Ep507 - Alton Brown | Good Eats 3, The Later Years
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Kyle, bringing you this week's episode with culinary television presenter and author, Alton Brown. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. Every episode is taken from a video that can be seen at youtube.com/talksatgoogle. Alton Brown visits Google to discuss his book, Good Eats 3: The Later Years.

The book offers foodies more than 200 recipes accompanied by hundreds of photographs, drawings, and stills from his hit food network show, Good Eats, as well as lots of signs of food facts, cooking tips, food trivia, and behind-the-scenes glimpses.

In chapters devoted to everything from pomegranates to pretzels or mincemeat to molasses, Alton delivers delicious recipes along with fascinating background in a book that's as fun to read as it is to cook from. With his trademark humor, Brown starts at the neighborhood supermarket and recommends what to buy, how to turn it into tasty good eats, and explains the science behind his recommendations.

What bacon should you take home? How can you make it crispy? Why does frying bacon suddenly burn? Does all espresso have to be dark roasted? Cooking school has never been so much fun. Originally published in October of 2011, here is Alton Brown, Good Eats 3: The Later Years. "Oh, you got your oven back." "I got my oven back. That's good." "Good morning."

Good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome back probably one of our most famous, most popular guests, Alton Brown. Thanks. I'm one of the Google chefs, Jeff Freeburg, and we're really happy to have him back. Thank you very much. You have some specials coming up soon on the Food Network? Yeah, I've got a two-hour, we're doing a two-hour Thanksgiving special live the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Live, not live to tape, really live, so if we cuss, it goes out.

So that's gonna be a lot of fun. And we've got Next Darn Chef, which starts on October 30th, which is scary good this time. I've got that. And I've got a new Good Eats special, a new Thanksgiving special that'll be out in November, a one hour, our final statement on Thanksgiving.

Which is kind of cool because there's only one recipe in the whole show and it makes the entire Thanksgiving dinner. So it's kind of cool, all in one massive kind of recipe. So that's kind of groovy. And then let's see, another Good Eats special, the final of the Good Eats specials because Good Eats is no more.

Yeah, I know. I made it for 13 years. Give me a break. I'm going to do new stuff that's better. That's better. But I had to let it go in order to do new stuff. But we have one more uber crazy special that I think will probably be around Valentine's Day on dark chocolate. Okay, great. I'll turn up the dark. So there's plenty going on. All right. And then you're in Mountain View tonight. I'm in Mountain View signing copies of Good Eats 3, The Later Years tonight. Anybody have that in their hot little hand? Anybody got a...

Those things right there, those four pound piles of paper. Okay, all right. Which I'm pretty proud of because the entire Good Eats book set is actually a little different from most cookbooks from shows because we take the recipes, the applications from the shows, tear them down and completely rebuild them from scratch. Because cooking from a book is very different than cooking from a show. And so they're completely remastered and we retweaked. So you should have 100% success. If not, it's your fault.

Because I've taken care of stuff. All right. Well, Alton, please. Yes. All right. So I wanted to spend some time drinking coffee.

We've got questions that have come in from that World Wide Web thing. Is that still called that? Do you want to sit this year or you want to... I don't, you know, I'm, I'm, you sit. Okay. And I'll, I'll perch, I'll perch from time to time. Okay, that's fine. But before we move on, are these actually... These are. Would you like to start with some questions? No, I want to start with questions from you guys. I mean, I could, I could give a speech about things, but it would probably be boring. I'd rather hear what you guys have to say, answer questions.

Since good eats has kind of come to a close. I'm happy to to talk about that But I might cry just a little bit because it's hard You know and I'm happy to scoop dirt on Food Network people only problem is I don't have any because I live in Atlanta and they all live in New York so I don't know a whole lot but I'd like to take the time that we have and answer questions and get kind of a general conversation about food or TV or Communications or the future of food or whatever you want to talk about them. I'm happy to chime in So yeah, we've got microphones to see there's a microphone. There's a microphone here. I guess that's I

Well, we can only afford two. There's two. Well, that's the way it goes. Two will do. Or you can just hold up your hand and scream at me. I don't mind that either. Go ahead, sir. Alton, thank you for coming to Google again. Thank you for teaching me how to cook. You're welcome. I've been watching you, so basically since I was 10. But...

I'm really sad to hear Good Eats is a... And I have to tell you, I've gotten to a point in my career where I'll have like really hot college girls come up to me to sign books and they'll say, "Yeah, I've been watching you since I was a little girl this tall." And I'm like, "Great."

Takes the wind right out of it, let me tell you. But, you know, being an engineer, the way you present food makes it great. But we're going to talk about Iron Chef. Who was your favorite battle guest chef to telecast, to comment on? Wow. There have been so many. You know, before I knew it, I think we've crossed the 200 battle line on Iron Chef America.

I would probably have to say that one of my very favorites was the Rathbun brothers. It was a brother battle. And the Rathbuns out of Atlanta, where I live, came and I think it was Holbor. It was like Holbor. The thing that made the battle so much fun is that, you know, we've got a good bit of space in Kitchen Stadium, but these guys are so freaking fat, they can't really move around the kitchen. They're like bumping into stuff, you know? And it was like watching guys in sumo suits cooking. That was kind of...

They're going to be really pissed that I said that. But there are these immense pieces of meat. I like the battles where the ingredient's really big because you've got to really-- a lot of time goes into kind of tearing it down to get it into cookable pieces.

We have an upcoming battle, Battle Yak, which is pretty exciting. I'm not going to tell you who's in it, but that's one heck of a battle. Because our new next Iron Chef is in that battle. So that won't be out until next year sometime, I imagine. But there's nothing like seeing a whole yak on the altar, let me tell you. Yak! You have another question? No, no, just thank you. Yeah, you're very, very welcome. How about you?

I wanted to say thank you too for-- You don't have your feet on the yellow marks. Okay, I mean if you're gonna put a mat down with footprints, you need to do it. Alright, we're on the same page now. Alright, we are. We're good. I can talk to you now. Alright. Well again, thank you for coming here. You're welcome. And I wanted to thank you for your take on baking.

Just your explanation of baking, the way you break things down, makes things very, very easy to understand. And it's a very unique take. I really appreciate it. Well, you know, baking is all about balance. It's a seesaw act. You know, the thing that people have to realize with baking is it doesn't forgive

It is engineering and it's like working on an engine. If you monkey with this over here, you gotta do this over here. And once an equation gets out of kilter, you're done, game over. So I think that it's just there aren't too many people that like to talk about it from that kind of standpoint. It's really easy to talk about baking from kind of historical standpoint or traditional standpoints because we think of baking as this kind of very kind of homey craft, but it's rocket science.

