Alton Brown's Rebooted "Good Eats"

(Bob M) #1

Back when I was high carb, I loved Alton Brown’s Good Eats show. He’s the one who started me brining my Thanksgiving turkey, for instance. I made basically every recipe I saw.

While I still love the show, it’s nerd-central at times, and both my kids are or have been hooked on it, now that I’m keto, with many more years of cooking, it’s tougher to watch. For instance, he does a reboot of a pressure cooker show, and he discusses the Instant Pot…then uses a “third generation” pressure cooker you put on the stove. He says it’s because the pot can be used for other things…but I don’t make anything in a massive stock pot. I usually just use the Instant Pot for that. I don’t boil veggies (roast them instead), don’t cook pasta, etc. So another large pot is useless to me.

He did a sous vide show where he cooked beef, which looked great. However, the beef was for sandwiches. Doh! He also made cheesecake and an aperitif. So, 1/3 of the show is relevant to me.

With my youngest, we watched a show about “ice box cakes”. Were I still high carb, I’d be making that over this weekend. However, being keto, there’s no way I could make anything on the entire show. The science was interesting, though.

So, while I still love the premise of Good Eats, it’s tough to watch. (And how the heck does he eat this stuff and stay so thin?)

(Libby) #2

I used to watch Alton Brown with such devotion that my husband actually started making snarky jealous remarks about it! hahahaha. That cheesecake recipe is the bomb!

#3

I like America’s Test Kitchen and Milk Street, but find I have the same problems with them–usually there’s only one thing of two or three that I can make and the others just make me miss carbs.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #4

I think it’s about time for a great chef doing keto on the Food Network or some other cooking channel. Man vs Fire has some keto stuff, at least from memory it did. Alton Brown is fun. :cowboy_hat_face:

(Bob M) #5

@LibbyL I have done a sous vide cheesecake recipe, and it was very good. I only do that for holidays, though. Maybe I’ll covert a low carb cheesecake recipe and try that this year.

@ZuleikaD I also record America’s Test Kitchen (did not know about Milk Street), but like you, I have to sort through them to find something I like. I have a great pork and peppers recipe from them, and a few others. Even with the pork and peppers recipe,though, they use sugar to brine the pork and use wheat flour as a thickener. I revise to eliminate those.

@David_Stilley It might be that Alton Brown can’t really discuss much science for meat. There is some science (brining, sous vide, etc.), but not a lot. It would be nice to see a paleo/primal/low carb/keto chef. I guess you have to go to – horror of horrors! :grinning: – You Tube for that.

#6

Milk Street is Christopher Kimball’s new show, since he left ATK. The emphasis is different. At ATK it’s really about finding things that are good and appeal to the widest range of palates. Milk Street kind of flips that on it’s head and says their goal is “bold and simple.” So they do a lot of international travel and then bring dishes from Asia and Africa and South America, etc. back to the kitchen and create those dishes using ingredients most people can get at the supermarket or with minimal specialty store trips.

Christopher Kimball irritates me and he’s trying to be Anthony Bourdain. Chris Kimball will never be a badass, no matter how many trips he makes to Ghana. But the food is good. Like most cooking shows, though, you’ll have to re-work around all the carbs.

#7

I used to love cooking shows, all of them, 24kitchen was the only channel I watched, endless youtube channels, I would devour recipes, testing, planning… I baked, I cooked, I studied recipes, the science of baking, everything!! I don’t watch them anymore, it felt like I was playing a masochistic game with myself. :joy: I’m still mourning the loss, baking was my antidepressant and my creative outlet, but I will fondly remember those good old days…

(Bob M) #8

I always thought that baking was good for me, as it allowed the engineer in me to follow recipes. I even weighed ingredients, if they provided weights. One of my favorite Alton Brown shows was when he did three different types of chocolate chip cookies (thin, chewy, thick - I think) and told you WHY they came out that way. It was part fat melting point and part type of sugar, if I remember correctly.

I still enjoy cooking, but there aren’t as many techniques in cooking meats as there are in baking.

@ZuleikaD Thanks, I’ll see if I can record some Milk Streets. I still miss Kimball from ATK.