I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking [Hardcover]

Alton Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2002

Blending humor, wisdom, history, pop culture, science, and basic cooking knowledge, the host of Food Network's Good Eats presents an indispensable, innovative, and instructional cooking guide that features various cooking techniques accompanied by a "master" recipe for each technique, and provides a

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Alton Brown, host of Food Network's Good Eats, is not your typical TV cook. Equal parts Jacques Pépin and Mr. Science, with a dash of MacGyver, Brown goes to great lengths to get the most out of his ingredients and tools to discover the right cooking method for the dish at hand. With his debut cookbook, I'm Just Here for the Food, Brown explores the foundation of cooking: heat. From searing and roasting to braising, frying, and boiling, he covers the spectrum of cooking techniques, stopping along the way to explain the science behind it all, often adding a pun and recipe or two (usually combined, as with Miller Thyme Trout).

I'm Just Here for the Food is chock-full of information, but Brown teaches the science of cooking with a soft touch, adding humor even to the book's illustrations--his channeling of the conveyer belt episode of I Love Lucy to explain heat convection is a hoot. The techniques are thoroughly explained, and Brown also frequently adds how to augment the cooking to get optimal results, including a tip on modifying a grill with a hair dryer for more heat combustion. But what about the food? Brown sticks largely to the traditional, from roast turkey to braised chicken piccata, though he does throw a curveball or two, such as Bar-B-Fu (marinated, barbecued tofu). And you'll quickly be a convert of his French method of scrambling eggs via a specially rigged double boiler--the resulting dish is soft, succulent, and lovely. But more than just a recipe book, I'm Just Here for the Food is a fascinating, delightful tour de force about the love of food and the joy of discovery. --Agen Schmitz

From Publishers Weekly

Known as the successful host of Good Eats currently airing on the Food Network Channel, Alton Brown brings an MTV style to food and cooking. He applies his winning formula of pop culture combined with history, science and common sense to his first cookbook. He offers his formula of food preparation ("food + heat = cooking"), explaining each process and food element in quirky sound bites. Starting with searing and taking in grilling, water and eggs among other elements, he uses diagrams, captions, sidebars and footnotes. Each module has a master recipe that applies the tactic explained to a dish and is followed by several others to emphasize the lesson. He carefully integrates his recipe to produce a comprehensive repertoire, whether it's Skirt Steak: The Master Recipe, Chicken Piccata or Lamb "Pot Roast." Despite its unconventional style, this is a solid volume presented in a lively, fun manner guaranteed to put cooking in the reach of just about anyone: Alton Brown + Cook = Success.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori and Chang; First Edition edition (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584790830
• ISBN-13: 978-1584790839
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 9.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (306 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

380 of 383 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not a cook book, but a book on cooking, April 20, 2002

By 

Baron Berwyn "Erstwhile Saxon" (Northshield) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking (Hardcover)

If you like "Good Eats," you're bound to love this book. In this volume, Alton Brown goes into the how and why of cooking to help you understand the process involved. Any cookbook can tell you , for example, to sear a piece of meat. This book explains why you sear a piece of meat (and its not what you might think), why cast iron is the best cookware for searing it, and what happens if you mess up. All this is done with the same off-beat style as Alton displays on his Food Network TV show.

The illustrations and examples are priceless. Who else would explain polyunsaturated fats by using pictures of shopping bags and dead rats? The recipes (about 80) are easy to follow, and each builds on the one before to give you a good understanding of the techniques involved. The aim of this book is to free you from your dependence on recipes, so that given a set of ingredients, you can create, if not a culinary masterpiece, at least -- dare I say it-- good eats.

Just a note about the arrangement of the book. Unlike most cookbooks, this volume isn't arranged by ingredient. Instead, it is divided by technique, in keeping with the author's goal of teaching the basics. Also, you won't find any cakes or cookies here. This book is about "cooking" the foods as they come from the plant or critter involved, rather than "making" food from the raw materials. (As AB puts it, "I didn't make the steak, I made the steak better.") Stuff you "make" is planned for the next book.

