Clang clang. Clicking the tongs together twice – not once, not three times, twice – is a crucial part of barbecuing. Also important? Having a Y chromosome apparently.
Dudes who eschew cooking at every other time of year seem to feel the need to get stuck right in as soon as it is outdoors and involves naked flames. The alpha-est bros, men who pride themselves on barely entering the kitchen, suddenly find themselves elbowing women out of the way to get to the grill.
I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I do the majority of the cooking in my household, because as a freelance writer I have the flexibility to cook during most people’s working hours, and this way we get to all sit down and eat as a family at a sensible time for my five-year-old daughter’s bedtime. It makes sense, then, that in the summer I’m also the one firing up the grill, but barbecuing is hard – stuff’s aflame, there’s a lot going on and I’m usually drunk.
I came to cooking fairly late in life (until 35 I was primarily composed of goujons), but even now that I’m pretty good at it, barbecues are stressful. Things burn, things drip, things cook at vastly different rates. So why, if you avoid cooking at all other times, would you confidently take on grilling? The same people who would see it as slightly emasculating that I make a very pleasant butternut squash soup are first in line to slap some meat onto hot coals.
Like me, a lot more men cook now than used to, but in mixed-sex households it is still overwhelmingly done by women, according to YouGov research. Why then is the BBQ still such a male-dominated space?
“My wife does most, if not all, of the cooking, but I’m always the BBQ guy,” says my friend Ben, a 38-year-old living in London. “It’s just an odd cultural macho fixation, isn’t it? My dad never cooked us a whole meal, but did the meat at barbecues. I literally don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman use a barbecue, other than on the TV show Barbecue Showdown.”
Everyone I ask about it throws around words like “primal” and “caveman”, as though heating up a few packets of sausages was what caused us to walk upright. Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers didn’t frequent the Tesco cold meat aisle, but the gist seems to be that some hyper-manly evolutionary need to protect and provide kicks in over an open flame. As soon as fire meets flesh, the indoorsy, deskbound life of the 21st century is abandoned for one where the only double-clicking involves tongs.
Of course, Stone Age chefs were just as happy foraging for berries or cooking pulses and roots, but prepping broad beans and parsnips doesn’t seem to inspire the same cheerful grunts of caveman-liness in modern men. And, while I make no claims to be an expert in prehistory, I’m reasonably certain women existed too.
It’s all really odd. I enjoy barbecuing, but can’t think of even one occasion where my testicles have played a significant part in producing a slap-up feed. It’s not like I’m lighting the barbecue by striking a flint against the side of my penis or anything. That very much seems like the kind of thing you don’t try twice.
“I lent a guy my barbecue once,” says Mat Kemp of London artisan butchers Turner & George. “There he stood, beer in one hand, fag in the other. When he opened the lid it was full to the brim of red-hot briquettes, paint bubbling off the bottom half, with about 10 ribs on the grill. I asked when they’d be ready, and he said ‘Well, they’ve been on for an hour, and I did them in the oven for an hour first, so I reckon another half an hour.’ I didn’t eat those ribs, or let him borrow my barbecue again.”
Is it the performance aspect that appeals to these fair-weather chefs? Instagram is awash with super-manly burly bearded fellas barbecuing enormous things and making it look easy. Perhaps part of it is the jargon. Firing up the grill is one of those areas with lots of bite-sized statements about dry rubs or letting the meat rest. They get to say things like “Getting a nice char on that? Ooh, great sear!” while not knowing where the saucepans are kept.
Of course, the BBQ dad trope predates big-armed influencers, of course. When I was a kid, there were plenty of dads who cooked twice a year – Pancake Day and a doomed annual barbecue. (Pancake Day: apron with comedic illustration of breasts. Barbecue: stripped to the waist regardless of climate.)
On this occasion, jet-black sausages burned to a crisp on the outside but still slightly frozen in the middle would be accompanied by unseasoned chicken drumsticks that looked completely cremated, but guaranteed diarrhoea. It’s almost as though, if you can’t cook, farting about with raw meat isn’t the best idea. If constructing a cheese sandwich is usually your culinary limit, should you really be playing fast and loose with uncooked pork?
So men, if you are going to insist on an annual attempt, here’s some expert advice. “There are two common mistakes made by people who only want to cook when it involves making a fire in the garden,” says Kemp. “First, getting the fire too hot: you only generally need it to be hot enough that you couldn’t hold your hand over it for any length of time, not so hot that you can’t get within six feet of the cooker without losing a layer of skin.
“And if you’re cooking something like chicken, ideally you only want to make a fire on one side so you can colour the meat over the heat and then put it away from the heat with the lid closed until it’s cooked.”
And if you do a brilliant job of it and really enjoy yourself, great news: there’s a room in your house called a kitchen, protected from the elements, where you can enjoy the thrill of cooking every single day.
