Heads up! MYTHBUSTERS season premiere tonight at 9 Eastern!

They must have started it before the abort, then done some fill in shots afterward. Tory definitely has a magically disappearing/reappearing beard, and Kari's earrings do the same.

 

Thanks for the link. I like the Air Force One analogy Adam made: any human analog they test to destruction is Buster.

I do wonder how they have these viewer questions ready to go as soon as the episode airs. Does it air earlier in Australia with the questions coming from there? Or do they show the episodes to focus groups or something and get questions from them?

Do you mean specifically in the blueprint-room segments, nothing else? Because I only remember Tory having a beard during the actual experiment portion (some parts of which did take place in the shop as they were preparing the cannonballs, but those are distinct from the blueprint intros/wrapups which are shot after the fact).

 

Precisely.

 

Huge event: tonight's episode teams up the Mythbusters with the Food Network's Alton Brown! It's the merger of my two favorite nonfiction cable shows! I'm positively giddy with anticipation.

 

Loved "Good Eats", though I think it lost steam once Alton went on a health-craze, got really thin and gaunt looking and the last season or so of episodes sort of reflected that. But I still really like him and him and the Mythbusters tonight should prove fun.

EDIT:

I want that Whack-a-Mythbuster game!

Overall a very enjoyable episode, I've no major complaints in everything that happened, though the "fastest way to pop popcorn" mini-myth seemed an odd one. I mean it already takes just a few minutes to pop popcorn, how much faster does it need to be?! Though I would have liked to see them test that contraption again under better controlled conditions, getting it hot faster and maybe a mechanical system for turning the device at a faster or more consistent rate.

The turkey/tryptophan myth I knew already. It's already pretty well documented and said in plenty of places that tryptopahn levels in turkey is pretty low (it's high, in fact in many other common foods) and that it's the levels of food we eat at Thanksgiving dinner that causes sleepiness. Particularly since many of the foods we eat are heavy in starches and carbs (like potatoes, rolls, stuffing, etc.) Still neat to see them test it.

The "tastes like chicken" one was also an interesting one to see tested. I never bought 100% into it but the "idea" of it was always sound. White meat just being fairly bland so all white meats "taste the same" was the idea and chicken is the most common white meat. Seeing that variety they ate was interesting and the final test in eliminating seasonings, texture and consistent was probably the best route to go. Eliminated variables.

The myth with Alton, Jamie and Adam was great to see and classic Alton Brown it was almost the perfect Mythbuster-meets-Good Eats type route to go. On the gravy I'm suspect Alton for-saw the gravy getting thicker the longer it took them to get to their destination. He's recommended on his own show to make the gravy thinner at the stove than you want it at the table because it'll thicken as it cools (starches or something like that.) So I suspect he over-compensated by making the gravy TOO thin for their long drive and it couldn't thicken up as the starch in it cooled.

Using the various cavities and components of the car was a smart way too cook the various dishes as well as the insulated "warming area" on the cowling by the firewall.

And thanks to Alton I've brined my family's turkey every year and it does, indeed, come out tasty and delicious. Particularly insuring you keep the white-meat close to 160-170, and the dark meat closer to 180. I think cooking it by the engine while it cooked the turkey it "suffered" some by not getting the browning from cooking a turkey in an intensely hot oven at first. (Again, as recommended by Alton Brown's turkey recipe.)

Good episode.

Kari is hot.

 

I'm a bit disappointed. Not as much Alton as I'd hoped for. Maybe there will be some deleted footage on the website. I would've liked to see more of a Mythbusters/Good Eats hybrid where Alton presented some actual recipes, or have him do more of the hosting. The popcorn segment came closest to what I wanted to see, with Adam, Jamie, and Alton all tag-teaming as presenters and geeking out together on the technicalities of the experiment -- although that wasn't so much testing a myth as testing a product. Plus we got a bit of an Alton Brown food-science lecture with the popcorn, though I wish he'd worked with Adam and Jamie to concoct one of his cheesy large-scale models for demonstrating the physics or chemistry of cooking. Or maybe buit some kind of large popcorn-kernel analog which they would heat until it blew up.

