About

Welcome to Dad Cooks Dinner

Hi! I'm Mike Vrobel. I'm a dad, enthusiastic home cook, indie cookbook author, and food blogger with a day job, a patient spouse, and three kids who would rather have hamburgers for dinner.

I believe that simple home cooking needs all the supporters it can get. I hope my stories help other home cooks become more confident and try their own kitchen experiments.

About Mike Vrobel

My love of cooking started when I bought my house and got a grill for the backyard. (Hey, I'm a guy, I think it's a law. Have a backyard, need a grill.) After years of enthusiastic home cooking, I started writing DadCooksDinner in 2008 after a vacation in France, where I took cooking classes in Provence and Paris. I came back wanting to share, and because I had been reading food blogs for years, I finally took the plunge and made my own. That was over 15 years ago, and I've been creating recipes and writing about my home cooking ever since. (And I have millions of page views to show for it-thank you for reading!)

I am addicted to cooking gadgets, especially Pressure Cookers. (The rise of the Instant Pot took me by surprise, but I'm delighted everyone learned how great pressure cooking is.)

I love my grill, and am pretty good in the kitchen, if I do say so myself. And, being a nerd, I have learned enough about the science of cooking to be dangerous. I come home from my computer programming day job and make dinner for three picky kids every night of the week.

How did I learn all this stuff?

Food is my hobby and my obsession. I am a self-taught home cook, and I learned most of what I know through reading cookbooks and magazines, watching food TV and videos, and surfing the Internet, followed by a lot of trial and error in my kitchen. While I don't have any formal culinary training, I have traveled the world to learn about cooking. Here are some of the places where I've attended cooking classes:

Hudson, Ohio, USA (at the Western Reserve School of Cooking, RIP)
Provence, France (at Famous Provence - Patrick Payet)
Paris, France (at On Rue Tatin with Susan Loomis)
Cleveland, Ohio, USA (with Michael Symon at Lola Bistro)
Oaxaca, Mexico (at Season of my Heart with Susana Trilling)
Wadsworth, Ohio, USA (at the Certified Angus Beef Culinary Center)
Verona, Italy (at Enoteca Della Valpolicella and Riseria Ferron with Dianne Jacobs and Demet Guzey)
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (with Locos x La Parrilla at the International Food Bloggers Conference, Visit El Paso and Visit Chihuahua)
Chicago, Illinois, USA (at The Chopping Block with Tastemakers Food Conference)
Kyoto, Japan (at Cooking Sun)
Tokyo, Japan (at Sushi Yachiyo)
Ghent, Belgium (with Suzy and Traveling Spoon)

Locally, I've held cooking demos at the Cuyahoga Valley Farmers Market and won the West Point Market/Taste of Akron Finest Cut Steak Cook-Off.

My Cookbooks

I have three cookbooks available: Rotisserie Grilling, Rotisserie Chicken Grilling, and Rotisserie Turkey. Check out my Amazon Author page here: Mike Vrobel.

Media and Brand Partners

I've been featured on and worked with:

Photography

Also, thanks in part to this blog, I am a enthusiastic photographer. Check out my photos at Mike Vrobel Photography, including my work-in-progress Food Photography series. Also, my Travel photography posts have a lot of food in them, just because of who I am.