Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen by Alton Brown
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Book Summary Author: Alton Brown Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2003-10-01 ISBN: 1584792965 Number of pages: 256 Publisher: Stewart, Tabori and Chang |
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Book Reviews of the Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen
Customer Review: Not worth the money
Summary: 2 Stars
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.