Recommending my Dad to “Masterchef”
1.) Name: William Weber, but everyone calls him Bill.
2.) Age: Forty something.
3.) Work Description: A supervisor at a chemical fertilizer plant.
4.) Highest Level of Education: Two years of school at a community college in small town Iowa.
5.) Cooking Education: He is a dad, so he is pretty well versed in the charcoal grill. He’s learned a lot about steaks from Outback and he knows how to cook one. I’ll never forget a summer where I stayed with him and his now wife really hyped up a steak house we were going to. It had been weeks with microwaved dinners and food from the same three restaurants in the town he lives in, so I was pretty excited. We pulled up and it was an Outback Steakhouse. “Some of the best steaks in this part of Iowa!” They told me. There is a certain vibe that comes along with going to an Outback in Iowa. There are families of six, with kids so sticky that when they take their hands off the pleather booths, it sounds like velcro. The parents feel postpartum depression years and years after the baby is an infant. The workers, who truly are tired of singing a weird, cowboy version of happy birthday. And we enter, take a seat and are immediately offered blooming onions, which, visually is actually kinda impressive, but also wow. It’s not something you’re really expecting and it’s so bold. It’s ordered once the offer is out there, along with coke and cheap beer. The two smells that are already lingering in the restaurant, alongside grease and oil. I realized this probably was some of the best steak in the area. It really makes me wanna see what my dad can cook up for you.
6.) How often do they order out? More often than he cooks. Like most dads, he loves a good drive-thru. Especially when that drive through is a Taco John’s, a not so unfortunate dying out fast food chain. He’s very concerned about where he’s going to get Potato Oles. If you don’t know what those are, it’s probably for the best but there is a chance he will make some version of them for you if you allow him on the show.
7.) What is their style of cooking? I’m telling you, if middle-aged, white dad was a food genre, it’d be him. He loves a good charcoal grill. He’ll use way too much charcoal and cook a steak bigger than all three judges faces.
8.) What is their cooking experience? He grew up on a very poor farm in the middle of absolutely nowhere Iowa. Cooking, like good, home cooking, was something that happened four to five times a year at family reunions. His background in food is not all that extensive. When I was a kid, he showed me some odd foods though. Like chicken gizzards and squirrel. I’m not totally sure when those foods first came about in his life, and when they did he eat them for taste or out of desperation.
9.) How often do they cook? Around the holidays. Another classic dad dish, he likes to make a roast or smoke meat.
10.) What led to their love of food? No idea.
11.) Who is the greatest influence on their cooking and why? Although he didn’t get a lot of tasteful foods growing up, that lack of food influenced him I think.
12.) Who do they cook for? Mostly his wife and kids. And always way too much or way too little.
13.) What are the responses to their cooking?
14.) Rate their cooking skills from a scale of 1 — 10?
15.) What are some of their signature dishes? Provide a description/story about them. When I was around eight years old, his uncle asked him to take care of a wild bull that had broken the fences one their farm. My dad went out to the farm and killed the bull, which was really large. A few days later, we were given so much bull meat, my dad had to buy another freezer. That summer we had bull meat probably five nights a week. It definitely got repetitive, but it was the first summer I was surprised by his cooking. He made lot’s tacos with that bull meat, and would sometimes make homemade seasonings. I have no clue where he learned any of this cooking.
16.) Do they have any special skills or secret weapons in the kitchen? Probably cooking bull
