Alton Brown Shares His Sabotage Secrets From Cutthroat Kitchen - Exclusive

Alton Brown's knack for making food exploration fun with over-top-antics and wicked commentary is undeniable. It made for 14 exciting seasons of "Good Eats" (via IMDb), and it made him the perfect host for a series like Food Network's "Cutthroat Kitchen," a show where chefs' skills are tested through a set of ridiculous sabotages. We're talking about things like being forced to cook in a miniature kitchen, trying to prep a plate on a spinning platform, having to make all your cooking tools out of aluminum foil, and more (via Food Network).

That kind of tomfoolery takes some kind of work, and Brown admitted as much. "I was on a team of about seven people that worked on coming up with those. There was no way for me to do all that by myself, nor am I that crazy." he told Mashed. When he did contribute, Brown did have his own method to the madness. In an exclusive interview, the host shared his secret to the best sabotages on "Cutthroat Kitchen," and surprisingly enough, it's not as out there as you might expect.

While it's easy to get caught up in the chaos of every "Cutthroat Kitchen" episode, at the end of the day, the contestants still have to show off their skills and create a delicious dish to win the competition. And that's the part of the show Alton Brown likes to highlight. "The best sabotages are ones where you can actually see people think through the problem and see them cook through the problem." For that reason, Brown preferred sabotages that keep things simple, but super challenging. "I tended to like the really, really simple sabotages, like you can't use salt... if the sabotage is so complex or so daunting that that can't be done, then to me the resulting competition isn't really that exciting," he told Mashed, adding "I really want to see somebody use culinary knowledge to work out the problem, not just simply endure a hardship."

The process took a lot of time and effort, and challenges were tested multiple times to make sure they were possible (via Yahoo). Unsurprisingly, Brown admitted that there were several sabotages the producers tried to develop that just didn't work out, whether it was too difficult, expensive, or otherwise. "And some were just too big to make practical when it came down to building things," he added.

Learn more about Alton Brown's live tour and his new book "Good Eats: The Final Years" on his website, and learn more about keeping your pet healthy by visiting endpetobesity.com.