Male performative cooking, it’s a thing isn’t it?

[Beeth0ven]

Characterised by:

Weekly cadence
Complex recipes (often involving trips to specialist shops to source)
While day needed (or substantial park of the day) to cook
Low engagement with wider family during process
No expectation of clearing up afterwards, despite WILD amount of mess

Has anyone else observed this? Has it been widely discussed on here?

• source ingredients
• whole day

Got over excited

Yep. I think of it as "cooking with an ego"....

It’s a thing here. Last week DP made me video the assembly of his beef Wellington. Can you imagine if I requested footage as I splashed milk into three bowls of Rice Krispies for the 126th time already this year?!
To be fair, it was an epic Wellington...

It's the use of "prep bowls".....and thinking I'm some sort of sous chef. There is a lot of eye rolling done by me during the process.

An overuse of celery salt and sesame oil often feature.

My dad. My mum did 99% of cooking and he would complain about something small in every meal.

If any friends came to visit, he would put on a banquet. Dazzling array of home made Chinese food or currys back in the 80s, which were less common then (I think?). As we got older he turned to barbecuing as a hobby and now has smokers and all sort of fancy Weber things. Once again if anyone visits he can spend a whole day cooking.

Except on Christmas Day, which is another big occasion, he just sits down and waits for my mum to cook another meal he can complain about.

Oh I hear you! I have accepted it as the normal rhythm of family life especially during the last year where other entertainment is sadly lacking. Thankfully the result is usually worth the enforced audience participation part of the process.

Prep bowls 😂😂👏🏻👏🏻

Filming the beef Wellington!

Absolutely recognise this, no interest in knocking up a spag bol on a Wednesday evening but will happily make an elaborate meal involving buy a new pan and sinking a bottle of red during preparation

Not in my house. Its the same recipe over and over which I MUST be grateful for.

Gadgets are often required

@Letsallscreamatthesistene ooh, what's the recipe! I had years of pea and stilton barley risotto

Urgh yes. Thankfully lockdown has spared us some of DH's more elaborate performative roasts. During which I prep all the veg, wrangle two small children, set the table, respond to 87 desperate queries for "where is the...?" (2cm to the left of where you're looking) serve up everything except The Meat. Then eat it (and feed aforementioned small children) while listening to his tedious explanation of the cooking methods and how the wine pairs with it.

Obviously this is an exhausting process, so I then have to clear up, load the dishwasher and clean the kitchen too. But he COOKED!

Yep, it's some sort of kitchenwanking. Seems to me that a man who can follow a three hour Heston Blumenthal recipe is also capable of cooking a Monday night dinner that takes 20 minutes, but funnily enough, these types never seem to do that.

My DP does most of the cooking as he’s self employed and works from home while I work FT outside the home. I’m afraid since this started I’ve become the performative cook swooping in to make Sunday roasts! In my defence, if he’s not around to make dinner on weekday or busy, I’m more than happy to get on with it without direction, and I do all the food shopping, but I was a bit shocked to realise I’d become one of Those Cooks. I don’t complain about his meals though!

Yep!!! Uses every bowl, utensil and pan we own. And complains we don’t have some obscure kitchen gadget that I’d never use but he ‘always says we need one’ - BUY ONE THEN

@yawnyowl its a very standard spag bol but, wait for it, with added chorizo.

If only, dp only makes a couple of dishes and I make them better, in half the time and with far less mess so I prefer he doesn't cook - he is in charge of frozen pizzas though!

Yep it happens here too. Despite doing 99% of the cooking I am suddenly deemed incapable of cooking a steak. Only he can manage this. He saw a nigella recipe for chocolate and licorice cake. Weeks of collecting very specific ingredients. That cake must have cost £40. One year we hosted xmas. Despite me cooking a roast most weeks all year, a Turkey needed weeks of research on how to cook it, comparisons on all different ways to do it. It was like a science experiment. He couldn't possibly just leave me to get on with it. And then there was the bloody beef wellington.....

Oh the fancy specialist ingredients. Did you know these facts about truffles! (No and I don’t care as I bloody hate them!) Plus wine pairing!

Yes.

It's fucking ridiculous. And the whole world must know.

The whole family will be sent photos today of dh creation as it's Mother's Day so Dh will perform a miracle in the kitchen. "Ooooo you are fabulous, isn't she lucky?" His old Nan will coo.

No.

It's basically some chicken Kiev's and a fucking salad (his "specialty") that he will over complicate and take hours to put together.

The salad dressing he takes half an hour to prepare and which must be fawned over like it's right out of Gordon Ramsey's ball sack is made of chip shop vinegar mixed with vegetable oil, applied so liberally that I worry local wildlife may fall into my salad (sad looking iceberg lettuce, far too much red onion and a bit of floppy cucumber), and need specialist cleaning by the RSPB.

It will be presented with undercooked chicken, which he will throw a stop about as I put it back in the oven for a bit as I don't want to die of the shits. He will however, eat his undercooked food while bitching that I am too picky and ungrateful.

He won't get the shits as he's a superior being who doesn't have my inferior immune system.

I will have to declare it the best meal I've ever tasted and then spend the evening cleaning the kitchen as he does that fucking sous chef little bowl thing too with all the cereal bowls he can find.

Repeat every birthday, Mother's Day and Christmas until I die.

I'd rather he wasn't such a prick all year round and didn't bother with the performance cooking to try abs absolve himself.

My friends DH was a bugger for this (esp on hols). He did the 'look at me' showstopper whilst she did all the rest of it that turned it into an actual meal. We started openly taking the piss and he's better now.
My DH who stopped cooking his 2 staple dishes when we got married 20 odd years ago...has started to become a competitive chef during lockdown. He tells me all my go-to dinners are quite easy really (I know - 2 kids to feed!) and requires a huge amount of praise for new dishes. But he IS a much tidier cook than me - even if he does the prep bowl nonsense.

Oh my goodness @Beeth0ven you have made my day for the fact that I really thought it was just my husband that does this!

I should add, this is a man who needs my help to cook (special truffle) risotto today as he’s worried he’s going to mess the rice up. . .

I think it's fine if a) it's recognised as hobby time, not fulfillment of a necessary service to the family and b) the cook cleans up.

In our house the cook cleans up after themselves, the other person puts children to bed. So the cook / cleaner gets a grottier job but gains by finishing earlier and they reap the reward of any cleaning as they go, they've done.