Alton Brown's 20 Best Cooking Tips For Home Chefs

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Alton Brown is no doubt one of the most recognized names in American food television. According to the Food Network, Brown began his career as a cameraman with close to eight years of experience directing television commercials before going into culinary school. Brown has been an important part of several Food Network shows, including as the host, writer, and show-writer of "Good Eats," and commentator on both "Iron Chef America" and "Cutthroat Kitchen." Besides also writing eight books on cooking, including "Alton Brown: EveryDayCook," and "I'm Just Here for the Food," Alton Brown received two James Beard awards in his career for Best TV Food Personality and Outstanding Television Host, (via Food Network).

Outside of all the accolades for his work in food media, Alton Brown is also a proficient cook who frequently shares his tips for making the lives of home chefs much easier. Here are some of the kitchen hacks Alton Brown has put out in recent years that make us all breathe a little easier when it comes to food.

Most home cooks can resonate with the feeling of not having anything in their kitchen to make dinner with. But with these two ingredients, Alton Brown shares that you can easily make a meal without the cost (and the fuss) of ordering out.

As Brown shared on his YouTube series Quarantine Quitchen, having eggs and canned tomatoes handy can transform the leftovers in your fridge into something truly remarkable. If you have leftover peppers and onions in your kitchen, you can add canned tomatoes and poached eggs to make traditional Israeli shakshuka. Or, go for Mexican huevos rancheros with canned black beans, assorted veggies, and spices. Both eggs and canned tomatoes are budget-friendly vegetarian ingredients that tend to keep well in your cabinet, countertop (for unwashed eggs), or in your fridge.

Besides mayonnaise, Alton Brown also has a deep appreciation for sumac. Sumac is native to the warm humid areas of both Africa and North America. Sumac berries are collected, dried, and then sold in the spice section of most grocery stores. The taste of the spice has a subtle brightness and tartness — due to the presence of malic acid on the surface of the berry. Sumac has a similar flavor to citrus, which Alton notes are the perfect pairing for starchy foods like beans and potatoes.

Brown notes that sumac is his "hidden weapon" in his book "The Everyday Cook." He writes, "Earthy yet lemony, unique yet oddly familiar, sumac is also a key ingredient in za'atar, which is kind of like the five spices of the Middle East. I tend to use it a lot on fried foods that can use some acidity to cut oiliness." But, your roasted potatoes would benefit from the bright lemony flavor of the sumac berry just as much as your french fries.

What do popular, puffed savory snacks like Cheetos and Nacho Cheese Doritos have in common? A delicious, finger-licking coat of cheese dust, of course! Alton Brown shares the same facilitation with this snacking experience essential. In fact, the leftover dust at the end of a bag of Cheetos is "the best flavor on Earth," Brown shares in a blog post.

In his recipe for homemade cheese dust, Brown combines powdered cheddar cheese, powdered parmesan cheese, nutritional yeast, buttermilk powder, and Kosher salt. He recommends sprinkling this savory mixture over popcorn, but you can also use homemade cheese dust for seasoning homemade tortilla chips or potato chips. Or, if you want to enjoy the flavors of Cheetos without all the work, you can check out a Cheetos Duster from Amazon that will do all the work for you. It's like a NutriBullet for Cheetos — and we're here for it.

What is it with Alton Brown and mayonnaise? In a segment on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," entitled "Precise Advice with Alton Brown," the T.V. personality notes that adding mayonnaise to scrambled eggs seems a bit out there, but works well with the emulsion qualities of scrambled eggs. Both scrambled eggs and mayonnaise are considered emulsions — homogenous mixtures of fat and water. Mayonnaise acts as a bolster that increases the fat content and smoothes out the flavor of the eggs. Plus, the base of mayonnaise is just eggs, oil, and an acid like vinegar or lemon juice.

If you are a little weary of adding a spoonful of goopy mayonnaise to your scrambled eggs, you have other options to boost the flavor and texture of your favorite breakfast food. You can add a bit of heavy cream or sour cream for a depth of flavor. You can also add a splash of plain, unflavored seltzer water for more aeration in your scrambled eggs.