Yes, it is. It's absolute rocket science. You can draw a direct line from muffins to Saturn V rockets.

Well, thank you very much. Well, my question was, so now that the greatest show in the history of TV is coming to a close, what is coming next? What's coming next? There are a few different things. One, I'm going to be putting a lot of energy into video-enhanced e-books. I'm going to merge the film experience with the print experience into an e-form. And I think that there's a lot of room for pioneering in that that will allow for some very interesting filmmaking opportunities.

as well as a kind of a whole new way of communicating what food is and how to work with a cookbook in the kitchen. So I'm gonna be doing that. As far as Food Network goes, I'm going to be doing a mini series. It's kind of a historical thing called Foods That Change the World. We're gonna be looking at a series of ingredients and how man's relationship with that ingredient has helped to craft the planet that we live in. And then also looking forward at the foods that I think are gonna change the world as we go into a planet with a population of nine billion plus.

Which is that we're basically all gonna eat Soylent Green in very small cubes, you know. Some of you don't remember Soylent Green probably. And at the very beginning of the year, there's another show on Food Network called Next Food Network Star. I don't know if anybody's seen Food Network Star before. Apparently, I was in the very first episode of that last year and the general impression was that I make people cry and that I'm a meanie. And so as a result, I've been asked to be on all 11 episodes next year.

I'm gonna be on all of the Food Network Star shows next year and my only mission is to make people cry and give up or try, you know, drop out basically, I think is what I'm gonna do. Kind of like Louis Gossett Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman, you know, that's what I'm gonna be there for. So I got a lot of stuff going on. Cool. And I may do something that's not food related.

Male modeling, maybe? Kidding. Yes, sir? You're referred to differently in Good Eats and Iron Chef America. Is it Alton or Elton? It's Alton. All right. I just give up correcting people after a while, you know, and just, yeah, okay, I know who you're talking about. Ever since we saw Iron Chef America, I've been wondering that. Yeah, yeah. That's the way that my mom says it and the way my wife says it. Do you want to take a minute and take a question? Yeah, no. Here's a great question about fluffy rice. I can't get my rice fluffy. Arrgh. Arrgh.

I can't get my rice to be fluffy. Arrgh. What will it take for me to accomplish this? And that's from Mongomad. Yeah. Number two, like kind of. Oh, it's a two-part question. Kind of. Well, let's answer the first one first. You're a chef. Answer the fluffy rice question. You know, I use a rice cooker. You do use a rice cooker? That's a unitasker. Don't feel bad. Okay. No, it's cool.

I would direct this person actually to...

our The Good Eats Red Beans and Rice episode because we did a speed version of cooking rice that is long grain rice that you saute first in butter until it's very, very hot. And then you add boiling water to it, kind of stand back, dump in the water, slap on the lid, and count 15 minutes and it's done. So I would say go-- go mad, go check out that recipe.

Because I think that makes a big difference you've got to get the heat right and you've got to do it fast What can I make with sushi rice besides sushi? I have eight pounds hanging around hanging around my neck like an albatross. I like that Well an albatross is a big bird and and eight pounds. Yeah of sushi rice. You know what you can make I don't know about you've you ever made Rice pudding I have you and I like I like that rice. Yeah, I think that you can make you can actually make a

rice pudding and then do it into cakes, like rice cakes, only ones that you'd want to eat. Who actually likes rice cakes? Be honest. No, you don't. We make really good rice cakes here. You've been convinced to think that you do by advertising. You don't actually like rice cakes. Nobody does. So that's what I would do. I would make rice pudding out of it. Or a beverage. You can make a yummy beverage out of it, like horchata you can make with sushi rice.

I have a wardrobe question that's not on the screen. Oh, this is just for you? Yeah. Oh, who is this from? So, I don't know who it's from. This isn't Mongo Matt again. It's not. It's not. So, in the past, you've mentioned that your wife chooses your wardrobe. Did she choose the bow tie or is that your choice alone? Actually, when I said that about my wife choosing my wardrobe, I was lying.

She doesn't. She's my wardrobe. Really? I was just, I didn't, I just didn't want to get into it. That was a long time ago. I think I told that lie. Two years. Was it two years? Yeah. That's a long time ago. No. She will keep me from wearing things because I'll put on something and she'll look at me and say...

Really? And then I go change clothes. But that's all of it. I like bow ties because you don't get tangled up in them. I'm a man of action. I'm an action man. I don't want to get tangled up in this big -- I like ties, but I don't want to get tangled up. And I also find that whenever I get a really, really nice regular tie, like a silk tie, the first thing I do is drop food on it.

and ruin it. So the worst thing I can do now is screw up a shirt, you know, and this is up and out of the way. And I'm kind of a Doctor Who fan, so this kind of riffs with Doctor Who. So you were here two years ago and you're really focused on health and you're still looking really healthy. I'm still trying. How's that going? It's hard.

You know, losing weight's easy. Keeping weight off, hard. It's like fighting zombies. You think you've killed all the zombies and then there are more zombies. I mean, there's just more of them. They never freaking really go away. And so you have to constantly keep your nine mil on you. You have to constantly keep a machete nearby. And that's the way it is with diet because your body does not want to maintain the weight that you've set. I mean, it'll get used to it after a while, but any chance that your body gets to betray you, it will.

And how's your sugar? Does anybody else notice this? Anybody here? This is in Northern California. People don't have weight problems, I know. Because you all eat granola and alfalfas and crap. Well, I live in the South, okay? You know, we have biscuits and ham and mint juleps for breakfast. So it's...

I mean, until I was like 12 years old, I thought bourbon was just for Captain Crunch cereal, for God's sake. It's hard. How's your sweet tooth going? Because I know that that... My sweet tooth is not as nearly as bad as it used to be. The biggest thing to getting over my sweet tooth was giving up diet soda. Diet soda, I think, is evil because what it does is it tells your brain, I need this level of sweetness. Can you repeat that? Sorry? Can you repeat that about the diet soda? I think diet soda is evil. Okay. Thank you.

And I live in Atlanta, so I mean, I've already got a hit out on me, okay? Because, I mean, you know, in Atlanta, all the new houses have a Diet Coke spigot in the kitchen. But no, I think that what it does is it conditions your brain to believe that you need a certain level of sweetness all the time. And when you can't get it from, you know, your eighth soda of the day, you eat more sweets. The truth is now, if you were to put a bowl of something that I used to be extremely susceptible to, peanut M&M's.

