Blogger of the Week: 8 Things to Know About 'The Food in My Beard'

Photo: Ken Goodman

Don’t be fooled by Dan Whalen’s manicured stubble in the photograph above. The Boston-based gent behind the blog The Food in My Beard is indeed, at times, so heavily bearded that crumbs get lost in… well, you know.

It’s his over-the-top comfort food mashups that have brought our current blogger of the week acclaim. The self-taught cook—an IT professional by trade—launched his site seven years ago, inventing quirky dishes such as stroganoff hamburgers and crab rangoon mac and cheese. And although he’s a bit of an anomaly in the female-dominated food blog space, Whalen’s numbers speak volumes: The Food in My Beard boasts 1,000-plus recipes, and collectively they’ve garnered more than six million views. Last year, he authored a cookbook, Stuffed: The Ultimate Comfort Food Cookbook.

So what’s the Dan Whalen story? Here’s everything you need to know.

1. He started his blog while living in Bermuda and working in IT.
"I live in Boston, I grew up around here, and I went to college around here, but I temporarily moved to Bermuda for three years [for an IT job]. When I lived there, I was cooking a ton because the restaurants were either high-priced or not good (or both). I was used to Boston, where I had access to all these good restaurants. I was missing out on that in Bermuda, so I decided to make the dishes that I missed myself."

2. He thinks his dude-centric approach sets him apart.
"I definitely don’t want to rip any bloggers or make fun of things, but a lot of blogs out there are written by girls or women, and they’re very girly…I thought there was a void of the [more masculine] style I present."

Whalen’s crab rangoon mac and cheese. Photo: The Food in My Beard

3. He’s not keen on adapting recipes.
"A lot of bloggers just take recipes form other places and adapt them. That’s part of the fun, but I wanted to create original stuff. So 80 percent of what I do is stuff I pretty much made up myself."

4. He was particular about food as a kid.
"I didn’t realize then, but I see patterns in my current cooking style in how I ate when I was younger. Like, I was very meticulous when it came to microwaving a Hot Pocket. I had a special method. And if I had to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I was very particular about how I did it. My sister would just slather [the PB & J] on, but I would be sitting there, making sure that the peanut butter was applied as a perfectly even layer on one side and making sure the right peanut butter-to-jelly ratio was there.”

Whalen’s take on Korean pork and cabbage soup. Photo: The Food in My Beard

5. He moved beyond PB&J construction in college.
“When I went to college, I had never cooked before. I was just grossed out by the cafeteria food, so once I got a kitchen in my dorm room junior year, I started playing around with easy stuff. It was mostly things like tacos—using a kit!—but I really enjoyed how people would come over and it would be a big thing. It would be ‘taco night’ or ‘pasta night’ with my roommates, and just a lot of fun. That’s what made me fall in love with cooking.”

6. Comfort food is the name of the game for him.
"To me, there’s nothing better than comfort food to heal your mind and body. When you come home at the end of the day, and you have this big bowl of pasta, soup, mac and cheese, or even just a grilled cheese sandwich? It can change the whole next couple of days and make you feels so replenished and happy. People eat so health nowadays—I eat healthy, too—but if you see a picture if this cheesy, oozy thing online, your instinct is to press the ‘like’ button."

Remember the ramen burger? Try the stroganoff burger. Photo: The Food in My Beard

7. He loves a good comfort food mashup.
"It’s definitely hard for me to choose favorites among my recipes, but something I am wicked excited about is this ‘everything’ bagel macaroni and cheese I just invented. I made homemade ‘everything’ spice, stirred it into pasta that was coated in a cream cheese-and-Monterey Jack cheese sauce, and baked it. That dish embodies the way that I see connections in food—the two inspirations are things that normally wouldn’t go together."

8. Food does get into his beard sometimes.
"It definitely happens."

More from previous bloggers of the week:

'Domestic Daddy' on his travels to India and a pea soup mishap

The Vanilla Bean Blog dreams of Paris and how she could eat pizza forever

Turmeric & Saffron on the glories of Persian cuisine

Who’s your favorite food blogger? Tell us below!