Alton Brown on 10 years of 'Good Eats'

When you know how to cook, it's tough to be a renaissance man.

Food Network mainstay Alton Brown, the star of "Good Eats" and the host of "Iron Chef America" and "The Next Iron Chef," would like to branch out from food-related entertainment, but when he goes on a show like "The View," as he did last Tuesday, he cooks.

"We don't get the sofa," Brown said. "Cooks don't get to sit on the sofa; we cook."

Luckily, Brown is able to flex his creative muscles on "Good Eats," which is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a live special on Saturday, and with "Good Eats: The Early Years," a massive compendium of the first 80 episodes, in bookstores now.

PULP SCIENCE

Weighing in at more than three pounds and a decade in the making, "Good Eats: The Early Years" is an enormous resource for chefs, foodies and fans of the show. Brown, who will be signing the book at Barnes & Noble Union Square on Friday, said that decided long ago to wait awhile before doing a "Good Eats" book.

"It's like getting to go back and remaster your greatest hits," Brown said of the book. "We get to go back and re-examine, re-test -- everything's retooled, so to speak. But I think to do that effectively you have to have distance, you have to have some space, so 10 years is appropriate."

The cover of the book features Brown in a lab coat examining an egg with a stethoscope, with a slight painted feel akin to old science fiction pulp magazines. The retro looking cover enhances the idea that Brown is the mad scientist of cooking. Though, he pointed out, he flunked chemistry and biology in high school.

"I'm not a scientist," Brown clarified. "I'm a mechanic at best, and a home-trained one."

Brown said that through research he has learned a lot about how to use science in the kitchen, a skill that he often displays on the show.

"I like to think that I probably understand more about science in the kitchen then a lot of actual scientists do, because I understand how to use it and I don't let facts get in the way of principles, which a lot of scientists do," Brown said. "They let exactitude get in the way. I don't. So part of that cover is that it's pulp science."

LIVE 'EATS'

To celebrate 10 years on the Food Network, Alton Brown decided to take "Good Eats" to a new level by doing a live show. The eccentric host describes the hour-long episode as part variety show, part talk show, part food show and part game show. And it has guest stars. "Chopped" host Ted Allen stops by for what Brown simply called "craziness."

"You'll see some things you've never, ever seen before," Brown said, which you could say is true about many episodes of "Good Eats."

Despite the high cost of doing a live show -- Brown said that even after selling out two live shows in Atlanta, they still didn't cover their expenses -- he wanted to give all the people that work on the show and have been with it for a long time the opportunity to do something really new.

"People are going to see a different side of 'Good Eats,' let's put it that way," Brown said. "And yet it's still very much a 'Good Eats' show."

'IRON' ALTON

While Alton Brown has made his name on "Good Eats," it is quite possible that most people know him as the host of "Iron Chef America," where his quick wit and encyclopedic knowledge of food and cooking guide the show.

He's also the host of "The Next Iron Chef," airing on Food Network on Sunday nights. That show has chefs competing for a chance to stand alongside the likes of Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Masaharu Morimoto, Cat Cora and Michael Symon on "Iron Chef America."

"It is the highest grade of culinary performance art you'll ever see," Brown said. "They're the best contestants ever, and the level of culinary aerobatics that's going on there [is unmatched]. I went through a lot of that month with my jaw hanging open because I couldn't believe what these people were able to do."

While Brown certainly knows his way around the kitchen, he said he'd never compete on the show. Even when speculating how he'd do, he ends up not doing the show.

"First challenge, I think I would have walked away," he said. "I'm not cut out for that. I don't have that fire-in-the-belly competitive nature. I'm a born quitter. Times get tough, I drop. Nah, I wouldn't have lasted a week. I would have been the first one out the door, I think."

HOME COOKING

When you watch "Good Eats," host Alton Brown is always coming up with some new homemade contraption to cook with. When you consider that, you might imagine that he would have an impressive kitchen. Think again. In his words, it is "hauntingly ordinary."

"I have very few pots and pans," Brown said. "My spice rack has shrunk over the last few years. You wouldn't look at my kitchen and say, 'That's the kitchen of a mad food scientist.' It actually looks pretty ordinary, with the exception of a microscope."

Contact Scott A. Rosenberg at scott.rosenberg@am-ny.com.

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