I considered any vessel of peanut M&Ms to be one serving. Kind of like Girl Scout cookies. Everybody knows that a box of Thin Mints only has two servings in it because once the tube is breached, you know, you take the hold of the plastic and you take your fingers like this, you just...

Until the plastic comes off. But now it's like I could eat, you know, like a handful of peanut M&Ms and be just so overwhelmed with sweetness that I couldn't have anymore. All right. Or I could go ahead and have another handful and just throw up. But that's unhealthy too because it turns your teeth funny colors.

This isn't really going where you thought it was going. Let's go back down here to the floor for a second. How are you, sir? I'm great. Thank you for coming. You're very welcome. For the record, the bow tie is pretty cool. Thanks, man. It's action. I can move. As a man who went to school in the South, I have many bow ties myself. Well, you should rock them here on campus. Be proud of your Southern heritage. I will have to. Play your Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs.

Or your Lynyrd Skynyrd 8 tracks, which would be even cooler. Thankfully I'm not that old. I like him. He's okay. But it's good to hear that you're getting more into the digital realm. And my question kind of relates to that. You kind of, you know, you started to wade into the social media sphere. I would be loath to not mention, you know, that you are on Google+. Yeah, I am. I just don't know how to use it.

And you are, you know, you've been on Twitter as well. Yeah, I was on Twitter, I was off Twitter, and I'm back on Twitter. So I'm curious, kind of, what's your perception been of your experience engaging with the social sphere? And what can we do here at Google to make it better? Pay off my mortgage. No, I'm kidding.

What could you do to make it better? You know, I am new at it. I decided to jump in because I wanted to shut my agent up. My agent was nagging me. And I finally was like, okay, fine. I'm going to try this. And so I jumped in and then I jumped out because it creeped me out. Because I live in a very kind of insular... I don't... I'm antisocial is what it comes down to. On a day-to-day basis, I don't really want to interact with...

Susie572 from Boise. Okay, I just don't. I don't know how and on top of that I have an addictive personality as I have my seventh cup of coffee. Hey, can somebody get me some more coffee? Is there coffee over there? Can you get me some more coffee? I'm starting to get the shakes.

So, you know, it's like, to me, Twitter is Tetris for the 21st century. You know, it's very habit-forming. And I don't ever want to be influenced. My own work, it's funny, when I started making Good Eats, and even before that, one of the things that I hated about directing TV commercials is that I didn't like clients very much, and I wanted to be left alone. So I kind of have a, and thank you very much, I kind of have...

No cream, no Splenda? No, okay.

Like, good eats. I never pay attention to fans. I want fans to like the shows. I really do. But I'm not gonna make it for them. I always made it for me. I thought the best thing I could do is be true to what my vision is of what I wanna do with my craft, in that I would do my best to make the best shows I could, but I wasn't gonna be influenced by the outside world. I'm not gonna worry about, "Well, the fans want me to do this, or the fans want me to do that." 'Cause when you do that, you don't actually develop a fan base at all. Fans like to follow someone with a clear vision of what it is they're doing.

I truly believe that. When you look at great media works through the ages, they were always accomplished by visionaries, not people with focus groups and not people that were looking at search engine optimizers, okay? It was somebody who decided, "I'm gonna do this," and they did it. And if people follow them, fans stinkintastic. You get to do more of that. That's your reward is you get to keep working.

And if you get some cash and prizes along the way, okay. So, the danger with social media is that once you start engaging in that, you're from the South, you must remember the story of the Tar Baby.

Remember your bare rabbit? You remember your Uncle Remus stories? Yeah, they're not really politically correct anymore. But the truth is, social media is the tar baby. Once you stick your finger in it, once you poke it, you're pretty much caught up in it. And it's very easy to then start letting that influx of information, that influx of opinion, that influx of emotion from all around kind of infect what it is you're doing. And so that's why a lot of celebrities have other people do it for them and they never touch it at all.

Or you've got people that do it a lot, but don't do it in a way where they really let people they put a lot out But don't let a lot in and then you have people that go insane, you know And I've spent some time looking at what other celebrities do real so like big-time celebrities not just cable liberties like me but what big celebrities do on places like Facebook is they basically just put they share out and

And and I think that's I mean that's fine, but I tend to want to also see what's what's coming in But only to some degree one of the nice things about Twitter is it's limited You know you can only give me this little burst in a link and if I want to go to the link I can you know so it's very it's like skipping a rock across a pond I'm and that's where I am right now whether how that's gonna change my work is

is actually, I realized that social media is actually going to allow me to work better because what it's going to allow me is to focus my future work more and more on the stuff that I want to do that I feel confident my real fan base will also enjoy and will allow me connectivity to them to allow them to know what it is I'm doing. So in other words, I'm going to be able to preach louder to a smaller choir, if that makes any sense. And that's one of the things that when you do TV projects, if you're just on a network,

Then you're you're it's a shotgun and it's and it's always going out there and you always have to assume that somebody's watching it but a lot of the work that I want to do is I move into another phase of my life is I want to start to focus more and more on what I really want to do and to do that I need to have better contact directly with my fan base and that's what I can get from social media by the way for free You got to realize that somebody like me will very often pay a PR firm $10,000 a month

to manage media relationships, to make sure that when you're in New York, you're gonna be on Jimmy Fallon, to make sure you get that article in Rolling Stone Magazine. Well, guess what? I don't like paying that money out, to be really honest with you. Why should I do that if I can have a good life on social media and do the same thing for free?

Did I come even close to answering your question? Now to say what you can do to make my life easier is don't always assume, as you design social media projects, don't always assume that all of us want to jump into deep water.

You gotta think like a beach. I may just wanna walk here where the water just laps up here a little bit. Or I might wanna get out in the waves, go like this a little bit. But I may not wanna go out where the sharks are. I may not wanna go out where the deep water is. So make it easier for me to not, you know, I'm not always gonna be drawn into the deeper water of circles. Circles scare the crap out of me. I'm not gonna go into a circle.

To me, that sounds like a social STD. I mean, I'm like, a circle? What the hell do I need a circle for? I mean, that just scares me. I don't want to be in a circle. Streams, that sounds safe, because streams wash things away. Stream. I like stream.

