Alton Brown Quotes

Slicing a warm slab of bacon is a lot like giving a ferret a shave. No matter how careful you are, somebody's going to get hurt.

A home cook who relies too much on a recipe is sort of like a pilot who reads the plane's instruction manual while flying.

Everything in food is science. The only subjective part is when you eat it.

Good service can save a bad meal, but there is no level of food that can save bad service.

Cooking is an observation-based process that you can't do if you're so completely focused on a recipe.

Laughing brains are more absorbent.

In the end, all journeys are spiritual. So go off the main road. Be givers of hospitality and gracious takers of it too. Accept the serendipitous moments of life because, when all is said and done, you may find out that they were not serendipitous at all. And know that faith is as real as bread broken among friends. What you believe will take you far on your journey. If you search carefully, you will find good food all along the way.

I'm too tired to hate.

The kitchen's a laboratory, and everything that happens there has to do with science. It's biology, chemistry, physics. Yes, there's history. Yes, there's artistry. Yes, to all of that. But what happened there, what actually happens to the food is all science.

I do like artfully breaking rules.

I say grace. I'm a big believer in grace. I happen to believe in a God that made all the food and so I'm pretty grateful for that and I thank him for that. But I'm also thankful for the people that put the food on the table.

The way to any woman's heart, be she witch or Wonderwoman, princess or Pocahontas, is through her stomach.

You know we fixate on the food so much itself: “Oh, the ultimate brownie or the ultimate this or that” -- well, let me tell you something: It’s all poop in about 12 hours, okay? The real power that food has is its ability to connect human beings to each other -- that’s the stuff right there and, to me, everything else is secondary to that.

No matter how much creativity goes into it, cooking is an art. Or perhaps I should say a craft. It abides by absolute rules, physics, chemistry, etc. and that means that unless you understand the science you cannot reach the art. We're not talking about painting here. Cooking's more like engineering. I happen to think that there is great beauty in great engineering.

Your patience will be rewarded.

Remember, America: organization will set you free.

There are no bad foods, only bad food habits.

Now my wife may think she's locked me out of the kitchen but MacGyver's not my patron saint for nothing.

The stubby French painter Toulouse-Lautrec supposedly invented chocolate mousse - I find that rather hard to believe, but there you have it.

I found that if I offered to cook for a girl, my odds improved radically over simply asking a girl out. Through my efforts to attract the opposite sex, I found that not only did cooking work, but that it was actually fun.

I'm like a really goofy home ec teacher.

I grill, therefore I am.

Basting is evil. Basting does nothing for the meat. Why? Skin. Skin is designed to keep stuff out of the bird, so basting just lets heat out of the oven. That means the turkey will take longer to cook... so don't touch that door!

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.

Stuffing is evil. Stuffing adds mass, so it slows the cooking. That's evil because the longer the bird cooks, the drier it will be.