2003 James Beard Award Winner: Reference

As host of Food Network's Good Eats, Alton Brown entertains and informs viewers with a lively mix of wit blended with wisdom, history with pop culture, and science with the kind of common cooking sense that our grandmothers took for granted. This lively half-hour program is now in its 5th season and one of the network's top-rated shows.

In this, his first cookbook, Brown presents readers with an instruction manual for the kitchen, combining 60 wide-ranging recipes with a wealth of culinary information that allows anyone — at any level of expertise — to understand the whys and wherefores of cooking.

The book is organized into modules featuring different cooking techniques: from pan searing to pressure cooking, stewing to steaming, each is explained in detail.

A "master" recipe is provided for each method, accompanied by additional recipes — both simple and sophisticated — that epitomize the technique described. The text is accented throughout with food facts, history and lore, science and mechanics — all of which heighten the reader's understanding of how cooking techniques have developed and why recipes work the way they do. Other sections detail the "before and after" of flavoring (from brining and marinating to sauces and gravies), food hygiene, the well-equipped kitchen, and what's in the author's basic pantry and why.

With Good Eats, Brown has created a cooking show for a new generation; in I'm Just Here For the Food, he again breaks the mold, creating a cookbook for people who want to really understand their food. Combining cutting-edge graphics with a fresh take on preparing food, this is a book that his legion of fans has been clamoring for.

"[Brown] applies his winning formula of pop culture combined with history, science and common sense to his first cookbook....Despite its unconventional style, this is a solid volume presented in a lively, fun manner guaranteed to put cooking in the reach of just about anyone: Alton Brown + Cook = Success." Publishers Weekly

With I'm Just Here For the Food, Alton Brown has created the cookbook that his fans have been waiting for — an instruction manual for the kitchen that combines more than 80 recipes with wit, wisdom, and common cooking sense.

Blending humor, wisdom, history, pop culture, science, and basic cooking knowledge, the author presents an instructional cooking guide that features various cooking techniques accompanied by a "master" recipe for each technique.

Alton Brown began his television career as a cameraman and eventually became a director of commercials and corporate films. When he wasn't shooting, he was cooking and watching cooking programs, which he constantly criticized as dull and uninformative. Tired of the griping, Brown's wife (and now producer) DeAnna suggested that they do something about it. They moved to Vermont so that Brown could attend the New England Culinary Institute. During the years of study that followed, Brown concocted a new kind of food show, one which he would write, direct, and star in. It came to life as Good Eats, now one of the top-rated shows on Scripps-Howard's Food Network. This is Brown's first book.