I like watching Alton Brown's cooking show, Good Eats — and I like it for three reasons, two of which may be unique with me. First off, I like the knowledge he presents. He not only tells you to add three anchovies to the recipe, he tells you where the anchovies come from, what kinds of anchovies they are, their names, their kids' names, what they do in their spare time when they're not being anchovies and so on. This is a reason I think every watcher of Good Eats has for watching Good Eats.
Only a few of them probably consciously share my second reason. I like the presentation. The shows were cleverly produced and aren't just one person — clearly more skilled at cooking skills than on-camera presence — explaining how to dice your onions. The guy is entertaining and his shows are always ambitious in production values and spending time and cash on being entertaining. No one will ever hire me to work on a cooking show but if I ever did an instructional show in one of the few areas I know something about, I'd want to do it like Alton Brown.
And the reason I (and maybe, I alone) have for watching Alton Brown is that he frees me from any desire to cook for myself. I suspect he's being subsidized by the restaurants in my area because the more I watch this guy, the more I'm convinced I simply don't have the skills or knowledge to do much more than empty a can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti into a microwave-safe bowl.
When I don't watch Alton Brown for a while, I get this foolish notion to cook something. I don't get ambitious but even when I attempt a simple meal, it ends in disaster. Then I go watch me some Alton Brown and he reminds me I shouldn't even attempt that. Two weeks ago, I made an entire corned beef precisely according to the recipe, taking it off the heat the moment an internal thermometer told me it was done. This is one of the easiest things in the world to prepare but what I wound up with had the texture and taste of an old Artgum eraser. It went immediately into the garbage and I realized that if I'd watched Alton Brown more, I would not have tried that would have therefore saved a lot of time and money.
Brown and his crew served up 14 seasons (249 episodes) of Good Eats, ending in 2012. They rerun incessantly on The Cooking Channel but they don't seem to have all 249 in rotation. Every time I tune in, there's about a 40% chance I'll get the one about how to make French Onion Soup. He's back now making new ones which will debut next year but in the meantime, he's doing something interesting: Thirteen episodes of Good Eats Reloaded.
What these are are episodes from the original Good Eats show which Brown has annotated and updated, correcting errors or inserting segments to talk about that which is outdated. He's found better ways to do some things, there have been technological advances in some areas and he got some things wrong in the first place. That he occasionally made mistakes is comforting in some ways but he doesn't do it often enough to make me think I could ever be a decent cook.
I really like Good Eats Reloaded. How many other TV shows have you ever seen that went back to correct screw-ups? Last week was the first of the thirteen and the episode was about 60% new material. The second one airs tonight on The Cooking Channel — at 6 PM on my TV. It's the "reload" of the episode on cooking pasta. I believe I tried to cook pasta his way and it didn't work. I can't wait to see his new way of cooking pasta which won't work for me either. It's not him, you understand. It's me.