Alton Brown Has a Strange Cookie-Eating Habit — For a Very Sweet Reason

This weekend I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Judge John Hodgman, and heard something I just had to share. If you’re unfamiliar, John Hodgman plays a fake internet judge in a fake court that’s open to hearing various disputes from listeners. Although the lawsuits are not always food-related, there certainly are a lot that are. Perhaps the most well-known case included two people arguing whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich. (The court ruled it is not.)

Back to this weekend: I was listening to episode 358 (cheekily named Chips Annoy!), featuring a couple who disagreed about how well-done chocolate chip cookies needed to be before they could be pulled out of the oven. Alton Brown was a guest witness, so naturally I was even more enthralled than usual.

He had lots to say about the process of making chocolate chip cookies. The biggest takeaway, however, came around 32 minutes in … and it was more about the eating of the cookies than the making.

“I do not eat them directly from the oven. I do not like them Sam I am. My preferred way of consuming chocolate chip cookies is frozen,” he said. Meaning, he bakes them and then freezes them! “I freeze them in bags, and when they’re good and hard and crunchy and cold, then I eat them.”

Get our recipe: How To Make Chocolate Chip Cookies from Scratch

And now for the super-sweet explanation: “When I was quite young and my mom worked, she would bake chocolate chip cookies and then put them in a bag in the freezer so that they would keep. And I would come home from school, alone, and be comforted by a chocolate chip cookie. But I didn’t wait for them to warm up, so I ate them cold and that’s given me an emotional connection to cold chocolate chip cookies.”

He went on to say he does the same thing to Girl Scout Thin Mints, which I already do. I’ve never had a frozen chocolate chip cookie, though. It’s a little wacky, but this is Alton we’re talking about — and I trust him. (After all, he’s the reason my fridge door is finally organized.) So I’m gonna try it even though I usually prefer my cookies warm and gooey, right out of the oven.

What about you? Do you also freeze your chocolate chip cookies? Will you try it?