Does that make any sense? The last thing that I want to do is live my life on a computer. I think that computers and the internet can enhance life, they can enhance a lot of experience, but they do not actually replace life. And unfortunately, I've seen some people go bonkers. Literally, I've known some people that have lost their lives because they quit living their life and they just lived on like Facebook, which is old school anyway. I think we can agree on that. Thank you.

Shall we take another one from, that was a dissertation. - Please, that's okay. - All badly put. - Any chance you might be taking to the asphalt again? There's a lot of pavement you haven't ridden yet. - Boy, tell me about it. I would like nothing more than to do more feasting on asphalt shows. And I might be able to convince Food Network of that.

But, they think they've pretty much got that category all wrapped up with Guy Fieri and divers, diners, drive-ins, dives, whatever the heck it is. Yeah, what can I say? Your emails could certainly help. If you don't like that idea, just email Food Network and I'll take to the road again. I had always wanted to do more feasting on asphalt. I wanted to do a West Coast all the way from Baja to Alaska. I had always wanted to do that. And then I also wanted to do feasting on rails because I'm a huge train fan.

But you have to go to Europe and Asia if you really want to do that right so it gets expensive. And then I want to do feasting on air because I'm a pilot and I want to be paid to fly. I love the West Coast thing. Sorry? I love the West Coast thing. Yeah, the West Coast. I would love to do that because that's such a diverse, not only geography, but people groups. Food to me is mostly interesting when you examine it within a microculture. Mm-hmm.

It's like the best time that I had on the original Feasting on Asphalt series, season one, before I broke my collarbone and spent my time all drugged up, was cooking and eating out on the reservations, Native American reservations in Arizona. Because you're moving in a whole new people group that's in your country that has whole different food traditions, and learning how to appreciate those and see them through their eyes. That's what that series is really about. Not just getting really big hamburgers.

Let's see, here's another one. Not that that's a bad thing, I guess. Go ahead. When will you delve into science of food and good eats? Do you do your own research or do you have a whole team of physicists, nutritionists, etc.?

No, we do all of our research in-house. Okay. And I do a lot of research. Matter of fact, I would say that 90% of the storylines on Good Eats came out of research. What we would do is once we decided on a season list of shows, we would generate research books that usually average probably 500 pages of research. And this would be research from periodicals, from book.

We're very careful about internet sources. We will use an internet source to develop a lead and then we'll follow it to a primary source, typically speaking. And then out of sifting through all of the research, that's where storylines kind of percolate up and out of. So I would say that research is the number one skill that you have to be able to have to kind of develop those storylines. So we do our own research. When we can't get an answer to something, we have people that we can get to answer things for us. You don't Google it?

Yeah. Okay, all right. Yeah. Although what I'd really love to see from Google is like a really high power professional level academic search engine. Something that's like a pay service that would allow me the really good stuff faster. There's people that develop... I would do that. I would pay...

I'd pay $10,000 a year to have a high-speed, no-junk search engine to high-end, academic, concierge-level research, quality research. Because it's just too easy to spend too much time stumbling through crap. And let's face it, nothing multiplies and propagates on the internet faster than bad information. And it would just be really great to be able to kind of weed through that kind of stuff. Somebody ought to get on that.

Fantastic. To be a fan. Now that you own the internet, you might think about selling it at better levels. Kind of like the creme de la creme of internet searching. I would definitely. That would be invaluable. Work on that. Here's our team. Because I could use that. All right. How about which other Food Network hosts would you choose as your second if Gordon Ramsay and Anthony Bourdain challenge you to a two-on-two cage match?

Let's be sure that we can define the nature of the cage match. I haven't actually seen-- I'm presuming that's cooking related. I haven't seen Anthony Bourdain do anything but actually just talk. Actually, I like Anthony Bourdain a great deal. I think he's a fantastic writer. I just haven't actually ever seen him cook anything. Who would I want to take with me? If I was like going in a kitchen stadium-- Yeah, exactly. Wow.

I'd take Bobby Flay. Yes! Okay. I would take Bobby Flay because I know, I don't think he likes Anthony Bourdain very much. Yeah. And I'm not really sure Anthony Bourdain likes him very much. So that could be like super cool. That would be a lot of fun. I've never met Gordon Ramsay, so I don't know how that would be. I like Anthony a lot. I think that'd be pretty fun. He's a great writer. So I think that's what I would do.

It would either be him or I would take Morimoto. Okay. Just for the knife skills alone. Okay, there's a question about a knife on here. How long should a good knife last? Assuming, of course, that you're not using it to cut shoes in half.

Or open tin cans. You know what? A really, really good knife should last lifetimes. Lifetimes. I have a carbon steel sabatier. It's a French knife made with a dark carbon steel that I know is about 100 years old.

And it's still kicking just fine. It should be something that you should pass down to grandchildren. There's absolutely no reason not to do that. And all you have to do is take care of them right. The number one thing that destroys good knives, by the way, is bad washing.

It's not bad sharpening or anything like that. It's harsh chemicals on handles that make the handle material rot out around the revets. I still see people buy $200 chef's knives and put them in the washing machine. Yeah, I was going to say don't put them in the washing machine. And the washing machine, not only do the chemicals, the enzymes that are in the dishwashing powder that breaks down stuff on dishes, but it's also the drying cycles. It's a harsh environment. And yet I see that. Or I see people buy really good knives and just throw them in drawers with a lot of other junk, which absolutely is one of the most dangerous things ever.

in the world, you know, horrible thing to see. But a good knife, you spend money on a good knife, it will last generations without question. - Speaking of danger, I think there's an explosion question. Did you ever want more explosions on your show? - Well, who doesn't? I mean, understand something, I'm a dad. I have an 11-year-old daughter named Zoe. She's been on the show a lot. I'm crazy about my kid, but she does not think I'm cool. And the reason she doesn't think I'm cool is because I have never been on Mythbusters.

Now, I can't go on Mythbusters because of exclusivity contracts and things like that. But basically, every time we're watching Mythbusters and something blows up, she'll turn to me and say, "What'd you do at work today?" So one day I was finally like, "All right, I've had enough of this. We're gonna go blow up some stuff." And so I taught her some things. I taught her how to make napalm.

out of orange juice concentrate and I taught her how to make nitroglycerin and I taught her some other things. And we blew up some stuff so loud that neighbors came to ask if a transformer had blown somewhere in the neighborhood. I mean, we were making some really obscene. And then we muffled the really big explosions. We muffled by dropping them in the pool first. But that also had some backlash, unfortunate backlash.

