Alton Brown

The pilot for Good Eats first aired in July 1998 on the PBS member TV station WTTW in Chicago. Food Network picked up the show in July 1999. Many of the Good Eats episodes[16] feature Brown building makeshift cooking devices in order to point out that many of the devices sold at conventional "cooking" stores are simply fancified hardware store items.Good Eats was nominated for the Best TV Food Journalism Award by the James Beard Foundation in 2000.[17] The show was also awarded a 2006 Peabody Award.[18] In May 2011, Alton Brown announced an end to Good Eats after 14 seasons.[19] The final episode, "Turn on the Dark", aired February 10, 2012.

On Alton's 2017 book tour, he stated that Good Eats would have a sequel[20] and that it would be released to the internet in 2018. This was changed in late 2018 when Brown made arrangements with The Cooking Channel to air "revised" versions of several episodes with new recipes entitled Good Eats Reloaded, in which he stated new episodes of Good Eats are also in the works. Thirteen episodes of Good Eats Reloaded aired late winter and early spring 2019, and were added to the Good Eats reruns on The Cooking Channel. It was announced on June 5, 2019, that the new show will be called Good Eats Returns; it premiered on the Food Network on Sunday, August 25.[21]

Brown relaunched the show in two versions: as Good Eats Reloaded on Cooking Channel (which updates, reworks and adds to original Good Eats episodes), and on Food Network as Good Eats: The Return in August 2019 (all-new episodes). Both the Reloaded series and the Return series are said to be returning in 2020. New episodes of Reloaded premiered in April 2020. New Return episodes were in the writing process and planned to be filming over the summer of 2020, but were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[22]

In 2004, Brown appeared on Iron Chef America: Battle of the Masters. This was the second attempt to adapt the Japanese cooking show Iron Chef to American television (the first being UPN's Iron Chef USA, which featured William Shatner). Brown served as the expert commentator, a modified version of the role played by Dr. Yukio Hattori in the original show. When the show became a series, Brown began serving as the play-by-play announcer, with Kevin Brauch as kitchen reporter. Brown also served as the host for all five seasons of the spin-off The Next Iron Chef.

Brown's third series, Feasting on Asphalt, explores the history of eating on the move. Brown and his crew traveled around the United States via motorcycle in a four-part miniseries about the history of road food. Brown samples food all along his travel route. He includes a "history of food" segment documenting famous road trips and interviews many of the foodies he meets en route.

The series premiered on Food Network on July 29, 2006. The miniseries was picked up for a second run, Feasting on Asphalt 2: The River Run, in 2007. Six episodes were filmed during April and May 2007. The episodes trace the majority of the length of the Mississippi River through Brown's travels. The second run of episodes began airing on Food Network on August 4, 2007. The third season uses the title Feasting on Waves and has Brown traveling the Caribbean by boat in search of local cuisine.

In 2013, Brown began hosting the cooking competition series Cutthroat Kitchen on the Food Network. In each episode, four chefs are each given $25,000 with which to bid on items that can be used to hinder their opponents' cooking, such as confiscating ingredients or forcing them to use unorthodox tools and equipment. Three chefs are eliminated one by one, and the winner keeps his/her unspent money as the day's prize. The series premiered on August 11, 2013.[23]

In October 2013, Brown launched "Alton Brown Live: The Edible Inevitable Tour," his first national tour visiting 46 cities through March 2014. The show included stand-up comedy, talk show antics, a multimedia lecture, live music and "extreme" food experimentation [24] After a hiatus of several months while Brown worked on his Food Network shows, the tour resumed in October 2014 and concluded on April 4, 2015, in Houston, Texas, after visiting more than 60 cities.[25]

Brown mounted a second tour show, Alton Brown Live: Eat Your Science, in 2016. The show toured through the fall of 2017. All totaled, Brown's shows have played over 225 dates including Broadway. Both his tours have included "large, unusual and probably dangerous" food demonstrations, audience participation and even food songs performed by Brown and his combo. Brown has been quoted as saying his final tour will launch in fall of 2020.[26]

Brown is the recipient of two James Beard Awards. He won the Best Book award in 2003 for his first book, I'm Just Here for the Food, and the Broadcast Media Award in 2011 for TV Food Personality/Host. He has also been nominated four additional times.[27]

Brown served as a mentor on Season 8 of The Next Food Network Star alongside Bobby Flay and Giada De Laurentiis. During Season 8, each mentor selected and mentored a team of five finalists. Alton's finalist, Justin Warner, was the Season 8 winner; however, Brown will not be producing Warner's show.[28]

Brown appeared on the Travel Channel show The Layover with Anthony Bourdain which focused on the city of Atlanta in 2013. In the episode Bourdain takes Brown to the Clermont Lounge.[29]

Brown guest-starred as the "Guest Bailiff" and "Expert Witness" in John Hodgman's comedy/court show podcast Judge John Hodgman.[30][31]

In October 2017, Brown was featured on the Food Network television show Chopped in a five-part series called "Alton Brown's Challenge."

Brown voices Yum Labouché in Big Hero 6: The Series. The character is a judge for an underground cooking competition.[32]

Brown appeared on episode 196 of MythBusters titled "Food Fables".

Brown has done commercial work for General Electric products,[33] including five infomercials touting the benefits of GE refrigerators, washers and dryers, water purifiers, Trivection ovens, and dishwashers.[34] The infomercials are produced in the Good Eats style, employing the use of unusual camera angles, informational text, props, visual aids, scientific explanations, and the same method of delivery. These infomercials are distributed to wholesale distributors of appliances/plumbing devices.

Brown has also aided GE in developing a new type of oven. He was initially called by GE to help their engineers learn more about the effects of heat on food;[35] that grew into an active cooperation to develop GE's Trivection oven.[36]

Brown has promoted Colgate toothpaste,[37] Dannon yogurt, Welch's, Shun knives, and Heifer International. In 2010, he endorsed kosher salt use in a campaign for Cargill.[38] In 2020, he began doing commercials for Healthy Choice's line of low-fat, low-calorie, vegetable-based "Power Dressings", [39]

In 2012, Brown gained popularity by pioneering the use of humorous "Analog Tweets," wherein he posts pictures of hand-drawn Twitter responses on Post-it notes which he has stuck to his computer monitor.[40]

On June 28, 2013, Alton Brown joined the Nerdist Podcast Network with his podcast The Alton Browncast, covering food news, men's style, music and other topics.[41] Through February 15, 2017, 68 episodes have been produced.[42]

With the COVID-19 quarantine in 2020 and the subsequent delays in production on Season 16 of Good Eats (Season 2 of "The Return"), Alton took to YouTube to make two new online cooking series.

Pantry Raid was a series of once-weekly shorts (usually released on Fridays or Saturdays) for making palatable foods while staying safe at home. The episodes were filmed in the Good Eats test kitchens at Brain Food Productions, and consist of Alton and a cameraman as the only personnel onsite.[43]

Quarantine Quitchen started as a single livestream titled "The Browns Make Dinner", referring to Alton and his wife Elizabeth making dinner at their loft apartment in Georgia. After the success of the first such "episode", the once-weekly series is now released live every Tuesday.[44]