You know we fixate on the food so much itself: “Oh, the ultimate brownie or the ultimate this or that” -- well, let me tell you something: It’s all poop in about 12 hours, okay? The real power that food has is its ability to connect human beings to each other -- that’s the stuff right there and, to me, everything else is secondary to that.

Alton Brown

Categorized in : Stuff Real Poop

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.

Alton Brown

hurt food giving

Cooking is an observation-based process that you can't do if you're so completely focused on a recipe.

Alton Brown

recipes cooking food

In the end, all journeys are spiritual. So go off the main road. Be givers of hospitality and gracious takers of it too. Accept the serendipitous moments of life because, when all is said and done, you may find out that they were not serendipitous at all. And know that faith is as real as bread broken among friends. What you believe will take you far on your journey. If you search carefully, you will find good food all along the way.

Alton Brown

real spiritual believe

Butter typically melts around, you know, 90 Fahrenheit, as opposed to about 20 degrees higher for lard. So what that means is that when you're working with it, the lard is going to stay more solid, which is great for flakiness.

Alton Brown

degrees higher mean

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.

Alton Brown

creativity mean art

The kitchen's a laboratory, and everything that happens there has to do with science. It's biology, chemistry, physics. Yes, there's history. Yes, there's artistry. Yes, to all of that. But what happened there, what actually happens to the food is all science.

Alton Brown

kitchen chemistry physics

A home cook who relies too much on a recipe is sort of like a pilot who reads the plane's instruction manual while flying.

Alton Brown

flying too-much home

The turkey - my number one thing that people don't get is take that sucker out of the refrigerator about three hours before you plan on cooking it.

Alton Brown

turkeys numbers people

Do not allow watching food to replace making food.

Alton Brown

A pie dough comes together exactly like a biscuit only there is very, very little liquid and no leavening involved. Other than that, the same rules apply. My best advice: handle the dough as little as possible.

Alton Brown

pie together advice

I spent a college semester in a small town in Italy - and that is where I truly tasted food for the first time.

Alton Brown

college travel firsts

I want to bring things up to room temperature, especially poultry, before I cook it because I want it to cook faster so that there's less moisture loss.

Alton Brown

moisture want loss

I grill, therefore I am.

Alton Brown

A lot of food shows need only to tempt. Some food shows only need to inspire, to empower. And there are a lot of shows that do that.

Alton Brown

empowering inspire needs

Culinary tradition is not always based on fact. Sometimes it's based on history, on habits that come out of a time when kitchens were fueled by charcoal.

Alton Brown

kitchen sometimes facts

It's funny, when you look back in history books or American cookery books, one of the reasons that the quinces and cranberries are used so often is because of their natural jelling properties.

Alton Brown

often-is book looks

I found that if I offered to cook for a girl, my odds improved radically over simply asking a girl out. Through my efforts to attract the opposite sex, I found that not only did cooking work, but that it was actually fun.

Alton Brown

girl fun sex

I'm going from doing all of the work to having to delegate the work - which is almost harder for me than doing the work myself. I'm a lousy delegator, but I'm learning.

Alton Brown

doing-me harder learning

If you really love stuffing, wait until the turkey comes out of the oven, add some of the pan drippings to the stuffing, and bake it in a dish. That's called dressing, and that's not evil - stuffing is, though.

Alton Brown

turkeys evil waiting

Lumps are caused by one thing and one thing alone - the improper addition of a starch.

Alton Brown

lumps one-thing