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Not Your Dad’s Dad Food Not Your Dad’s Dad Food
(about 16 hours later)
Every year, as Father’s Day approaches and the gift guides suggesting $300 supercharged charcoal grill lighters and backyard pizza ovens roll in, I’m left wondering if I’m truly dad enough in the kitchen.Every year, as Father’s Day approaches and the gift guides suggesting $300 supercharged charcoal grill lighters and backyard pizza ovens roll in, I’m left wondering if I’m truly dad enough in the kitchen.
I do most of the cooking for my family. My wife is a public-school teacher with a relentless schedule who rarely has the will to make dinner. I, on the other hand, love to cook and, as my two kids frequently remind me, don’t have a real job. Yet, dads, avert your eyes: I do not own a Big Green Egg. I have never even used a 16-pound baking steel to make my kids sourdough pizza.I do most of the cooking for my family. My wife is a public-school teacher with a relentless schedule who rarely has the will to make dinner. I, on the other hand, love to cook and, as my two kids frequently remind me, don’t have a real job. Yet, dads, avert your eyes: I do not own a Big Green Egg. I have never even used a 16-pound baking steel to make my kids sourdough pizza.
Blame it on my TikTok algorithm, but so many of the dads I see seem to be reveling in this profligate age of Dad Food, making homemade burger buns and subjecting spice-rubbed animal carcasses to long periods of indirect heat. Meanwhile, I’m wary of grills (too flammable!) and overwhelmed by gadgetry (the Bluetooth-enabled meat thermometer I received as a present three years ago remains unopened). I’m just trying to sneak vegetables into the pasta sauce without the kids’ noticing.Blame it on my TikTok algorithm, but so many of the dads I see seem to be reveling in this profligate age of Dad Food, making homemade burger buns and subjecting spice-rubbed animal carcasses to long periods of indirect heat. Meanwhile, I’m wary of grills (too flammable!) and overwhelmed by gadgetry (the Bluetooth-enabled meat thermometer I received as a present three years ago remains unopened). I’m just trying to sneak vegetables into the pasta sauce without the kids’ noticing.
I had the sense that dads were cooking more than they once did, and this was true — to a point. We have come a long way from the dawn of dad food, when man discovered fire and the “Big Boy Barbecue Book” suggested in 1956 that their occasionally grilling steaks indicated a revolutionary shifting of gender roles: “Wives take it easy. All they have to do is make the salad and dessert.” ‌I had the sense that dads were cooking more than they once did, and this was true — to a point. We have come a long way from the dawn of dad food, when man discovered fire and the “Big Boy Barbecue Book” suggested in 1956 that their occasionally grilling steaks indicated a revolutionary shifting of gender roles: “Wives take it easy. All they have to do is make the salad and dessert.” ‌
But despite decades of sustained increase in the contributions by dads in the kitchen, moms — at least in households with moms — still did about three times the cooking and dishwashing from 2015 to 2019, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, and that was before the backsliding seen during the pandemic.
To me, the food that dads cook sometimes seems to have a performative quality that mirrored so-called dude food, which the author Emily J. H. Contois memorably describes in her book “Diners, Dudes and Diets” as “comfort food with an edge of competitive destruction.” A dad, after all, is just a dude with more responsibilities.