

20. You know what, I hate sifters. You can't clean 'em, they rust, they take up a lot of storage space, and half the time, they're broken! The food processor is always there for ya.

25. You'll need a basting brush. I like this silicone one--it's bouncy!

26. My, my, my! Would you just look at that meaty lava flow of love!

28. I'm just not into vegetable bondage.

29. (about salt) Don't worry about it burning. It's a rock!

31. Slicing a warm slab of bacon is a lot like giving a ferret a shave. No matter how careful you are, somebody's going to get hurt.

33. Stock is like a computer--crap in, crap out.

37. Everybody ready to dough?

39. We gotta change over to the hook in order to work in the rest of the flour, of course, to do the kneading that will be necessary. So.. hook time. Pirate time. Arrrgh.

41. Ahhh, just smell that rosemary, I... Oh. I'm sorry. You can't. That was mean.

42. I always consider raisins optional.

49. Squishable spreads go on squishable breads.

50. Last but not least, one cup of heavy cream. That's right, heavy cream. Look, I said I would help you make premium ice cream. I didn't say anything about low carb ice cream, or low fat ice cream, or low anything else ice cream. As far as I'm concerned, ice cream shouldn't be low anything! It should just taste good!

52. Candy making is basically the manipulation of sucrose by heat. Taffy, jawbreakers, fudge, divinity, butterscotch are all made possible by the fact that between 230 and 350 degrees plain old table sugar, sucrose, goes through more changes than a teenager during prom week.

53. Now, these will be perfectly roasted in 30 to 35 minutes. But halfway through the cooking process, you will have to rotate and spin the pans. Meaning, the top will go to the bottom, the bottom will go to the top, the back of both pans to the back of the oven.. um, you know what I mean? Good.

54. Some people like their meringues all wavy on top. Me, I want mine as smooth as Kojak's noggin.

55. Then we have a tablespoon of fish sauce, an ingredient I keep around for making pad thai or, well, any dish where you want a little flavor of cat food and athletic sock.. but in a good way. That's why we only use a tablespoon!

59. Though there is such a thing as saltless pretzels, called 'baldies' , I would suggest that they are really not pretzels at all, but rather cruel jokes perpetrated by bitter bakers.

64. If there was a trick to [recipe or ingredient], and I'm not saying there is. But if there was...

65. Thank you, Thing.

66. Take your time, and your patience will be rewarded.

67. Golden brown and delicious.

70. By the way, I don't recommend this for most people. I'm just a little bit crazier than most.

74. from a Feasting on Asphalt vignette on YouTube:

76. I like cooking with kids... and I don't mean in a Grimm Brothers kinda way.

79. No matter how much creativity goes into it, cooking is an art -- or perhaps I should say a craft. It abides by absolute rules, physics, chemistry, etc. and that means that unless you understand the science you cannot reach the art. We're not talking about painting here -- cooking's more like engineering. I happen to think that there is great beauty in great engineering (the wing of a Boeing 777, a suspension bridge) but they are not works of art, they are works of science. To my mind art is a matter of personal expression and the exchange of ideas; food is in the end, fuel -- a means to an end.

80. I approach cooking from a science angle because I need to understand how things work. If I understand the egg, I can scramble it better. It's a simple as that.

81. My neighbors thought I was insane because I was standing there with a stopwatch grilling ice cubes for three days.

85. on Iron Chef America: The biggest surprise to me was how fierce the competition was. I mean these guys are some of the best cooks on the planet but that's so easy to forget when you see them on television. They were dead serious and amazing to watch. I wasn't (nor am I now) worthy.

89. There are no bad foods, only bad food habits. I eat cream, butter, and bacon; I just don't eat pounds of it at a time. I use these things when they are needed in recipes and leave them out when they're not needed.

90. As for substitutes, I only agree with them if they really don't change a person's response to a dish. Take mashed potatoes, for instance. I recently saw a recipe that suggested that the fat we all know that mashers need could be replaced with vegetable broth. Hogwash. All that does is lead to dissatisfaction and I think that dissatisfaction results in overeating. We like fats because fats satisfy. They break down in the digestive track very slowly so they keep us fuller longer. Now if I find a way to replace a fatty ingredient without missing it (I do this a lot with yogurt) then you bet I'm going to do it. But I repeat: there are no bad foods.

