PBS News Hour

AMNA NAWAZ: Using cooking, chemistry and comedy, Alton Brown has made a name for himself as a TV host and Food Network fixture.

His creative eye and quick wit captivated audiences of "Good Eats," "Cutthroat Kitchen," and "Iron Chef America."

Now he brings that same humor to the page in his new book, "Food for Thought," a collection of personal essays.

Geoff Bennett spoke with him earlier this week.

GEOFF BENNETT: Alton Brown, welcome to the "News Hour."

ALTON BROWN, Author, "Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations": Thanks for having me on.

GEOFF BENNETT: You have had such a unique professional journey starting from your beginnings in television as a cinematographer for music videos.

ALTON BROWN: Indeed.

GEOFF BENNETT: When did you discover that food was your true calling?

ALTON BROWN: I don't think food was ever my true calling.

(LAUGHTER) ALTON BROWN: But I think telling stories about food was a true calling.

And I think that it happened right when -- this is early 90s, probably around 1992, when I started thinking more about food.

When I was actually on set shooting TV commercials, I was thinking about cooking.

And that's what I thought.

Well, that's a little backwards.

So maybe I need to spend a little bit more time with this food thing.

GEOFF BENNETT: We were talking earlier and you said that the process of writing this book, you didn't intend to do it.

ALTON BROWN: Nope.

GEOFF BENNETT: And when you started writing, things just sort of fell out onto the page.

What surprised you about that process?

ALTON BROWN: You know, at least half of this book is what I'm going to call memoir.

I'm talking about myself in certain ways.

And I did not expect that to come tumbling out the way that it did.

I like to say that I have lived my life without a rearview mirror.

I don't think a lot about the past.

But, apparently, that's not true.

(LAUGHTER) ALTON BROWN: I think about it plenty, and so that when anything that was memoir, stuff from my childhood, which is there, some of which I think is funny, that stuff came out, I was really surprised by it, very surprised.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

Let's talk a bit about the past, namely "Good Eats."

ALTON BROWN: I suspect some of you are still asking.

GEOFF BENNETT: Because that show really revolutionized food television with its mix of history and science entertainment.

How did you settle on that format?

And did you know at the time that its impact would be as enduring?

ALTON BROWN: Oh, like most people that are doing something strictly for themselves, which I was in that case, I had no idea that it was going to have any impact at all.

I did -- when I first started thinking about writing that show and making that show, I had no intention of hosting it either.

I was just going to write it and direct it.

But I literally wrote down on a notepad, Julia Child, Mr. Wizard, Monty Python, because I thought if I could get those three types of things into a show, it would be the kind of food show I would want to watch.

And at the time I didn't realize that I would do it, but that was kind of the mission statement.

GEOFF BENNETT: What do you make of the evolution of food as entertainment since then on TV, but nowadays on social media?

ALTON BROWN: Well, everything has changed, more than I ever could have fathomed.

At the time that I started "Good Eats," if you wanted the recipes, you had to send a self-addressed stamped envelope into this place in Ipswich, New York, I remember, in order to get things back.

There was no, what, Internet.

We were on dial-up, the ones of us that were very sophisticated.

I think that food's role in society and culture has, of course, amplified, which is greatly due to Food Network, but then also proliferated and mutated in a way that concerns me as someone who has spent most of my professional life trying to teach people how to cook.

I think that food has moved into a lot of spaces it probably shouldn't be in.

We look at it more than we think about it.

We fetishize it more than we share it.

So I worry about food.

I worry about cooking and I worry about food and its place in culture in general now.

I never would have seen this kind.

GEOFF BENNETT: You have always emphasized the science behind cooking.

What's a common misconception that still frustrates you?

ALTON BROWN: There are so many kind of myths that are held about food.

For instance, I still hear people talking about searing meat seals in juices.

No, it doesn't.

It does not.

It doesn't do anything even remotely like that.

GEOFF BENNETT: What's it do then?

ALTON BROWN: It adds flavor, but let me tell you, if you sear a piece of meat, you weigh it, you sear it, and you let it sit for a couple of minutes, guess what?

It's lost weight.

You have done damage.

Liquid comes out.

It's worth doing, but it doesn't seal in flavor.

But that's such a wonderful kind of trope, and it's such a beautiful idea.

GEOFF BENNETT: If you could teach home cooks one fundamental technique, what would it be?

ALTON BROWN: Read the recipe, how to actually read a recipe, which people have lost that ability.

It's one of the things that I blame TikTok for, is that we have forgotten how to interact with this piece of instructional writing.

My thing is, you sit down, you read it, like you would read a short story, and then you read it again while taking notes about it.