But I can't do that on TV. I can't show people how to do that. Or there'll be like kids come into my signage. Or would you have to put a disclaimer, don't try this at home? You know, I can't. I'm not going to do that. All right. But I know how to make food blow up. Okay. I believe you. Anybody else? You can make napalm. Never mind. What's your one favorite kitchen gadget? My favorite kitchen, define gadget. Well,

Well, that's what's on the screen. What's your favorite kitchen tool? Well, a tool and a gadget are very different. All right. What's your favorite tool and what's your favorite gadget? Gadgets are flirting with, are usually unitaskers, which I don't suffer by and large except for

Fire extinguisher. Fire extinguisher, exactly. Which I have now turned into a freezer, if you saw our live show. So there are no more taskers. But my favorite, I do have tools that I like a lot. Things that I wouldn't be able to live without or would not like to live without. An electric kettle. I do a lot of stuff in an electric kettle. I'm a big egg fan. I love hard-cooked eggs. And so I load up my electric kettle with them and then fill it with water and turn it on. It cuts itself off. I leave them in for eight minutes and I get perfect hard-cooked eggs. So I like that a lot. And I use a panini press a lot.

Okay. I'm a big fan of panini presses. I use them to cook entire meals. Do you have your favorite hand tool? Everyone always asks me what my favorite kitchen is. A favorite hand tool. Nine-inch spring-loaded tongs. Okay. Great answer.

I have some that are longer, but holding something longer than nine inches, just, I don't know. I can't seem to get used to it. Okay. Let's take another question here. What is your favorite cookbook to use other than ones you've written yourself? What are cookbooks that I like to cook out of other than mine? My very, very first cookbook, which I purchased, well, that I bought for myself. I'd inherited a bunch, but the first cookbook I bought was in 1989.

And it was the original frugal gourmet cookbook. Jeff Smith's Google for frugal gourmet. I almost said Google gourmet, which would be a different thing altogether. And I still cook out of that book all the time. And I still cook out of the 1962 edition of The Joy of Cooking because that was the last edition where they actually had sketches of how to skin a squirrel. And once you lose that skill, it's really hard to get it back.

And believe it or not, the most important thing to have for skinning a squirrel is good boots. Because you have to hold. Once you get the skin going, you've got to hold it. And I've actually skinned a squirrel with these very boots. It's a pulling thing. Once you get the tail meat down, you get hold of the skin, and you pull it off so that you're left with skin. I was going to ask what your favorite go-to meal is after this. My favorite go-to meal? Yeah. I've got a lot of favorite go-to meals. You know what? When in doubt...

I have this one dish that I really adore that I cook a lot when my family's not there. And I do this on a panini press, and it's really cool. I get my panini press hot. I take three-- and by the way, I don't have an endorsement from a panini press. I put three big rashers of bacon in it. And I close the lid, and I wait about two minutes and let the bacon cook till it's crisp. Take it out.

During the time that that's out, I cut up an onion and I cut up some mushrooms. So what I do is I take the bacon out, and while the bacon fat is in there, I throw the sliced mushrooms in, close the lid, cook another two minutes until they're crispy, take those out, throw in some sliced onion, still enough fat to cook, couple of minutes, take that out. In the meantime, I cut up the bacon, and then the last thing I do is I throw in two big handfuls of spinach. Baby spinach, close the lid, count to 12, take it out, put that all in a bowl, put some hot sauce on it, and eat it.

I love that. So it's a hot spinach, mushroom, bacon salad. That's kind of my, I love that meal. And canned sardines. I got a thing for sardines. Okay. So what was the last meal that you cooked at home? The last meal that I cooked at home before I went on this book tour was I made breakfast for my daughter. If I am in town, I cook my daughter breakfast every day for two reasons. One, no one will feed you as well as somebody who loves you.

I believe that. I believe there's a tangible, transferable value of love in cooking for people. So I want to cook for her every day. Number one, I know I can put good nutrition on the plate and I want her to see that her dad is there.

Cooking for her and doing that for her so that was my last meal because after that I do you cook with your daughter often Do I cook for her often every day with her with her? Yeah, but she's lazy She's only interested my daughter is only interested in something that results in a lickable batter or dough

So, she'll, she's, you know, like my dogs, I have a couple of corgis and they love ice. So, anytime I open the freezer door, they come running because they think they're going to get ice. Anytime my daughter sees the mixer come out, she comes. Because she assumes there's going to be some kind of, somebody's going to get to lick something off of something. Which I don't know what that says about her, but that's, but when it comes to actually doing work, she'll always, ah, dad, you know, I got, I got this thing I got to do over here, you know.

Unless it's blowing something up, then I got her. See, I think that's fun. Yeah. Should we take an audience question? Yeah. How about that? You, sir, speak. Hey.

Hey there. So I work in search. And I was going to ask you for some feedback on searches specifically for maybe recipes or for restaurants. And now that you've said what you said about filtering out the high quality content, I wonder if maybe you could expand on that perhaps and give any pet peeves or-- Well, first off, I don't search for restaurants online.

I have never looked for a restaurant on using a computer. So unless it's a map function, I'm standing here in Missoula, Montana, where's the closest food? I will do that. I will use the map function on my iPhone for that. But like evaluating and looking them up, I typically don't do that. And I would never, there is no way to find good recipes on the internet, I don't think. Not through a general recipe search because 99.97% of them are crap.

And you can't find good ones unless you go to a paid service. Like if you have a subscription to Cooks Illustrated or some other site like that that you can access their recipes, that can be quality. But just searching? Nah. So the ways in which that paid service can provide you with those quality recipes that you can't find on the open internet, which ways--

could we perhaps improve Google Search to provide better access to higher quality content? - Well, you could have curators, for instance. You could have like, here are Anthony Bourdain's 125 favorite internet recipes. Or you could find a way to curate collections, allowing you to package what you don't actually own, which of course is the way of the future.

But the problem with a recipe is you've got to have a quantifier. And a quantifier usually comes in the form of the dreaded forum, which I think is the whole idea of user feedback and forum style is pretty much if there is anything that will ultimately destroy the usefulness of the internet, it's that. Because the only people that typically go on forums are the last people that you want to listen to. Unfortunately, we've given everybody a voice, and most of them are bad.

