One of the perplexing and delightful things about 2023 is the ongoing reimagination of what it means to be a father. We live in interesting times. Make your way down a suburban street and peek into the living room after school — you’re just as likely to see a stay-at-home dad caring for the kids and folding laundry while a high-powered CEO mom runs a business via Zoom and delegates the household labor. 

This can complicate Father’s Day gift-giving. In the marketplace of ideas (and stuff) holidays tend to celebrate the broadest stereotypes about family roles. On Father’s Day, manly men with square jaws sip cold beer by the bbq while flipping burgers and tossing the old pigskin with their boys. Interesting times call for a more expansive vision of Father’s Day gifts, just as they call for a more expansive vision of what a dad is.

So for Father’s Day this year, I have some gift ideas for all the different kinds of dads in your lives, no matter what kind of dad they may be. True confession: The gift I’ll be recommending for each kind of dad is the Yummly Smart Thermometer.  

1. A gift for dads who worry

I’m the kind of dad who worries about things. When I host big events, I tend to apologize in advance for meals I’m making to prepare for the possibility of disaster, even for recipes I’ve cooked a hundred times. I’m not saying a digital meat thermometer is a panacea for all anxiety — mindful breathing helps, too — but a Father’s Day gift of a Yummly Smart Thermometer can take one source of hypervigilance off the table. I know if I’m keeping track of a smoked turkey or a pork tenderloin with a Yummly Smart Thermometer (or three!), I don’t have to worry that it’ll overcook because I can see how close it is to done in the Yummly app. 

Perfectly cooked pork tenderloin thanks to the Yummly Smart Thermometer

Then I can focus instead on apologizing for the pies I baked for dessert. They’ll probably be terrible this time around; the crust gave me a lot of trouble when I tried to roll it out. 

My gift recommendation: a Yummly Smart Thermometer to ease their troubled minds! 

2. A gift for dads who like to eat delicious things

You don’t have to be a gourmet food critic to appreciate a delicious meal. And there’s no better pathway to deliciousness than cooking a piece of meat or fish to the level of done-ness that each eater prefers. The Yummly Smart Thermometer has custom programs to let you pick how each meat is cooked — your dad will wind up with a steak cooked to his specifications whether he likes it black and blue or medium-well.

The "Choose your doneness" screen on the Yummly Smart Thermometer

My gift recommendation: a Yummly Smart Thermometer to help make dinner great! 

3. A gift for dads who just have to be right

My dad’s side of the family has a double-edged motto: “Often wrong, never in doubt.” On occasion, there has been a proposal floated to upgrade the first half of the motto to “infrequently wrong” but sticklers in our families have objected to the change. If the father-figures in your family want to achieve more frequent rightness (at least in the arena of predicting when dinner is done), the Yummly Smart Thermometer can be a technological aid in the pursuit of epistemological truth. The Yummly app will let you know when your roast beef or steak is done, removing the possibility of wrongness. 

Steak cook status screen on the Yummly Smart Thermometer

My gift recommendation: a Yummly Smart Thermometer to upgrade their motto to “Sometimes wrong, never in doubt!” 

4. A gift for dads who like to look at their phones

I know it’s not just dads who are addicted to screens. But in my family, it’s the fathers who are the most fixated on their phones. An infinitely connected resource for immediate retrieval of any trivial tidbit you may want to research? A convenient distraction from dull conversations about the weather? Count us in. The Yummly Smart Thermometer reports back to your phone about the progress your meal is making on its pathway from raw to cooked; the expert mode screen even shows a constantly updated graph of internal and ambient temperature. 

The "Almost done" screen in Expert Mode on the Yummly Smart Thermometer

So if your dad has trouble resisting the temptation to check the box score during family chitchat, the Yummly Smart Thermometer provides a ready-made reason to consult his digital oracle. If a few headlines happen to pop up while he’s checking on dinner, who can complain? 

My gift recommendation: a Yummly Smart Thermometer to provide a pretext for checking your TikTok notifications. 

5. A gift for dads who like new technology

Some dads are early adopters: They need the latest model of iPhone, and can’t feel satisfied if they know a new smart TV or digital camera is available. The Yummly Smart Thermometer is one of a new generation of digital meat thermometers that communicates wirelessly to change the way we cook. If your dad is that kind of dad, then a wireless Yummly Smart Thermometer is a great gift to keep him on the cutting edge of the connected kitchen. 

My gift recommendation: a Yummly Smart Thermometer to make sure he’s keeping up with the latest technology. 

6. A gift for dads who crave reassurance  

My bbq life coach Gary used to paraphrase Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle by saying, “If you’re looking, you ain’t cookin’.” The act of lifting the lid of the smoker or opening the oven door to take a temperature reading affects the cooking environment and can make it harder to achieve the kind of results you want. With wireless notifications and remote monitoring, a Yummly Smart Thermometer can let you indulge your need to observe without messing up your perfect low-and-slow cooking environment. 

My gift recommendation: a Yummly Smart Thermometer to help him follow his bbq life coach’s advice. 

7. A gift for dads who want to smash the patriarchy

Some dads are itching to tear down the gendered structures of oppression that have plagued society and caused so many problems for so many people. One small way to erode those norms is to take on more of the household labor that has traditionally been considered women’s work. If your dad wants to take on a larger share of the domestic labor, the Yummly Smart Thermometer can help. The Yummly Thermometer and app can open up the repertoire of recipes and techniques at his disposal with step-by-step instructions and easy-to-use cooking programs. It seems like a thermometer, but it could be an agent for social change!

My gift recommendation: a Yummly Smart Thermometer to help change the world. 

8. A gift for dads who actually kinda like traditional masculinity

I started this article with a portrait of traditional masculinity for Father’s Day, dads in aprons with whimsical messages manning the grill while sipping beer and playing catch. Some men find that version of the role fits them just right. Good news: The Yummly Smart Thermometer can just as easily facilitate the pursuit of traditional masculinity and performative Father’s Day grill-mastery as it can be the tip of the spear in social change. If your dad wants to mess around with the charcoal grill on Father’s Day and toss the football, then the gift of the Yummly Smart Thermometer can make it happen! 

Yummly Smart Thermometer inserted in a piece of steak; photograph by Brittany Conerly

My gift recommendation: a Yummly Smart Thermometer to keep things in the comfort zone. 

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