In his "Precise Advice" segment, Alton Brown notes that investing in more expensive butter brands is more advantageous than its cheaper counterparts, noting that cheaper generic brands can contain close to 12% more moisture than more expensive, name-brand butter. But less moisture isn't always better, especially for baked goods that use the steam in the butter to aid in rising — like croissants.

Expensive European butter contains a butterfat content of around 82% to 86%, while AA butter contains around 80% butterfat. Lower butterfat can be beneficial for muffins and muffins in both preserving the texture and the moisture of the baked good. The more expensive butter should be deferred to when you want a strong buttery flavor. Brioche bread or high-quality pastries benefit from the buttery undertones of more expensive butter. If you want to splurge on your butter, our favorite brands include the Vermont Creamery — it is almost half the price as other top-performing butter brands, but still has an excellent flavor.

Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas may be the three times a year you pull out an electric carving knife to cut through turkey or ham. Alton Brown would prefer we keep it simple. On his YouTube channel, he claims to only like using spring-loaded tongs and an "honest-to-goodness" carving knife. Among these kitchen tools, you should also keep a sturdy cutting board and a towel for stabilizing the meat handy. The tongs are used for a stabilizing grip on the turkey while the sharpened cutting knife easily slices through the meat with ease.

Alton Brown is full of other Thanksgiving tips as well, including the part about skipping basting the turkey. He told NPR that basting the turkey only prolongs the cooking time because you open and close the oven frequently — and it doesn't actually keep the meat moist. Instead, Brown recommends wet brining or dry curing the turkey to optimize moisture.

If you're baking anything at home, you need to use a liner for your baking pan. The two primary options are parchment paper and silicon mats. While silicon mats are heavier and can stick to the pan a little easier than parchment paper, silicon mats can create too much of a cushion between the hot pan and whatever you're baking, resulting in a less-than-perfect golden brown color. Parchment paper is a bit more ubiquitous because it is thinner and can be cut based on the size you need. But there's one problem with parchment — it doesn't stay still.

Alton Brown has a tip for anyone who has been inordinately frustrated with parchment paper that curls back every time it's placed on a baking tray. To encourage the paper to stay put, Alton Brown recommends spraying the baking pan with water before placing the parchment down to help it stay put.

Nothing is worse than cold and hard scrambled eggs. While you can fix hard scrambled eggs into soft scrambled eggs by cooking low and slow, adding cream, making the eggs in a small saucepan, and removing the eggs sooner than you'd think you need to, you have to be more diligent about keeping up the heat of the plate to prevent your eggs from going cold.

Alton Brown recommends serving scrambled eggs on a warm plate to optimize the warmth of your eggs. You can either place an oven-safe plate in your traditional or toaster oven to stay warm. Nigella Lawson recommends instead soaking your plates in water for at least five minutes before drying and serving your eggs. The warm plate will keep the bottom of the scrambled eggs warm and delicious — but we still recommend eating your eggs soon after you finish cooking the eggs.

There might not be a more disappointing feeling than watching your bundt cake come out of the oven with a piece of cake stuck to the pan. The reason why your cake is sticking is that you didn't grease every nook and cranny of the pan. Luckily, you can make a "cake goop" with equal parts oil, flour, and shortening as a liner for your bundt pan.

But despite this simple tool, there is some technique needed to ensure that your entire pan is ready to bake. Brown's method (via Facebook) of lining a bundt pan involves coating the bundt pan with melted butter before sprinkling 2 tablespoons of flour or granulated sugar. Then, Brown covers the pan with a layer of plastic wrap and shakes until the entire pan is covered. Then, the plastic wrap can be removed, and the remainder of the flour or sugar into the trash.

Chocolate mousse is a delicious dessert that Alton Brown believes can be made with the addition of just two ingredients. He sticks to melting your chocolate of choice over a double broiler until melted. The other ingredient is separated yolks and whites — the yolks being added first to create a soft decadent custard, and the egg whites being added next to add protein and structure to your mousse. Equally as important, Brown advocates chilling your mousse for several hours until the mixture is stable and ready to be served.

Chocolate mousse is deliciously easy to make and is super fluffy — which is why it should be in any home cook's recipe arsenal. You can add a layer of this mousse to the cake or serve it in (per Brown's recommendation) a Champagne glass with fresh berries and a bit of whipped cream.