102. I know people that could serve me canned tuna and saltine crackers and have me feel more at home at their table than some people who can cook circles around me. The more you try to impress people, generally the less you do.

108. I am a nerd, I guess, if you think that getting kind of excited about understanding ionic bonds is nerdy. Truth is, I was a horrible student. I sucked at everything because nothing mattered to me. History was a bunch of numbers, chemistry was a bunch of symbols, math was bunch of equations. And once in my adulthood, I started getting really interested in food. All of those things started to make sense, and now I'm into it. I can't learn enough about chemistry because now it applies to something. And I blame the educational system for that -- for making it meaningless. For making a lot of what we learn in the educational system meaningless.

113. Bobby Flay's getting ready to crack some coconuts. He's choosing his arsenal for that.. his head, he's using his head--which may be the hardest thing here in Kitchen Stadium, I'm not sure. (He and Flay both laugh.)

118. (takes a deep breath) Can you smell it? Can you smell Kitchen Stadium? Awww, of course not--you're watching television. But hey, at least you get to watch!

119. She has a dessert with the ice cream, streusel, and pork! Yummy! (laughs nervously)

123. Okay, so all of those items are being made into a frosting for the chocolate eggplant cupcakes. What a magical world we live in!

126. Cat Cora's got a fascinating way of getting creme fraiche out of the container. Instead of simply removing the lid by lifting it up away from its interlocking device, she just simply whacks off the whole top of the thing. The woman is positively medieval!

128. George Bernard Shaw wrote that there is no greater love than the love of food. If that be true, then Kitchen Stadium must surely be Love Central. Granted, I admit, it's kind of tough to feel the love, you know, with all that battling, and yelling, screaming, chopping, and searing going on. But hey, tough love can still be true love, and I, for one, could use a big fat hug. So let's get to cooking, shall we?

130. That's a big, big fire.. Iron Chef Bobby Flay, willing to sacrifice life and limb all in the name of flavor!

132. Anne Burrell, just putting down a piece of that dough right on the grill. It's very thin, and I bet it's got a sexy name.

134. Now I have to tell you, sometimes, occasionally, when I've been very very good, the chairman allows me to glimpse the secret ingredient before that two-ton lead shield seals its secrets. Now I gotta tell you, get ready to lick your TV screens, America, because today's battle is going to send your salivary glands into hyperdrool.

136. If you take a raw egg like this and you give it a spin and stop it and let go, it'll start spinning again. However, if you take a hard cooked egg and spin it and stop it, it won't spin again. That is because the liquid has set in here, but this is still free to move around. That is so cool! But then.. I'm kind of.. a geek that way.

137. That truffle probably cost more than my first car. But let's not be wowed by flashy fish and expensive pounding fungi, this is about cooking and this is about egg!

140. Food: the final frontier. These are the battles of Iron Chef America: our continuing mission to discover strange new groceries, to seek out talented culinary combatants, and boldly go where no kitchen arena has gone before. Let's cook.

141. Over on the challenger's side, we've got some chemicals at play. And I understand that that is methylcellulose.. and methylcellulose, it's a gelling agent. But guys that are getting on an age like me, know it mostly as the main ingredient in Metamucil. And goshdarnit, you've gotta be regular if you're gonna be happy on this planet.

142. Hi, I'm Alton Brown here in Kitchen Stadium, the culinary coliseum where the only ingredient that isn't allowed is FEAR. Well, that, and those little containers of yogurt they give you on airplanes that always blow up in your face? Oh, and mothballs. We frown on those, too. Anyway! Are you ready for some down and dirty deep-fried fisticuffs? I know I am!

150. All right, kids. Up to this point, I've been okay with you drifting away, going into the kitchen, getting a beverage or maybe some reference books to look up all the ingredients today. But at this point on, you have got to stay RIGHT THERE. Let's get back to the action!

151. There on the challenger's side, we can see those crawfish being peeled. That's a lot of work; it would be a lot easier to suck them out with his mouth.. but that would be a sanitation violation here in Kitchen Stadium.

154. So.. the challenger has already rubbed his meat and spanked his pomegranate right here on national T.V.! So at least somebody's having a good time here in kitchen stadium.