Good Eats: The Early Years

Alton Brown's "Good Eats, The Early Years" is brilliant.

Highlights...

1. It is organized by TV episode, not by course or food grouping -- there is an index, though, so searching for a recipe isn't a problem.

2. Chock full of pictures from the show, diagrams, historical notes, behind-the-scenes tidbits, footnotes, and even descriptions of injuries sustained while making the TV show!

3. Trademark humor from the show carries over into the book.

4. Some of the recipes have been "corrected" by Alton Brown, making them better, more reliable, and more accessible to the home cook.

5. Printed in the USA.

6. A little gimmicky, perhaps, but the dust cover is actually a poster. The cover is nice and thick and more protective than the typical cookbook show more cover.

As for the recipes and procedures I've tried…

Vanilla ice cream: Awesome taste and ridiculously easy to make. No eggs are required, and the addition of peach preserves -- which you would not know was in there unless you told someone -- does an amazing job of punching up the vanilla flavor.

Brining turkey: Best turkey I've ever made. Just be aware that the initial roasting at high temperature may create quite a bit of smoke, so open the windows.

Steel cut oats: I didn't use the recipe, but Mr. Brown's discussion of the various types of oats made me go out and try the steel cut variety. Much better than rolled oats for making cereal, in my opinion.

I can't wait until the next book in the series! show less

A run-down of the first 80 episodes of Good Eats, complete with episode descriptions, "Knowledge Concentrate" sections, Alton Brown's dorky humor, technique and chemistry descriptions and tips, and recipes. I do love Alton and Good Eats and this is a great book for fans to get fun background information on the show. It also contains a lot of information from the shows that I wish I had written down when I saw the episodes, especially the chemistry parts (not my forte), so that is quite helpful as well. One caveat is that although there are plenty of recipes here, this isn't really a cookbook I'd recommend if you haven't seen the show - it's more a book about producing the TV show than it is about cooking. For fans of the show, you'll be show more happy to know that there are more food puns here than anyone could wish for. show less

If you like knowing more about what you eat and how mixing and cooking technique affects how it turns out, this is a book you will love. Well written, well organized and full of great recipes.

Just like one of Alton's shows -- witty, creative and stuffed with all sorts of information. Some of the recipes seem beyond my (very basic) cooking skills, so in some sense this is more of an aspirational cookbook than purely instructional.

The book that goes with the first 80 episodes of the TV show Good Eats. It has a bunch of his recipes from the show and commentary. Useful, amusing and nostalgic. I have made some of the recipes, they are just as useful as they were on the TV show.

Alton wants me to learn more from his cooking than I'm really up for. What I want from the Food Network is escapism, not homework!

Alton Brown's eclectic style, complete with humor, translates well into this cook book. It is set up as to also be an episode guide, assisting in quickly finding information from your favorite recipe by epidose.