Good Eats: The Early Years [Hardcover]

Alton Brown (Author)

Book Description

Series: Good Eats | Publication Date: October 1, 2009

Alton Brown is a foodie phenomenon: a great cook, a very funny guy, and—underneath it all—a science geek who’s as interested in the chemistry of cooking as he is in eating. (Well, almost.) Here, finally, are the books that Brown’s legion of fans have been salivating for—two volumes that together will provide an unexpurgated record of his long-running, award-winning Food Network TV series, Good Eats. 

 

From “Pork Fiction” (on baby back ribs), to “Citizen Cane” (on caramel sauce), to “Oat Cuisine” (on oatmeal), every hilarious episode is represented. Each book—the second will be published in fall 2010—is illustrated with behind-the-scenes photos taken on the Good Eats set. Each contains more than 140 recipes and more than 1,000 photographs and illustrations, along with explanations of techniques, lots of food-science information (of course!), and more food puns, food jokes, and food trivia than you can shake a wooden spoon at.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Every so often a cookbook comes along that wishes it were a television show. Brown's latest effort actually is a television show, or rather, a marathon of all 80 episodes from the first six seasons of his Food Network hit. Egotistical yet thrifty, Brown interviews himself in the introduction, describing this work as four hundred pages of liner notes. And that is sadly accurate. For all its girth, there are merely 140 recipes, ranging from chocolate syrup to butternut dumplings with brown butter and sage. That these entries appear sequentially exemplifies the book's biggest problem; it is organized by TV episode number, causing readers to repeatedly visit the index to make sure they're not missing anything. The roast turkey is toward the beginning of the book, for example, but the turkey salad is hiding out somewhere in the middle. Recipes that never made it into the show! are promised, but good luck identifying them, and is that really a bonus? Accompanying each meal is a chart labeled, Knowledge Concentrate. These contain the fun, quasi-scientific facts that are the author's bread and butter (The higher the egg-to-dairy ratio, the firmer the custard). The remainder of the pages are cluttered with photo strips, sketches and squiggly lines, lest you get bored and turn on the tube. (Oct.)
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About the Author

Alton Brown is the writer, director, and host of the Food Network show Good Eats, which won a 2007 Peabody Award, and is the expert commentator on Iron Chef America. In 2004 his STC book I’m Just Here For the Food won the James Beard Award for in the reference category. Brown lives in Georgia with his wife and daughter.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 396 pages
• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori & Chang; 5th Printing edition (October 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584797959
• ISBN-13: 978-1584797951
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 9.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (113 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Television
  • #19 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > U.S. Regional

More About the Author

Alton Brown is the writer, director, and host of the Food Network show Good Eats, which won a 2007 Peabody Award, and is the resident food historian, scientist, and color commentator of the network's Iron Chef America series. In 2004, his book I'm Just Here For the Food won the James Beard Award for Best Cookbook in the Reference category. A regular contributor to Bon Appétit and Men's Journal magazines, Brown lives in the southern United States with his wife and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Eats for your countertop - a multi-use tool., August 26, 2009

By 

Sandy (Kenosha, WI United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Good Eats: The Early Years (Hardcover)

Finally! No more having to dig through the search engine of the food network website or dreading that I wrote the wrong measurement or ingredient while watching the show and frantically trying to copy all the juicy "tidbits"! No more looking at the DvD collection and sighing at the price, knowing I could never afford it! It's Good Eats, concise, compact and affordable.

This volume contains the first 6 seasons and covers all 80 shows, covering: steak, spuds, eggs, baking, grilling, jams, frying, apples, mushrooms, and many more Good Eats.

All of the tidbits are here and I dare say if not all, most of them, including updates on some of the tips and hints since the episodes were made (such as the recent teflon scare and how teflon isn't bad below 550F). The recipes from each episode are listed with procedures, diagrams, pictures and notations. It takes the fear away from the complexity of cooking and gives you fun history tips that you can pass on during dinner chat or use in a friendly game of trivial pursuit. Having seen other works of Alton's and considering him the best of the best for telling you how, when and why with science to back it up, I rate this the #1 must have.

