With all its various gadgets and shiny new tools, is the kitchen becoming the new garage for men, writes MICHAEL KELLY
I WENT on a four-week cookery course last year and was surprised to discover that of the 20 or so people attending, there were only two men (including me). I have to admit that I had assumed the gender breakdown would be roughly 50/50 given these enlightened times that we live in.
How wrong I was – throughout the course we were the “token men”, notable only for our novelty value and certainly not for our culinary skills. It has always struck me as a curious anomaly that while the majority of chefs and particularly “celebrity” chefs are male, the domestic kitchen still seems to be largely a female preserve.
Bord Bia has been tracking attitudes to food among Irish people since 2001 in a biennial study called PERIscope. Its 2007 research found that women were responsible for meal preparation in 77 per cent of households surveyed.
The research also showed a marked difference in attitudes among men and women towards cooking.
Some 54 per cent of men saw cooking as “a chore, or something to be done” compared with 25 per cent of women, while just 6 per cent of men said they were “passionate” about it, compared with 11 per cent of women.
There are also, it would seem, a considerable number of men who won’t venture in to the kitchen at all.
Some 9 per cent of men owned up to not being able to boil an egg, and a miserable 13 per cent of men professed themselves confident enough to produce a good Sunday roast (compared with 43 per cent of women). Come on guys – it’s just meat and two veg, how hard can it be?
A 2008 survey by the culinary social networking site Allrecipes.co.uk found that one in 14 men “refuse” to cook with the top five reasons listed as (1) their partner is better at cooking, (2) their partner loves cooking, (3) they are not allowed, (4) they can’t be bothered and (5) they think it’s girly.
The first two excuses sound like a total cop-out and the third one is just plain strange, so I reckon that reasons four and five are probably closest to the truth.
Still, it would appear that things are improving, albeit very gradually. The Bord Bia study showed a slight increase in the number of men responsible for meal preparation, from 18 per cent in 2003 up to 23 per cent in 2007.
A 2008 study by UK food company PurAsia found that 60 per cent of men now regularly cook for friends and family and that the number of families where men help in the kitchen has risen from 27.5 per cent in the post-war period to 66.5 per cent in 2008.
According to Dr Muireann Cullen of the Nutrition and Health Foundation, there are numerous reasons why more men are cooking than previously – one of the most important factors, she believes, is the rise (and rise) of the celebrity male chef.
“It used to be that most of the famous chefs on TV were women,” she says, “but now we have the likes of Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey. I think that pretty much knocks on the head the idea that it’s not masculine to cook. I also think that it’s partly to do with the economics of the situation.
“In most households now, both partners are working so there is a tendency to share whatever household duties there are.”
The classic stereotypical breakdown of gender roles in the kitchen is as follows: women do the cooking week-in, week-out without getting a whole lot of thanks for it; men make an occasional dramatic guest appearance in the kitchen on the weekend and expect to be much praised when they do so.
Nutrition consultant Paula Mee believes that men and women have different attitudes towards cooking.
“I have female friends whose husbands do most of the domestic cooking, but I think for most men who cook it is an enjoyable hobby that they might do on weekends,” she says.
“They have their signature dish and when they do make an appearance in the kitchen they go all out. I think men are more likely to spend time on preparing a dinner – they are more patient. They will root in the back of the press for spices or go out to the garden and get herbs. Women are more functional when it comes to cooking. It’s more about getting it done.”
Many health-conscious women attending her clinic tell her that they are reluctant to let men cook because of the health implications.
“They say to me ‘oh, he puts butter and cream in everything’,” says Mee.
“I think men can be a little liberal with the higher fat ingredients when cooking. They see it as enhancing the dish which it probably does, but there are health implications to using that much fat.”
Women, according to Mee, also worry about our cavalier attitude to health and safety in the kitchen – and it’s more than just being worried that we might set the kitchen counter on fire.
“I know a lot of men who say that ‘sell-by’ dates are rubbish,” she says, “or that using cream that’s three days past its sell-by date won’t kill you. They think that these things are a food company conspiracy to get us to buy more. I think women see that they are there for a reason.”
A primary accusation against the male chef is that we lack a certain creativity in the kitchen when it comes to ingredients. I have to admit that when I cook I slavishly follow recipes – if there is even one ingredient missing I will most likely move on to some other recipe or put everything on hold while I go to the shop to get it.
Mrs Kelly, on the other hand, will nonchalantly substitute in alternative ingredients if she needs to, and sometimes she just goes right ahead and leaves ingredients out altogether.
Cullen believes this is a throwback to our time in the science lab in secondary school.
“I think that men see cooking as a science experiment and they know that if you follow the directions on a science experiment it will work every time. Women are more flexible.”
Being able to swap ingredients in a recipe is, she believes, a useful skill for men to acquire from a health perspective. “If you have, for example, someone with weight or health issues, you can substitute ingredients in a recipe as appropriate. You could use a low fat yoghurt or crème fraiche instead of cream. I think that this ability comes with time and experience.”
Men, as we already know, love gadgets and the kitchen provides us with ample opportunities to buy lots of them. Two hundred euro for a deluxe Masamoto chef’s knife. Stainless steel pasta-makers that we will never take out of the box; an authentic paella pan imported from Spain especially for that Iberian-themed dinner party; unnecessarily accurate digital weighing scales with self-calibration technology. Sure it’s no wonder that we are starting to love cooking.
“I think that’s a male thing,” says Cullen. “Men have this philosophy that you have to have the right tools for the job or you have to get them ‘just in case’. In some ways the kitchen is becoming the new garage with men surrounded by their shiny tools.”
So what do women think of men in the kitchen – sissy or sexy? The last word to Paula Mee. “Oh, I think a man who is able to cook is very attractive,” she says. “There’s nothing as good as seeing a man in the kitchen who loves and enjoys his food.”
Kitchen rules for men
Do:
Use every pot and pan when cooking a meal.
Surround yourself with expensive kitchen gadgets and appliances – the best chef's knives, the heaviest sauté pans, the most elaborate espresso machines.
Call your mother if (when) something goes wrong.
Make sure there's a working smoke alarm, fire blanket and extinguisher in the house before you start.
Try your hand at a flambé – but see previous point.
Cook things that involves lots and lots of meat.
Don't:
Get taken for a fool by the fishmonger.
Even think about starting to cook a dish unless you have every ingredient.
Try to multitask – you know our brains aren't up to it. Delegate menial tasks to a retinue of helpers instead.
Sweat too much – it's not attractive.
Clean up as you go – would Marco Pierre White do his own washing up?
Wear an apron – you'll look like a sissy.
Cook anything that involves puff pastry.
Michael Kelly