There’s no shortage of great cooking shows on television today. Some, like Top Chef, Chopped, and The Great British Bake Off, pit talented chefs in fun competitions. Others, like Barefoot Contessa and The Pioneer Woman, focus on showing recipes you can make yourself. But nothing on the air today quite combines the history of food with explaining the science and proper cooking techniques behind the dishes like Alton Brown’s Good Eats. Each episode of the beloved series was a stroll through the past combined with a mini-cooking lesson that offered useful insights that went well beyond a single recipe. Now the Food Network is bringing it back, and in the debut episode of Good Eats: The Return Alton Brown is teaching us all about where chicken Parmesan comes from and how we can make the perfect version at home. And you can watch it right now.
Starting along the shores of Italy – which have nothing to do with one of the most popular American-Italian dishes – the food world’s answer to Mr. Wizard walks us through chicken parm’s origins in Manhattan. From there he tells us how get the best ingredients for it and what to do to avoid many of the pitfalls that can sink your plate.
Despite being the first original episode of the show in seven years – Good Eats originally ran for 14 total seasons and 249 episodes, first on the Food Network from 1999 to 2011, and then on the Cooking Channel in 2011 to 2012 – everything we love about the show is still here. That includes those shots from “inside” cabinets, refrigerators, and stoves, because nothing says, “This is how you make sure your fried cutlet stays crispy in the oven” quite like feeling as though you’re actually a piece of chicken parm.
There are lots of great cooking shows on TV today, but only Good Eats can do that.
Good Eats: The Return debuts with two episodes on Sunday, August 25, at 10 and 10:30 Eastern, with two new episodes every Sunday night.
Featured Image: Food Network