GB said:
Kelly, we have all types here. Some (like me) love the science behind the cooking. Others could care less about it. That, among many other things, is what makes this such a great site. We are very open to almost anything having to do with learning about and experiencing food and cooking.
As far as what defines an expert, for me it would be someone who has proven themselves in the past by providing information that I have seen as accurate. Each person here has members who they may consider experts and for each person those experts might be different members. using FoodTV as an example, Some people might consider Alton Brown an expert at food science while other people might think he is full of it and gives inaccurate info a lot. Each person is going to be different.
GB,
Thanks for the response. Of course I was being facetious; I wouldn't think of trying to "be" Alton Brown, but at the same time I have a hard time imagining that some people "think he is full of it and gives inaccurate info a lot." though I suppose it takes all types to make the world go 'round.
For me, at least, everything he says works, and I really appreciate the fact that he backs it up with science. Speaking as the musician that I am, it is the same thing to me as the difference between learning one blues tune by rote, and realizing all blues tunes are related. Learn one by rote, and you can play that one tune. Learn that they are all related, and how, and you can play 'em all.
If one is able to learn to ignore the old wives tales that have been hammered into them from the beginning, and has a modicum of intelligence, one can take Alton's advice and apply it to a lot more things than the recipe he happens to be touting at the time. However, if one persists in thinking they need to cook an X-pound roast for X-amount of hours, or cook a turkey to 185 degrees, (like their mama told them) and can still rail against Alton Brown, they deserve what they get.
And no, this is not a case of blind hero-worship. The only reason I revere him as much as I do is that I've tried his methods, and found them accurate and instructional, and have through him learned to cook everything from a turkey to a succulent pork roast, all in one episode, even though the turkey episode didn't mention pork roast.
To me, the whole thing about cooking, just like music, is to learn how it all is related. I recently got involved in a thread where someone was asking about how to make soup. I started out trying to teach them how to make soup, but my posts were soon buried in other people's posts of soup recipes. You can learn to follow a recipe to make a certain kind of soup, but if you learn to make
soup, you don't need the recipes, and you can make great soup with whatever is on hand, as long as you have already made a good chicken, beef, seafood, or vegetable stock, or even have some cream. You can't, on the other hand, just throw a lot of stuff into a pot of boiling water, and expect the result to be good soup. You need to first understand what makes good soup.
So yes, I'm a pretty much unabashed fan of Alton Brown. I
don't, however, agree with him as to his assessment of deep fat turkey fryers, and I think his obsession with cleanliness is a bit paranoid. To be fair, however, he has a TV show, and there are plenty of people out there who would not hesitate to try to sue him, were they to burn their houses down or contract food poisoning.
Kelly