Oh, and the slow-motion shot of the popcorn falling was very pretty. I wouldn't want to eat it after that, though.

The car-cooking myth was kind of fun, though, even if Alton seemed a bit more marginalized there. It was really more about logistics and preparation, I guess. It's impressive how successful they actually were at cooking the whole meal. But while this myth would count as plausible, I doubt your average person could pull it off without the right kind of old car, a lot of thermocouples and appropriate software, and the aid of a skilled and creative chef.

The other guys' myths were kind of basic. Nothing very elaborate this week, just straightforward (if messy) tests of rather simple questions. The main thing I wonder about the tryptophan myth is whether it was appropriate to test the guys' reaction time immediately after eating. I think it would take the tryptophan a while to kick in fully. Still, I'm sure it's true that just eating a large meal is a greater component in the sensation of relaxation or sleepiness. For one thing, your energy's going into digestion, so there's less available for the rest of the body and mind.

On the "tastes like chicken" myth, I wonder if it was appropriate to test the foods side by side with actual chicken. I think it might be more likely for an exotic meat to remind you of chicken if you hadn't just tasted the real thing. Then you'd be more aware of the similarity than the difference. So maybe they should've started out with a taste test of the exotic meats without any chicken to compare them to, and then done a test combining both chicken and exotic meats, and compared the results.

 

Yeah, again, particularly with the complex carbs and other heavy foods your body has to deal with after a large Thanksgiving Day meal. Tryptophan levels in turkey is pretty low all and all.

A 20lb turkey has about 5 pounds of edible meat on it.

100 grams of turkey has .333.. g of tryptophan in it.

100 grams ~ .25lb

1 lb of turkey = 1.333 g rams of tryp.

1 lb of turkey then being about two pills worth of tryptophan.

So eating more than three times a serving of turkey gets you almost as much tryptophen as you'd get in a couple of pills. Which is a LOT to eat.

 

I wasn't aware the car thing was considered a myth, I mean it was kind of fun but the results were never really in question. Good to see Alton though, and I thought he looked pretty good here and it was good seeing him more in his element than his cranky overseer role he has in newer Food Network programming.

I thought the B-team or whatever they're called had the more entertaining myths/testing but they could've used a few less disgusting shots of Grant and Tory eating. That was killing my appetite, lol.

 

I dunno, watching Kari always makes me hungry for apple pie.

 

I dunno, Alton seemed kind of out of it IMO, he looked like he was either annoyed, or not interested, or just angry to be there. I felt like he was disconnected from the whole thing.

 

According to the Aftershow him and Adam are friends and collaborated in the creation of this episode (at least the M5 portions.)

LINK to a removed segment where Jamie, Adam and Alton cook a lasagna inside a dishwasher.

Cooking on the Engine Block Aftershow

Tastes Like Chicken Aftershow.

 

Thanks for the links. The aftershow questions this week were kind of lame ("What's your favorite food?"), but the dishwasher segment was fun. I wish they'd included that and trimmed down the B team's myths.

 

I like the dishwater mini-myth, pretty fun.

 

Unfortunately, that's just the way he is now. He's trying to play up the 'goofy scientist' schtick, hence his new wardrobe including bowties, as opposed to the old everyday guy vibe he had going on during Good Eats. He was the same way on the Craig Ferguson show as well as a few other appearances recently.

I much preferred the old Alton.

 

I haven't seen the dishwasher clip yet, but addressing anyone who has, did they make mention of Vincent Price on Merv Griffon using a similar technique to steam fish? Besides being a reknown actor of macabre roles, Price was a rather adept chef and would present his culinary skills on the venerable afteroon talk show. He threw Merv for a loop when he placed fish (I think wrapped in foil) within a typical dishwasher. He was even more astounded when he tried the fish and found it quite delicious, light and flaky.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

No mention of Vincent Price, no.