So, I don't really know how you do that because I don't know how you provide. There might be a way that you could set up search strings in such a way that you could weed out a lot of things or you could simply start getting people to go through

a huge amount of print matter and use that, like anything that's in public domain. You guys have snarked off all that stuff anyway, right? Like Mrs. Beaton's cookbooks from the 1900s, maybe being able to search through that kind of print matter, stuff that's actually been tested. That's a conversation probably for, well, it's a longer conversation, figuring out how to actually do that. I have a lot of people come to me and say, how the heck do I search for recipes on the internet? And my answer is basically,

you don't unless you're looking for something very, very specific with a name attached to it. Like for instance, I find that it is much easier to find one of my own recipes by just Googling it rather than going to foodnetwork.com and looking for it because I can't find it on foodnetwork.com unless I go through Google. So if I go to Google and I type in good eats meatloaf, okay, that'll actually take me someplace that I want to go. But the nice thing would be it's like,

If you went to, okay, say that it is my meatloaf recipe and you had to search this, okay, Elton Brown meatloaf or Good Eats meatloaf goes to there. Being able to have some kind of service that would then offer, hey, if you like this one, try these. In which case you would have to have some kind of reference that would, some kind of system that would cross-reference ingredient lists or time that it takes or reviews and then offer up another 10 elsewhere on the internet based on if you like this one. I think that could work, but then that's some pretty sophisticated way

integration. Not that that's over your head at all. I mean, you can manage that. So if you don't use the internet for restaurant searches, what is your process for finding new restaurants? My process for restaurant searches on the internet is strictly geographical. If I'm traveling and I'm like, dear God, if I don't eat soon, I am going to die.

Where am I? What's near me? And that's what it is. And then what I'll do is I'll look, I'll pull up, you know, on my iPhone, I'll pull up that restaurant and I'll look at its website and see what the menu is and if they're open or not and go. But I'm not evaluating them or searching them out in any other form other than geographical.

Now, if I could look them up by ingredient, you know, if I could say, "I'm standing in the middle of Manhattan and I want to know who's serving rabbit in five blocks in every direction." That would be interesting because that would mean somebody's got to actually look through the online menus and somehow work that sourcing out. That would be very interesting.

There are ways to miss a lot of good food because you don't know that, okay, well, this French restaurant, okay, this Vietnamese restaurant over here is serving rabbit in this form and this French restaurant over here is serving in this form because what I really got a taste for today is rabbit for some reason. That would be cool. I don't think we have that now. Well, that's good feedback. Thank you. Sure.

You, sir. First, I just wanted to thank you for your deep-fried turkey recipe. I follow it every single year and-- You build the derrick. I build the derrick with the flashing light. You use the flashing light. It's the most important thing. Well, not only does it say danger, it says fried turkey will soon be served here, which I think is a nice kind of community gesture because people want that. Oh, yeah, definitely. And who doesn't want to build a derrick?

The pulleys kind of threw me off, but anyway. Really? My question is about... That's a pretty simple device. Pulley, been around for a few years. Hardware store, good place. So my question is about actually brewing beer. Okay. I'm going to start brewing. Are you old enough to have this conversation with me? Yes, I am. Okay. I don't know what the ages is for... Oh, wow. In California. So what is it? Drinking age is 21 here? Is that right? Okay.

And then, namely, in preparation, are there any home recipes, like using apple cider vinegar to rinse out all of the stuff to make it in first? Or would you go with a solution? And if you use the solution, would you rinse it after? Because a lot of them say no rinse.

There are a lot of ways you can go with your sanitation. Sanitation is paramount with any form of brewing, especially beer. And there are a lot of commercial solutions that work at very, very low concentrations. I gotta confess, I use a bleach solution. It's what I know. It dissipates very, very quickly and I've never gotten sick from it, other than from drinking too much beer and throwing up.

But I've never had a sanitation problem. So I use a bleach solution, but there are other people that swear by, excuse me, non-chloride kind of solutions as well. But I would not use a vinegar. I would not use anything that wasn't designed as a disinfectant.

And you'd always rinse? And I don't, actually I don't. I'm using it at such low concentrations that I typically don't rinse. Okay, great, thanks. This is a strange conversation. Yes, ma'am. I know you touched upon this earlier, but is there a new TV show or an episode of an existing show that you would love to see that would probably never be created?

Well, there were a lot of Good Eats episodes that I would have liked to have created that Food Network wouldn't let me do because of subject matter and sensitivity to their clientele, so to speak. The aforementioned rabbits. I would like to have done a rabbit episode because I really like rabbit. But they were like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because thumper. You know? I mean, it's like people will accept. Here we are with the pigs.

You know, because we all hate pigs now because of Angry Birds. Everybody hates pigs.

You know, it's like I was having a conversation with you know, daddy. You really gonna kill that pig, you know to make barbecue I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna kill the pig I don't want you to kill the pig you ever put a helmet on it and all of a sudden she wants a debt You know said not only we're gonna kill it. We're gonna throw birds at it until it dies We're gonna make the whole house fall down. Hey, that's another story, but I really wanted to do a rabbit show But you know the hippity-hoppity money nobody wanted to see that and and I probably didn't they said oh

Nobody wants to see you cut up and skin a rabbit on TV. And I said, well, come on. Once you get the fur off, it looks just like a cat. This was not the best argument that I could have put forth. Because then they were just going all like...

So that didn't go very well. And I also would have liked to have, I like oval variety meats, sweetbreads and tripe and stuff like that. And would love to have done a show of digging into that kind of stuff. Because I think if you're going to eat an animal, you need to eat the animal. And they're like, no, no, no, you're not going to do that. You're not, no. Nobody wants to see you cook tripe.

So, I'll get my revenge by doing that somewhere else. But those were really the only things that I really wanted to do that I was... I just couldn't get traction. Couldn't get traction for it. Thank you. Sure. Hi. Thank you for coming. I wanted to say that... How are things over here? You're... No, I like it better over here.

Go ahead. You're my food hero. Thank you. But I have three children who have terrible food allergies, and one of my favorite episodes that you ever did was The Replacements. Yes. But I was wondering, and I've struggled with this for years, is I love to bake, but they're allergic to wheat, eggs, and dairy. You're doomed.

And you did an episode where you replaced the egg with lentils, but you also replaced egg with applesauce, but you didn't replace the milk and the wheat. So I was wondering if you've ever had to do this challenge because it's been very difficult to make things. There's no emulsifier once you remove the egg. So is there a better? Well, you can use xanthan gum as a replacement for the natural lecithin in egg yolks, and that works.

Just understand something. You're never going to get where you want to go. You're taking away the trinity of real baking. So everything that you do once you remove those is only going to be an approximation. It may remind somebody of a baked good, but you're probably not going to get there. We just don't have the chemistry for it yet.

