Quotes By Alton Brown

I looked for a very long time, knowing that it had to happen, but it took me a long time to find someone with the same background and whatnot and I finally found him.

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.

I know people that could serve me canned tuna and saltine crackers and have me feel more at home at their table than some people who can cook circles around me. The more you try to impress people, generally the less you do.

You don't want flame to hit your food. Flame is bad. Flame does nasty things to food. It makes soot and it makes deposits of various chemicals that are not too good for us. The last thing you really want to see licking at your food while it's on a grill is an actual flame.

I grill, therefore I am.

The stubby French painter Toulouse-Lautrec supposedly invented chocolate mousse - I find that rather hard to believe, but there you have it.

Well, you know, when you go into a restaurant, one of the scariest things is the wine list, so whenever I'm really feeling intimidated, I'll just pick a wine type, like a Chianti or Brunello or a Burgundy, and I'll pick a year that's missing and ask for that one.

Molecular gastronomy is not bad... but without sound, basic culinary technique, it is useless.

Although I don't take myself very seriously, I do take my work extraordinarily seriously.

The thing that helped me get into the film business was that I went to school in Athens, Georgia and managed to get on, um, working on music videos for a band called R.E.M. and that kind of opened up a lot of doors for me.

I think in the end there are only 20 or 30 tenets of basic cooking. It's going at perhaps the same issue from different angles, from different points of view, from different presentation styles, that really makes things sink in and become embedded.

I grill almost all of my fish with the skin on because that gives you real protection at least on one side. It's a nice barrier against super high heat which tends to make a lot of fish to turn really flaky. It's very easy to overcook fish on the grill. But I still brush it with oil before I start.

The worst food you'll ever eat will probably be prepared by a 'cook' who calls himself a 'chef.' Mark my words.

I'm a filmmaker who decided to go to culinary school. All I picked up was the fact if I didn't understand what was going on with every single ingredient, I could be qualifying for, like, the lunch food job at my daughter's school.

Jeff Smith was the Julia Child of my generation. When his television show, 'The Frugal Gourmet,' made its debut on PBS in the 1980s, it conveyed such genuine enthusiasm for cooking that I was moved for the first time to slap down cold cash for a collection of recipes.

I had kicked around the idea for Good Eats when I was directing commercials.

Recipe writers hate to write about heat. They despise it. Because there aren't proper words for communicating what should be done with it.

My mantra was to educate people - to actually give them the know-how they could use - and to do it in a very subversive kind of way. I would entertain them, and I was going to teach them whether they knew it or not.

Everything in food is science. The only subjective part is when you eat it.

I'm like a really goofy home ec teacher.

I kept thinking, 'Somebody has to make a food show that is actually educational and entertaining at the same time... a show that got down to the 'why things happen.' Plus, I hated my job - I didn't think it was very worthwhile.

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.

I have nothing but sympathy for the people who are forced to work with me. I'm better now at picking out those that want to play that game with me, and those that don't.

Last year, I made a refrigerator in my basement. And I needed to because I needed to figure how - you know there is no such thing as "cold." There is only less heat.

I love to have battles of the wits with people that can dish fast and dirty - and it leads to problems occasionally, 'cause I can sound mean without attempting to be mean.

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.

The problem is I am both a procrastinator and a power junkie, so I am very frustrating to work with.

That's the ultimate goal of most turkey recipes: to create a great skin and stuffing to hide the fact that turkey meat, in its cooked state, is dry and flavorless. Does it have to be that way? No. We just have to focus on what the turkey is and what the turkey needs.

I say grace. I'm a big believer in grace. I happen to believe in a God that made all the food and so I'm pretty grateful for that and I thank him for that. But I'm also thankful for the people that put the food on the table.

I think a lot of food shows, especially when we started 'Good Eats' back in the late '90s, they were still really about food. 'Good Eats' isn't about food, it's about entertainment. If, however, we can virally infect you with knowledge or interest, then all the better.