My only gripe about the book is that the typeface is a tad small for my tired old eyes. And the pages, pleasantly heavy as they are, aren't coated so they might tend to soak up grease. That isn't much of a problem, because this book really isn't meant to be read next to the stove anyway. Read it in a comfortable chair and prepare to achieve enlightenment. Yes, you too can be a briner.

188 of 192 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new classic! Good information, OUTSTANDING presentation, April 22, 2002

By 

Bradford Daniels (Redmond, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking (Hardcover)

If you care enough about food to be reading this review, but don't know who Alton Brown is, all I can say is, "For shame! Get thee to a cable or sattelite provider that has the Food Network, then watch every episode of Good Eats!" I'll wait till you're done...

Now that you know who wrote this book, I'm sure you'll understand why I pre-ordered it the second I heard it would be coming out. As you know (you do know now, right?) Alton Brown is the "Mr. Wizard" of cooking. He presents the science behind all kinds of cooking in a way that anyone can understand and enjoy.

"I'm Just Here For the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking" is the first in what will hopefully a series of books about the scientific principles underlying various recipes and cooking methods. This book focuses almost exclusively on the various methods of applying heat to food, what they do, how they affect foods, and how to control them. The presentation (in form and visual style) is reminiscent of a grade school textbook, but the text is light, easy to understand, and very witty.

Alton Brown is not a lightweight when it comes to erudition, either, but somehow the man can quote Brillat-Savarin and Greek philosophers without sounding stuffy. I only wish Brown had been there to collaborate with Harold McGee on "On Food and Cooking : The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" (ISBN 0684843285, still the most comprehensive work on food science and history available), or to give style tips for "The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore" (ISBN 0020098014, and a good read nonethless). While those books may be more comprehensive and technically-oriented than this book, the style can get kind of tough to handle in those books.

As I have said, "Food + Heat = Cooking" focuses on cooking methods, rather than ingredients, which is a bit of a switch from the usual style of Brown's TV show. He doesn't ignore the ingredients, though. Instead, he choses to present each ingredient in the context of a method of cooking, and discuss the effects of the cooking methods on the ingredients. It's an interesting approach, and one that results in a more recipe-oriented approach than any of the other works I've read on the science of cooking. (I've also read "The Science of Cooking"/ISBN 3540674667 and "The Inquisitive Cook"/ISBN 0805045414).

In other words, this is not just a text book, it's also a cookbook. I really admire Brown's ability to balance the two goals.

My only complaints are that the book could have used a bit more editing (there were several typos and some minor factual errors), and the paper stock was a bit too thick, so that I always felt like I was turning two or more pages at a time. Minor faults, I know, but I don't want you to think I didn't try to find fault with the book.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the principles of cooking and how to apply them in real-life situations.

132 of 136 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hate I Waited So Long, June 10, 2007

By 

NuJoi "Create with me" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: I'm Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0 (Hardcover)

I'm not a fan of purchasing Food Network personality cookbooks since you can usually get the recipes online for free. I did buy a signed copy of AB's Gear for the equipment info and I dearly love it. When I found a signed copy of this one (Crate & Barrel) I couldn't pass it up.

This book is all and more of the food science in the show. It's organized by cooking method. There are chapters on brining, sauces and eggs. The appendix is substantial, which I love. There are the famous meat diagrams with the quirky magnets. The Basic Culinary Toolbox is a very, very condensed version of Gear. The notes on sanitation are good, I don't think I 've seen them in a cookbook before. Top Five Activities, A Selected Reading List,resource guide and metric conversion charts round out the section.

This book is dense. You don't have advantage of the easy-to-follow, cool, teach-by-quirky-demonstrations method of the show. No wonder it won a James Beard award. This doesn't mean the material is incomprehensible; you just have to concentrate more. As with Gear, I could care less about the recipes. The book's worth is as a reference guide. I hate I waited so long to buy this.

This book is for the curious cook. If you aren't interested in the "why" and just want recipes, you'd probably find it frustrating.