What do You think about I'm Just Here For The Food: Food + Heat = Cooking (2002)?
This is a great cookbook and really the only one (except Brown's other books) worth listing as a book I've read here. I haven't read it cover-to-cover. Like any other cooking or brewing book, there's not a lot of reason to read the parts that don't apply to what you're cooking. Despite this, I've read enough of the sections to get a good feel for it. If you enjoy the shows and find them helpful and entertaining, you'll find the books the same way. He focuses on teaching you how to cook more than just giving you recipes. The only thing to keep in mind is that many of the recipes actually differ from the recipes he presents on Good Eats. If you have I'm Just Here for the Food and I'm Just Here for More Food, and an internet connection for the good cooking websites for more recipes, there's no reason to own another cooking book (except maybe the kitchen gear book of Brown's).
—Jacob
I have a 13-year-old who thinks he wants to go to culinary school, but has still only mastered the arts of ramen noodles and jello. He's a fan of foodie rock stars like Anthony Bourdain, Gordon Ramsey, and, of course, Alton Brown. So, this summer we're making cooking homeschool -- I've got it all planned out, and this book is our text. We'll focus on one cooking method a week, and come September, I'll have another hand in the house that has no excuse for not coming up with dinner once in a while. He already made us beef stew and an oreo ice cream pie, and despite the anxiety, it all came out well. Here we go...Week 1 Completed!We have mastered the method of Searing--Meal 1: Beef stew, delicious the first night, even better the next day.Meal 2: Jerk tuna steak, the boys found the spices too...spicy, but I thought it was great. They scraped the spices off and enjoyed the tuna, and Eb added a coleslaw vinaigrette, which was the perfect side to mellow the spices.Meal 3: hashbrowns. Eb refused to include the red beet the recipe called for, so he just made regular hashbrowns with ham steak and eggs. Nothing extravagant, but a challenge to have everything ready at the same time.We'll be taking a 2 week hiatus while they're out of town, but next we tackle the barbeque. Let's hope we don't burn the house down...
—Kathrina
I haven't finished this yet but I have a good sense of it and I plan to finish it. This is not really a traditional cookbook. It does have recipes, but that's not really the main point. He breaks cooking down into different methods of heating things (grill, boil, braise, etc) and talks about each of those methods. I really like the scientific explanations- often on the molecular level. This is just what I need to help me become a better chef, and really understand how to cook. Also, I have never read a cookbook and laughed out loud. A lot. You might not laugh if you're not a dork though. :) I think my main complaint is that there aren't enough pictures (there are some drawings, but no real photos. I think there are some descriptions that could use them) and also there are occasionally some terms that are unexplained in the text, but then you come to find out they are in the appendix later- though it's hard to know they are in the appendix without just reading the whole thing. Sometimes he does point you to where to find the explanation though. Laziness?
—Libby