BTW, it's printed in a durable binder and the dustjacket folds out into a pulp-fiction type poster (cover art) that I'm seriously considering hanging in the game room due to its fun nature.

98 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book but could use some tweaks, September 11, 2009

By 

BTrain (Pioneer Square) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Good Eats: The Early Years (Hardcover)

Ok, I didn't give this five stars...which really kind of hurts to do because I am a huge Alton Brown fan. (My DVR is set to record every episode of Good Eats as it airs, I have autographed copies of all his other books and I've cooked just about everything on the show so far.) Anyway, the book is great, the "knowledge concentrate" is great in that it gets to the point of each topic/show, the recipes that are there are great and well written and the book is very well put together in general.

So why didn't I give it five stars...well mainly because I find myself wishing it had a better way of organizing it and making the information and the related recipes easier to get to when you are cooking and don't really want to improvise and want to try his recipes out. Case in point, I had a bunch of friends coming over for dinner and I had very short notice to throw something together so I was following Alton's recipes for meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Finding the recipes was kind of challenging because i first tried to use the table of contents but that is sorted by the order of the episodes so it isn't really that helpful. next I turned to the index which actually worked very well. I think I am just spoiled by the ease of use of some good eats fan pages websites as easier ways to find recipes by searching by things like food and find myself wishing that was included in the book. I am also hoping (Wishing) that future editions will include some sort of master index (hopefully by food too) so that I can just look up something like "Pork, tenderloin" and see that it was used in his schweinbrauten recipe in episode x, and the recipe is contained in book y on page z kind of thing. Otherwise it is going to be messy to find something since the reader will have to remember which season/book the recipe is in. Other minor complaints involve the recipes. I got very excited to see in the first episode that he included an additional recipe that wasn't in the show but was kind of let down by the scarcity of more of these recipes throughout the book. Also, some of the recipes seem to be missing. Case-in-point, the chapter about pickling is missing some of the recipes he went over on the show such as for "firecrackers" and I had hoped that this book would become my one-stop source for all Good Eats recipes but some of them are missing and must be found on the internet.

The above complaints may be things that are specific to me and not something other general readers would find as a problem. Me, personally, I'm a bit spoiled by how easy Alton makes it to explain and understand some of the complex things about cooking so I wish they took some extra steps to make the book easier to use. Overall though I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book...especially for people that are new to cooking or shy about cooking since it does contain a treasure trove of information that can be unbelievably helpful to people whether they watch the show or not.

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Alton is great His work deserves 9 stars *********, June 27, 2010

By 

Logical (Heartland) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Good Eats: The Early Years (Hardcover)

I hate to give this book a THREE STARS.
My hope is that the editor will correct the problems
before the next edition of the MIDDLE YEARS.

The book is better than expected.
Organized greatly ... how else could you do it except
by Episode. There is an index for looking up by
specific items.

Well thought out.
But if you are buying this book as a gift for someone,
then make sure that someone is YOUNG with young eyes

The MAIN text is okay ... as least it is black text on a white background.

Other texts like tidbits is like white font on very light colored background.
I have to hold the book just right ... light over my left shoulder with the
book on an angle AWAY from the light source. This helps to get rid of the glare.

Tomorow I will try some COLOR GLASS to look thru.
Hopefully there is a color combination out there that will increase the contrast.

The publisher must have been worried about people copying the pages.

The pages are probably larger than what a scanner would read and some of the fonts
appear to be less than size 6.

I took my bifocals off and replaced them with just reading glasses.

Book is great ... info is great ...Alton is great ... I would buy again even with the poorly designed fonts.

I will be getting the follow up book also and was hoping this review would help in getting others to also suggest
changing the font color in the next book. Could be the smaller font is there in order to fit in all the good info