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.

Re:Where do you get all the cool gadgets...

[acl993]

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

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%20si te%3Awww.goodeatsfanpage.com&num=10) and what you are looking for are the first few links.

Re:Why are some people better Cooks?

[twoshortplanks]

It's the same thing with coding - some people are better coders than others, and just showing them the rules and syntax won't help them. They need to learn how to problem solve.

Basically what you're attempting to do is called cognative skills transfer. It's no good transfering the rules of what to cook, you want to transfer the understanding of how you can combine various things, and how to anticipate what effect applying previously unknown combinations of ingredents and techniques work. Again, problem solving.

There's lots of literature on this subject about teaching people this - it's called "Cogantive Transfer". I recommend looking at some of the stuff by Richard E. Mayer - very interesting.

Re:Small kitchen - what tools?

[gallen1234]

A list of Alton's Essentials [altonbrown.com] can be found on his website in a typically quirky format.

Many of the questions so far can be found at...

[IvyMike]

Many of the answers to some of the questions asked so far can be found at www.altonbrown.com [altonbrown.com] and also at (especially check the FAQS on this site). [goodeatsfanpage.com]

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.

Already online! Re:10 Most Essential Cooking Tools

[IvyMike]

You should check out "Alton's Essential Elements" [altonbrown.com] 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.

Re:Recipes on foodtv.com

[IvyMike]

I was just wondering why the recipes are sometimes different from the shows.

Probably for about the same reason my luggage ended up in Dallas the last time I went to Chicago. :)

In any case, you can get the show transcripts [goodeatsfanpage.com] from the Good Eats Fan Page, which include all of the text from the shows, including the correct version of stuff foodtv screwed up on the web site. I usually double-check the foodtv recipes against the transcript if there's any question in my mind that there might be something left out in the recipe.

Re:Vegetarians

[Anonymous Coward]

World champion vegetarian athletes (among many others), who would not "laugh you out of the room", as you say:
Ridgely Abele, winner of eight national championships in karate.
Andreas Cahling, Swedish champion bodybuilder, Olympic gold medalist in the ski jump.
Chris Campbell, Olympic wrestling champion.
Ruth Heidrich, six-time Ironwoman, USA track and field Masters's champion.
Desmond Howard, professional football star, Heisman trophy winner.
Peter Hussing, European super heavy-weight boxing champion.
Bill Manetti, power-lifting champion.
Paavo Nurmi, long-distance runner, winner of nine Olympic medals and 20 world records.
Stan Price, world weightlifting record holder, bench press.
Dave Scott, six-time winner of the Ironman triathlon.

P.S. according to William Castelli, M.D., director of the Framington Heart Study, "some people scoff at vegetarians, but they have only 40 percent of out cancer rate. They outlive us. On average they outlive other men by about six years now."

I'm not Alton, but...

[BlackGriffen]

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

Re:MSG

[DtMM]

This is precisely the kind of ignorance I'm talking about. Knowing people who claim to get headaches is not scientific evidence!

First, a few facts:

• Glutamate is an amino acid that naturually occurs in the body (as a neurotransmitter, for example).
• Eating glutamate does not affect the concentration of this amino acid in the brain (therefore, you can't eat it and cause a headache).
• Glutamate occurs naturally in many foods, including tomatoes, milk, mushrooms, peas, parmesean cheese, and seaweed, to name a few.
• Glutamate has been shown in scientific studies to help people with poorly functioning taste buds increase their consumption of food (the elderly, for example).
• Scientists have shown that taste receptors on the tongue respond only to glutamate and not to any other combination of sweet, salty, sour, or bitter. The taste has been named "umami", or the "savory" flavor.
• Glutamate was first identified by a Japanese scientist way back in the early 1900's. Japanese broth (dashi), which is as common as chicken broth in the west, is made from seaweed containing loads of glutamate.
• Monosodium glutamate is simply a convenient salt form of this naturally occuring amino acid.

Tongue experiments:
Try eating some very, very rich plain tomato sauce. After you swallow, you can taste a lingering flavor on the back of your tongue. It's kind of an earthy, savory, meaty flavor. That's the naturally occuring glutamate in the tomato. A minute later, place a few crystals of monosodium glutamate on your tongue. You will taste the exact same earthy, savory flavor from the MSG.

After you've identified the flavor, you'll be able to easily taste it in mushrooms, good parmesean cheese, meat broth, and milk. If you've ever have miso soup in a Japanese restaurant, you can definitely taste it from the natural seaweed in the dashi broth.

The caveat:
Some people have been shown to react negatively to monosodium glutamate (it is not an allergy). It's a very small percent of the population. Saying MSG is bad for everyone would be like saying peanuts were bad for everyone because some people are allergic to peanuts.

A few references:
FDA MSG - Safe [fda.gov]
FDA - Some MSG Findings [fda.gov]
Chart of glutamate naturally occurring in foods [galaxyofhealth.com]
Society for Research on Umami Taste [iijnet.or.jp]

Food technology

[ruiner13]

Mr. Brown,

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.

1. What do you feel are the most important inventions/advancements in food preparation/service technology in the last 25 years, and which do you use the most in your cooking (i've seen you use just about anything not nailed down on Good Eats!).
2. What areas of food perparation/service do you feel can still be benefited more by future technology?

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!

Re:Economy Geek Food

[Starving Artist]

If you can cook rice, then Jambalaya baby!!

Just toss in whatever meat bits you've got (chicken chunks, sausage, bacon, shrimp, etc...), along with a bunch of veggies (celery, onion, tomatoes, bell/red/chili peppers, etc...), cook up, add some liquid (tobasco, water, chicken stock, beer, etc...), add some long grain rice (about 1 part rice to 2 parts liquid), cover your pot, drop the heat and wait for rice to cook.

The trickiest part is cooking all of the rice without burning it, but once you've done it once, you're good to go.

Re:Herbs & Spices

[BenSnyder]

From his site [altonbrown.com], he recommends the Spice House [thespicehouse.com]

Knives, pots and such.

[Attilla_The_Pun]

One of my biggest, most irksome things aobut my kitchen is that most of my knives are either bought at Wal-Mart, or else rescued from the Salvation Army. NOw, I'm not wanting to spen $500 and up for a knife set, but if I am looking for something that will cut very easily, and last a good, long time inbetween being sharpened, what am I needing to look for? Is Japanese cutlery still very much superior to American steel these days, or are they even? Are there certain materials to avoid?

Along that same vein, I use teflon pots and pans when I cook. But when I watch the food network, I almost constantly see stainless steel, non coated stuff. Why? What am I doing wrong that might cause me to be abusing non-coated pans? What's the advantage ot stainless steel?

Thanks!