Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen Book

Dedicated viewers of Alton Brown’s acclaimed Food Network show Good Eats know of his penchant for using unusual equipment. He has smoked a salmon in a cardboard box, roasted prime rib in a flowerpot, and used a C-clamp as a nutcracker. Brown isn’t interested in novelty, he’s just devoted to using the best—and simplest—tool for the job.

Alton Brown’s Gear For Your Kitchen offers honest, practical advice on what’s needed and what isn’t, what works and what doesn’t. For instance: You only need three knives, but they are a lifetime investment. And don’t bother with that famous countertop grill—it doesn’t get hot enough to properly sear. In his signature science-guy style, Brown begins with advice on kitchen layout and organization, then gets to the lowdown on these cooking elements: Big Things with Plugs; Pots and Pans; Sharp Things; The Tool Box; Small Things with Plugs; Storage and Containment; and Safety and Sanitation.

Gear For Your Kitchen is essential for all of Brown’s fans as well as anyone who wants a good guide to great kitchen gear. With more than 125,000 hardcover copies in print, this indispensable—and highly entertaining—book is now offered in a paperback edition that every home cook can afford.

Publishers Weekly

Best known for his Good Eats program on the Food Network, Brown has all the colander knowledge, marketing savvy and geeky male appeal to whip up a big hit from this unwieldy but very fun macropedia of gadgetry. Splashing the word "gear" across the cover in capital letters is clearly an appeal to the male shopper. Descriptions of every conceivable pan, peeler and propane torch get their due in entries ranging from a few sentences to a few pages, depending on which items Brown considers to be absolute necessities or which are just cool to have around. (As Brown is a self-confessed java-holic, the extensive overview of coffeemakers reads as a labor of love.) There are Mr. Science type explorations of topics such as, "Why Eggs Stick So Bad," and "The Proper Way to Pack a Cooler." One hundred photographs and another 100 illustrations make sense of what, for example, a nylon fish turner or an immersion blender looks like. Lost in the mix are 25 random recipes ranging from Icebox Bran Muffins to Potato Leek Soup. Brown does his own photography but designers Galen Smith and Amy Trombat deserve credit. The layout and graphics, replete with faux handwriting in the margins and arrowed lines zipping through the text are part 1950s Sears catalogue gone art deco, part coffee-table book for George and Judy Jetson. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.