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Right now, three different male Facebook friends of mine are showing off their recent culinary achievements. Ron embarked on a two-day chicken project involving a “refrigerator bath” and a “hot sauna.” My high school buddy Brian “brined a whole chicken for eight hours in Sam Adams cranberry lambic, brown sugar, and spices, then roasted [it] crispy golden brown.” And Garin, an acquaintance in Los Angeles, updated his “ ‘Cook This’ nights archive” album, which shows carefully plated and garnished meals or neat piles of ingredients positioned alongside his prized, expensive Japanese knives.
The scale, the endurance, the adjectives! The specialized ingredients and gear! Now that men are starting to take over the kitchen, cooking has become a kind of extreme sport, involving wild game and feats of endurance. And like every other specialized hobby, “manly cooking” now has its own magazine. Last fall, as the recession decimated the New York publishing world and American cooks of varying commitment levels mourned the loss of Gourmet, the German publisher Grüner + Jahr dished up a new magazine, called BEEF!, with a tag line that translates: “for men with taste.”
The first issue serves as a manifesto for a men’s cooking movement—in which fish are grilled with their heads on, espresso is brewed at exactly the right temperature, animals are self-butchered, and women have no place in the kitchen. The magazine provides thorough bylaws for starting your own men’s cooking club that include the line, “If a woman is invited to a meeting of a men’s cooking club, either a couple of guys chipped in to get another member a stripper for his birthday, or the evening’s shot ...” The tone is something like Cooks Illustrated meets Thrillist, and the attitude is just short of sexist. Not only are the women not allowed in the kitchen but their presence is an affront as much as if they’d walked into the post-game locker room.
The cover displays a juicy cut of expensive-looking steak. The first article, “Off With the Hide,” is accompanied by a full-page shot of a rabbit hanging from its hind legs and step-by-step photo-illustrated instructions on how to skin, butcher, and prepare the furry critter. There’s a feature called “Knives To Die For” that plants knives priced up into four figures in noirish art-directed crime scenes, a bloody look at the global fish market, and a science-heavy handbook to wine.
The only place women have in the magazine are in the meditation “Can You Cook a Woman Into Bed?” which features sexy pictures of a naked woman adorned with the Latin names of ingredients. A “He Cooks, She Cooks” column imagines how a man and a woman would prepare something differently—in this issue, espresso. (She absentmindedly fixes an instant, caffeine-free coffee while gabbing on her cell phone. He performs a ritual: hand-selecting perfect coffee beans out of a specially prepared blend, manually [ha, ha: man-ually] grinding them, laying out his cup and saucer just so, and so on.)
The idea of the men’s cooking club started 12 years ago, when some buddies were sitting around in a living room, lamenting the lack on any good sports on TV. They were listening to the women in the kitchen, when one of the men suggested they could cook sometime. The others looked at him in disbelief, as if he’d suggested they all start to wax the hair off their arms or some such “ominous lady stuff,” writer Jen Clasen recalls. The guys eventually made their way into the kitchen, where they took up some aprons and knives and found themselves discussing whether you use parsley leaves or the more rugged stems. They “had a blast,” Clasen recalls, and their cooking club was born.
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Comments
US =/ Germany
By: Teaser38 | Mon, 01/25/2010 - 14:46
If you are going to apply 5 Cent sociology, please make sure you apply it to the right society. I can't help to think that any "men's cooking" magazine would be a real niche product in either country. I think maybe there should be more railing against the heavy female bias in most mainstream food publications.
US =/ Germany
By: Teaser38 | Mon, 01/25/2010 - 14:46
If you are going to apply 5 Cent sociology, please make sure you apply it to the right society. I can't help to think that any "men's cooking" magazine would be a real niche product in either country. I think maybe there should be more railing against the heavy female bias in most mainstream food publications.
US =/ Germany
By: Teaser38 | Mon, 01/25/2010 - 14:46
If you are going to apply 5 Cent sociology, please make sure you apply it to the right society. I can't help to think that any "men's cooking" magazine would be a real niche product in either country. I think maybe there should be more railing against the heavy female bias in most mainstream food publications.
Re: icpshootyz comment...
By: tahall62 | Thu, 01/21/2010 - 01:55
"...I found that cooking a girl a meal was almost on par with buying them jewelry. I'll say it, you CAN cook a woman into bed!"
No truer statement ever made. And we (guys) are the shallow ones!
12 Years Ago?
By: tahall62 | Wed, 01/20/2010 - 18:06
"The idea of the men’s cooking club started 12 years ago".
This reference confuses me. Was the quoted author referring to a particular group of men, or of men's cooking clubs (also called dining or gourmet societies) in general? These types of "clubs" have been around since the Victorian era. They are not exactly some new trend in male bonding.
Dismayed...
By: peonypink | Wed, 01/20/2010 - 13:59
I feel sorry for men who have or would adopt this hyperbolic view of them selves or even the sex wars. Moreover, I'm not entirely sure why there is a sex war. We need both. I feel sad for these types of men the same way I feel sorry for women who think they don't need men.
After reading this article, I
By: djheydt | Wed, 01/20/2010 - 13:22
After reading this article, I was moved to paraphrase Luke 18:11: "Lord, I thank Thee that my husband is not like other men." He does cook, when he has to, but the idea that cooking or any other activity is for men only no girls allowed, is foreign to him. Team sports bore him. He plays online games, and so do I; he got me into gaming decades ago and we go hunting together every evening.
He says it's because he was trained as an engineer. Perhaps that's why we're coming up on our fortieth anniversary.
As a male I can agree with
By: icpshootyz | Wed, 01/20/2010 - 09:34
As a male I can agree with some aspects of this article. I grew up with an Italian mother who taught me many of the basics of cooking and I was always interested in it. When I moved into my first apartment after college and started dating I found that cooking a girl a meal was almost on par with buying them jewelry. I'll say it, you CAN cook a woman into bed! Over time I've come to find a lot of pleasure in cooking a great meal, for myself but more often for others (hopefully others of the attractive female persuasion). And there's always a part of me that feels competitive about it, even with a woman I'm dating. I do consider myself to be the better cook compared to just about everyone I've dated. Heck, most women I've dated these days simply buy premade meals or takeout >90% of the time, maybe because they have to work just as long hours as men used to. I don't cook in any sort of guys club, since when I'm with my guy friends we usually eat pizza/burgers and beers. But it is interesting to see how many male friends are getting into cooking these days. Maybe it is some subconscious thing about taking back the kitchen. But then again, many of the great chefs throughout history have been men, so maybe it's not much of a change at all.