Good Eats
Award-winning Food Network TV series, Good Eats, goes from screen to page with this classic cookbook from Alton Brown, packed with all the tidbits, tricks, and science found in the show’s first six seasons.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
12mentions
11people
2011–2025years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Also: all the Alton Brown Good Eats books, and On Food and Cooking (McGee).
Much of cooking is physics and chemistry. "The science of YUM"
- I'll add the OG Good Eats by Alton Brown to your list
- Can't argue that Harold is the OG. It would be nice if he'd release a new edition of On Food and Cooking though. But as I understand it, it still holds up really well after all this time.
Alton Brown is certainly another name I'd add to the mix. Good Eats was brilliant, and his I'm Only Here For The Food / More Food books are really good.
- The best part of ATK and related Cook's country is they also helpfully go in-depth about the why. This helps you understand why the steps are laid out how they are. Plus it helps they test the crap out of their recipes so even with minor variation you can get a stellar end result.
My only complaint is sometimes they are way more steps and more exspensive sets of ingredients than other recipes. But often it's worth it for vastly superior results.
That's why I liked Serious Eat's Food Lab where Kenji also breaks stuff down but in an accessible set of recipes. Similar to Alton Brown's Good Eats, also a great resource if you like understanding the chemistry going on in your cooking!
- oh god, I don't think the only thing close is Alton Brown's good eats. It is the closest thing to food science classes you'll get that are general and simple to understand
- Alton Brown's 'Good Eats' television programs (now streamable) did a nice job explaining whys. His books are good too. 'Cooking For Geeks', mentioned in the thread is interesting here as well. Also consider Harold McGee's 'On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen'... chefs turn to it when they want to know why (until they start doing their own experiments, then you get Adria, Achatz, and folks like Nathan Myhrvold turning out 'Modernist Cusine').
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