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

Cook Like a Scientist by Questioning the Status Quo

Watch the newest video from Big Think

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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 Brown’s food hypotheses are a little more down to earth, and will break outdated circuits in your cooking habits for the better, without the fireworks.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.

Read the full transcript at