Do I have these ingredients?

Do I know what this word means?

Does anything need to marinate for eight hours?

And to do that without touching tools, without touching the food.

Learning how to read a recipe properly is the single biggest upgrade any beginning or even kind of middle skill cook can do to enhance their skill set.

GEOFF BENNETT: You mentioned tools.

What's a tool that every home cook should have?

ALTON BROWN: A good kitchen table.

GEOFF BENNETT: Good kitchen table.

ALTON BROWN: You don't have a good kitchen table, nothing that you do in there matters.

It's where the people come together to share the food.

It's absolutely pivotal.

It should be the center of the entire house, in my opinion.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, you have taken your culinary mastery to the stage.

You have been doing these live events all across the country.

What do you enjoy about that?

ALTON BROWN: Oh, I love performing in front of live audiences.

And I think that live performing now, more than ever and live events are really critical.

We don't have a lot as a society.

I don't think we have a lot of places where we get together anymore.

We don't sit down and eat with strangers very much anymore.

Going into a theater and having a bunch of people sit down to watch a performance, I think, is really special and very, very badly needed in this time.

But, for me, someone that spent most of his time in television, it's like this massive energy source that gives you back what the camera takes away, which is really lovely and enjoyable.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, you said in the book that you are fortunate to have a loyal and passionate fan base, and that when you interact with folks, inevitably, they ask you the same five questions.

May I ask you these five questions?

(CROSSTALK) ALTON BROWN: You may ask me the five questions, yes.

GEOFF BENNETT: So we can get these answers on the record?

OK. ALTON BROWN: Sure.

GEOFF BENNETT: What foods do you always keep in your refrigerator?

ALTON BROWN: This answer changes constantly, depending on what's actually in the refrigerator.

But I usually say, yes, 12 different kinds of mustard, four containers of olives.

There's going to be some butter and about 12 leftover containers of takeout Chinese food.

And the only thing that I can recognize on a regular basis is the Heartgard pills that we keep to give our dogs.

GEOFF BENNETT: What are your guilty pleasure foods?

ALTON BROWN: Oh, in that part of the essay, I talk about my problem with Little Debbie Nutty bars, which is a really junky snack food.

That's wafers with peanut butter cream in between that's coated in this -- they say it's chocolate.

It's not.

Chocolate doesn't feel like that.

It's closer to something you would make candles out of, I feel certain.

But the whole point -- and this goes back to childhood - - is that there's a way to disassemble the bar, because it's a wafer thing.

You have got -- the way you have got to move the pieces off, and the order that you have to eat them, makes Oreo eating simple by comparison.

And so that's -- I don't get them very often, but I'm mouth-watering right now, I think.

GEOFF BENNETT: Number three, what is your least favorite thing to cook?

ALTON BROWN: Hard shell blue crabs.

Hard shell blue crabs, because it's too much work for almost no return of satisfaction.

Now, if they're soft shell, that's a whole different thing,but, yes, my least favorite food to cook, because not only do I not like doing it.

I don't really like eating it.

I can make great crab cakes without crab.

GEOFF BENNETT: What food do you refuse to eat?

ALTON BROWN: Octopus.

I used to do a fair amount of work for the Monterey Bay Aquarium out of Monterey Bay, California.

I would do lectures and things out there, and I would get to -- I will make this short.

I used to visit this octopus a lot, a giant Pacific octopus.

And the first time that I met him and was playing with him in his enclosure, he stole my pen out of my pocket.

And, of course, they taste with their tentacles, and they recognize things by their tentacles.

And in the story, which I tell, I came back about eight months later, and he was getting very old at that time, and they were actually going to take him off of display, because they had very short lives.

But he touched my hand with one tentacle, and then with another tentacle reached up for my pen.

He remembered me.

He tasted me and remembered me.

And I'm like, friends don't eat friends.

GEOFF BENNETT: That's extraordinary.

ALTON BROWN: I don't do that.

GEOFF BENNETT: And what would your last meal request be?

ALTON BROWN: My last meal request would be -- as I say in the book, my wife is a fantastic cook.

She will go out and pick some things from the yard, and she throws them in the pot.

And it's the best thing that I have ever had.

So I think one of her soups would be my last meal, maybe with a good scotch and a nice cigar, and I'd be good with that.

GEOFF BENNETT: There you go.

GEOFF BENNETT: Alton Brown.

The book is "Food for Thought."

A real delight to speak with you.

Thanks for coming in.

ALTON BROWN: Thank you for having me on, and I'm glad you enjoyed the book.

GEOFF BENNETT: It's terrific.