You know, you can replace. The thing about working replacements is that you can generally get away with one or two. But when you cross the line into trying to replace three, the structure of everything falls apart. Because you're messing with that equation. The oat flour with the soy and the baking powder

with a little bit of extra acid, so either rice wine vinegar or apple vinegar. Sure. Works really well for the leavening. As long as it's not a recipe that was actually formulated for a double-acting baking powder, because the problem there is that you're getting all of your CO2 released upon mixture. So you may be able to mitigate that by... I add a little bit of baking soda so that at baking time I get the second lift for

for the addition of heat? That's going to be more a factor of the acid than the base. Don't I sound smart? I like your lethicin idea. Would you pre-soak the lethicin so that it... Well, you said that they're allergic to eggs. They are, but... Well, you probably can't use a straightforward lecithin, so I'd replace that with xanthan gum. With xanthan gum? Yeah, probably. Or gelatin? Uh...

- No. - No. - I've done really cool things. - Well, cool is the key word. No, cool is the key word though because if you're gonna use gelatin as a textural base, it all becomes relying on temperature.

Oh, because you think it'll break down once it hits three- Well, it does. It depends. Now, if you're using carrageenan or you're using some other gel base that's a hot gel, then that's different. We're now boring everyone else. All right. I'm sorry. But if you were able to do something online, a second replacement would be awesome. I will attempt to do so. This growing trend we have of intolerances and allergies is certainly...

And it opens up whole new marketing opportunities. And a lot of it, I think, I actually do think that there is a part of the population that is faking it.

I don't think that there are nearly as many intolerances as there are people that want to be treated specially by having an intolerance. I'm not saying that's your family's case at all, because there's a real difference between an intolerance and an actual allergy. But people that are gluten intolerant, that's going up. We're all lactose intolerant to some degree. Most of us of Northern European extraction-- no, that aren't of Northern European extraction have some of that.

So, it's a concern. My daughter, I mean, my daughter is allergic to peanuts. We have no freaking idea where this came from. There is no peanut allergy going back in my family as far as we can go or in my wife's. And yet, here she is. Why did this happen and how did it happen? Don't know. But I think it's something that we're going to have to deal with. Maybe part of evolution. Just natural evolution. I don't know. Thanks for your question, though. I'll work on that. Yes? Yes?

So you mentioned zombies earlier. I just have to ask a question. In the event of a zombie apocalypse, what's your go-to food for survival? And I guess your go-to food just for pleasure. Well, I have to let you know that I'm actually working on a couple of games that are related to this issue. That's awesome. One is called Zombie Chefs, where you're actually in a grocery store fighting zombies that are chefs of different nationalities. And you can only kill them with ingredients from their cuisine.

It's actually a pretty good game. Is that bad? Is Zombie Chefs bad? No, it's great. And then the big one I'm working on with my daughter is called Cupcake Apocalypse. And it's set in a time where all the weapons that we have left are cupcakes because we had all these cupcakes we made to make cupcake TV shows and that's all we've got left. And so we've converted Nerf guns to shoot cupcakes. So I have to say that in the end, it's going to be the cupcakes that will be the most important food.

Because a headshot with a 10-year-old cupcake, as long as it's not a Hostess product, which would still be soft and tender, is gonna do what needs to be done. And zombies hate buttercream. Thank you so much. Hate it. You're very welcome. This is a serious issue, people. I'm not kidding around. Yes, sir?

Okay, well, speaking of families, what was it like shooting a show with your grandmother? What was it like shooting a show with my grandma? That was in the very first season of "Good Eats," and that was my maternal grandmother. And it was great fun, and I was really glad we did it because she died about two years after that. And so now, my daughter doesn't really remember her, and so she can watch that show and kind of see what my relationship was like with my grandmother, and it's nice. I still kind of have a hard time watching it because she and I were very close. So I'm glad we got to do it.

You know, it's tough. It's an emotional thing for me. And she owed me money when she died. So that's kind of extra painful. Go ahead. Hi. I work on the Books Project, which is actually a couple of building-- ERIC SCHMIDT: You work on the Books Project. So I was very interested to hear that you're looking into video-enabled e-books. ERIC SCHMIDT: Yes, I am. Only if I can keep you guys from just nabbing them.

Do you actually wait by the door of authors that are dying to just wait for that moment when they take their last breath? Or do you... I'm screwing with you. 120 years later. Somebody has to do it. Copyright Mozabitch. Copyright Shmopyright. Anyway, if you have time this afternoon, we'd love to have you come over and pick your brains on what you'd love to... Well, and I'd love to pick your brains, too, because the thing about...

Digital publishing is that we're everybody's still going huh what and and the thing that you guys might not think about very much is where people like me that generate content are all stymied is by legal and

Because none of the lawyers can figure out what even the definitions are of things right now. And so all of us are paying thousands of dollars trying to develop deals that protect everybody and define things because nobody knows what the words mean. There's not precedent for it. So law firms are just...

really making hay off of this whole thing while no work's actually being done. I think that I know a lot of people with great ideas that have just said, I can't afford to do this. When you think about the fact that the average entertainment copyright lawyer's going between $650 and $700 an hour, and that's for something that either happens or doesn't happen, you just go, oh my gosh, I can't afford to do this. So everybody's waiting, waiting for court precedents to be set so that words can be defined enough that contracts can be drawn up.

It's really interesting. I've been trying to develop e-product now for a year and are just now getting to the point of actually being able to talk about what they will be because of trying to wade through the legal. It's really interesting. So you're hoping to use a lot of content you've made before? No, all original. I have no desire to repurpose content. And you still have all these copyright worries?

With all new material. Well, yeah, because the issue is defining what it even is. It's... Come to New York, young man, and spend some time with me in some tall buildings in Midtown, and I'll just show you how complicated it can be. It's not just about who originated at all. It's about even defining what the word is. It's defining what's an e-book and what's an app. Where does one cross the line into the other? Because...

Author X may have a deal over here that precludes the use of, or may say you can't make apps but you can make e-books, or you can do this but you can't do that. And the time limits on this and how long this is in here and how long the video piece is, very, very complicated. I'm in a bit of a unique situation because I don't own restaurants, I own a video production company.

