- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Stewart, Tabori and Chang (Oct 1 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1584792965
- ISBN-13: 978-1584792963
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 18.5 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 885 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #266,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
"I think cooking is a lot of fun and I hate to see people not having fun doing it just because they don't have the right tools--which is not to say they need the prettiest, best, most expensive tools. They just need the tools that are right for them." Such is the organizing principle of Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen by the selfsame Alton Brown, star of Food Network's Good Eats as well as award-winning author of I'm Just Here for the Food. It's an interesting, effective principle. It comes from a guy who serves pie with a four-dollar mortar trowel he picked up at the hardware store.
Brown's opening challenge is a 60-day, four phase process of ridding your kitchen of all things unused and insignificant--easy on the surface, but tough in the doing. That leaves room for essential gear. And to help make those choices, Brown looks at pots and pans, sharp things (not just knives, but graters, mandolins, and cheese slicers, too), small things with plugs (as in small appliances--from food processors to coffee makers to deep fat fryers), kitchen tools unplugged (those items that fill drawers), storage and containment, and safety and sanitation.
If this were just an encyclopedia, what an unwholesome bore it would be. But Brown turns this relevant information into a romp. He's talking about the tools he uses, after all, and has no fear of naming likes and dislikes--based on his own experience. He also includes unending side chatter about cutting corners, saving money, and actually putting good tools to work. You'll find recipes throughout, and techniques, too. Like, how to bake a chicken in a flower pot. If you wonder why you would even want to attempt it in the first place, Brown clues you in. Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen is about as guilt free as pleasure will ever get. --Schuyler Ingle
From 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.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not worth the money,
By
This review is from: Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen (Hardcover)
Apparently I'm going to be the first person to give this book a less than glowing review. First let's take a look at the (list) price. For almost $28 you get a book that is actually fairly small. I was surprised when I opened it up.But the basic disappointment is that Brown just doesn't do a very good job of convincing me which types of devices I do and don't need and then what brands/designs I should look for in those devices. The coverage of topics is somewhat spotty. At times his description leaves you to believe that pretty much everything you can buy in a category is equivalent, at other times he goes into excruciating detail about what to look for. Apparently all cake pans are equivalent so long as they are heavy-duty aluminum and not non-stick; no brand names are mentioned, no pros and cons listed. When it comes to ice cream machines, however, we are treated to a 2 1/2 page dissertation surveying a complete range from the $600 Musso Lussino to the $55 Krups. Sometimes he gives detailed explanations of why he prefers one brand over another, other times not. Sometimes he'll compare several brands, other times only compare his favorite against one other. This inconsistency is a little annoying. There were some instances where I was confused at his advice because it seems to contradict what I've heard him say elsewhere. He says that a Y-shaped peeler is the best there is yet I could swear on his TV show he said the two different designs are for somewhat different tasks and you really need one of each. On his website he recommends getting a mini-food processor because that's the size that is useful for 75% of the kitchen jobs you do; yet in this book he says that size is useless ("I can do [that much] with a knife in less time than it takes to wash the work bowl.") Flip flops like that make you start to question other parts of his advice. In the end, you're probably better off just paying $3.95 for one-month subscriptions to the Cook's Illustrated website and searching their archives for product reviews and recommendations. While they aren't quite as comprehensive as Brown's book (although they cover about 90% of the useful material in Brown's book) the reviews and recommendations you'll find are far more useful as they compare more products and give more detail about why certain products were liked and disliked as well as giving a range of products to try.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Alton Hits It Again,
By
This review is from: Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen (Hardcover)
Whether or not you agree with Alton Brown on every point he makes, you have to admit that he is not shy about giving his opinion, often in the face of generations of contrary tradition. Alton believes in multi-tasking, and he has a point; in my kitchen, most likely in yours, 20 percent of the implements do 80 percent of the work. Even in the most capacious kitchens, space comes at a premium. Ever injure yourself clattering through a drawer-full of this and that? You get my point. Kitchen tools and implements need to earn their stripes in terms of both quality and utility. For this reason, Alton's great taxonomy in "Gear" lays out an extremely useful framework, if anything, to avoid buying something expensive and needless. The serious cook cannot help but disagree with something Alton propounds, and yet still benefit from the depth of his viewpoint. This is an important culinary work, and a good read as well.Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com
5.0 out of 5 stars
I don't like the new Cuisinart either,
By Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen (Hardcover)
I'm a hobby cook and also a gadget-junkie, so I was delighted to discover this book by one of my favorite people on the Food Network. Brown covers much more than simply can-openers and veggie-peelers, though. His topical chapters cover pots and pans, storage containers, small miscellaneous utensils, safety items, "sharp things," and "small things with plugs," and perhaps the best way to read the book is to browse from the beginning and then read his descriptions, comments, and opinions on certain items as they come to mind. I'm a regular reader of the consumer tests in COOK'S ILLUSTRATED, too, and I think Brown and Christopher Kimball would agree in many ways on what makes a particular tool useful and what features to look for among the products available. Brown's judgments are admittedly personal but he explains them very clearly. Not everything must be specially purchased, either; he recommends a length of dental floss for cutting slices of soft cheese, and he boils eggs in an electric kettle that automatically turns itself off when it reaches a boil. (Great idea!) The book's page design is also quite nice, with good photos and drawings of the tools he discusses, side discussions and tips highlighted in color, and lots of open space. All his sources appear at the back of the book. I certainly hope he does a revised and updated edition in about five years.
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