I own sound stage, I own editing, I own... that's what I do. And so my desire is to get as much visual motion content into my product as possible. That's what I do. It's what I'm best at. And so that puts me in even more of a kind of a complicated territory because if I use... if the software, if the people that I work with to develop the actual e-product, if we

Work together. Here's the problem with pioneering. It's like, okay I want to do this and because I make this and you guys make this we all of a sudden make something new Oh dear God who owns that who owns that process? Is it patentable? You can't just buy all your patents, you know We try

Sometimes you have to make that stuff up. And so everybody's going, ooh, okay, so now we need another agreement between us to cover whatever we might innovate. So it's really tough. It's easy to be back. And so you start to see the marketplace is already getting kind of stale for e-products because everybody's doing the same stuff because it's established. Nobody wants to pioneer because nobody understands who's going to own it.

You can just wait for dead guys. So, well, yeah, forever. Yeah, I understand. So it's really complicated. It's exciting. I'm excited enough in it to be turning my company solidly into the direction of figuring this out, of finding out how to do this. For me, it's life or death in a way because it's evolving into a state of really being able to do what I do best, which is probably something that hasn't been invented yet. And if I'm wrong, I'm completely screwed. But we can talk.

We should talk. I would love to hear what you guys-- because you guys know. You guys know what's going on. Hey, oh wait. Yeah, let's do you, so you can sit down. You've been standing there a while. Go ahead. Thank you. First of all, thank you for coming, and thank you for the team here inviting you. Oh, yeah, thank you. Thanks for showing up. Love your recipes. We make the schmaltz-based gravy every year for Thanksgiving. Schmaltz is good.

What's the one exactly a heart-healthy thing? No, we make it once a year moderation exactly What's the one recipe that scares you to make well is there a dish that's like this doesn't always work It's a challenge. Is there something like that? No, I like to bet you're never the big complicated dishes that do me in it's the hollandaise Well, no, it's it's no, you know, it's like if I've really worked it out. I

It's the dishes that I accidentally turn my back on. It's simple stuff that I get cavalier with. Rice.

Every tenth pot of rice I make is an unmitigated disaster, and I don't know why. I will do it exactly the same as I've done all the others, but for some reason I'm not paying attention right and I screw it up. So now I just throw out every tenth one. I don't even make it, I just throw it out. To this day, I will still, I get up every morning and make a pot of coffee, and without failure, one out of every five pots is horrible.

I don't know what I'm doing. You know, it's when I'm not paying attention. But if you tell me, okay, today we're going to roast a whole hog over hickory wood with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right, I'm there. I'm solid. It's on my scope. I got it. I usually don't screw that stuff up because I plan and I'm paying real close attention. I'm not going to tell you that occasionally my hollandaise isn't

100% but you know something like a sauce I look at a success range of you know it's within this 10% Is it my best hollandaise? No. Is it still better than most people's hollandaise? Yeah, is it edible? You know the nice thing about food experimenting is that most of the time even the really bad screw-ups are edible You know you don't throw away that much food you know just why I tell people when they learn first learn how to cook cook eggs They're cheap

And if you mess them up, it's not that big of a deal. The chickens will make more. They're inexpensive. So I don't really mess up the big stuff.

But I'm a very simple cook. I don't do complicated stuff. I really don't. So what's your take on molecular gastronomy? Well, I've talked about molecular gastronomy before. I've been pounced on for it. I think of all gastronomy as molecular. It's all molecules. And the danger of any movement in food is that people fixate on it, excluding other things. So I know a lot of young cooks right now, or have met several young cooks, who want to jump straight to the powder and

and not cook the carrots properly. The real great practitioners, the real artists in food that are embracing those ingredients and techniques are already great cooks.

Okay, and they're just using they're just innovating. It's like adding paintbrushes to your to you know or colors to your palette, which is fine I think that when we start moving into for my own personal taste when food starts becoming unidentifiable as what it is I kind of lose my interest and and I've been on record as saying man I just hate foam the only food I want foam on is cappuccino

And if you want to call them a rang of foam, but I don't want big bubbles that look like something that came out of a dying fish's gills. You know, I just don't. And you can tell me that you filled them with smoke and that it's made with blah, blah. And I'm just still, I still just don't freaking want it, man. You know, it's just not what I eat. Okay. I don't have a very sophisticated palate. I like simple foods that taste like what they are.

So, those are all fantastic tools. You know, in the summertime, I keep liquid nitrogen around because my daughter and I love to make instant ice cream or we'll buy fruit on the way home and say, "Hey, let's make sorbet out of that." And you know, liquid nitrogen is cheap. There's a place up the street, I live near a hospital, I can get this stuff cheap and we pour it on all kinds of stuff. Sometimes we soak crackers in liquid nitrogen and give them to the dogs, which is really cool because as the dog chews the cracker, the steam shoots out of their mouth. But I'm not sure that's legal, so I know that I would do that.

And I use xanthan gum to keep my dressings stable. So I use these things. I use, you know, occasionally we'll use tapioca maltodextrin to turn olive oil into a powder because that's fun and I can put it on stuff. But by and large, they're all just tools. And when an artist becomes defined by the tools, that's a problem in general. Thank you. Sure.

I'm going to wait for more people to come to the microphones. So would you do a mini-series? That's a question on here. Mini-series? Not food-related. Would I do a non-food-related mini-series? Sure. I would do a non-food-related series. I mean, I have a lot of interests besides food. I like science. I like all sorts of stuff. I like the Mythbusters thing. I think you'd be perfect for that. If I could get on Mythbusters. Well, if one of the Mythbusters guys would like get blown up.

I could slip right in and take over. Take either of them. I'd be all right with that, I think. I think that's a good fit. We'll have to see what happens. They're getting pretty sloppy with their pyro works. I'm getting this. Are you? Are we done? I guess so. Did I suck all the air out of the room?

We're three minutes over. Thanks for coming. Wait, can I take this one last question? Go ahead, sir. I really salute you for bringing a really quirky sense of humor to TV, and yet you don't do it on all of your shows. So what's it like balancing the quirky Alton with the making people cry on Food Network star Alton? I see that all as quirky. You know,

Oh, that's actually a really interesting question because the kind of quirkiness that's on Good Eats, that's actually me. The other side of the way I am, like on Iron Chef America or certainly on Food Network Star, is job specific. You know, they're asking me to play a specific role. So that's more like acting. That's not...

me. That's a sliver of me that's being used to make people cry, which I can do, but it's not me. You know, any job allows you only a certain range of your skill set. And so there are a lot of projects that I do that only call for one or two things. Good Eats, though, is kind of the whole Kim Caboodle. So thanks for coming, everybody. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening. To discover more amazing content, you can always find us online at youtube.com slash talks at Google.

Talk soon.