How can you tell if a man is really into cast-iron kitchenware? He’ll pansplain it to you | Emma Beddington

I need some guidance on a tiny source of friction in my home life. It is this: I live with a pan man and his man pans.

You know the kind I mean: rugged, elemental pans that you need to bench 160kg to lift; apocalypse-proof pans. Cast-iron and carbon-steel cookware isn’t exclusively a male preserve – female cookery writers and chefs are enthusiastic; I have heard it described as “tradwife adjacent” – but if the Marlboro Man cooked his horse, he would do so in these. Paradoxically, man pans are as delicate as they are tough: they need to be “seasoned” (an arcane ritual), massaged with oils, protected from humidity and low-pH substances. They invite boring fanaticism (if podcasts made pans, it would be these), becoming a shorthand for a certain kind of man; in one Instagram skit, a pan fanatic castigates his bored housemates for wrecking his skillet’s seasoning, reeling off the pH of blueberries (“2.2”), jackfruit (“4.1”) and Lucky Charms (“You’d never guess it: 1”).

I refuse to use ours – no hunk of metal with notions can force me to understand “polymerisation” – but my husband does. Religiously. Unfortunately, that includes deliberately leaving them unwashed on the stovetop, causing me deep bourgeois embarrassment when anyone comes round. He often gets around to performing whatever ritual ablutions they demand only when I passively-aggressively put them by the sink), then returns them to the stovetop, unattractively oily.

Broaching the issue risks an outbreak of pansplaining (my best friend’s coinage, when I was, er, definitely not complaining to her): historic pan lore dictates that washing is bad and detergent terrible. This seems to have shifted: “You are not going to bring about the apocalypse by dabbing a little soap on your cast-iron pan,” I read in an article I have resisted printing out and sticking to the fridge.

I understand that man pans are healthier – nonstick is a PFAS nightmare – but must they be so high maintenance? It’s like living with metal Mariah Careys. Am I, in the words of Mumsnet, being unreasonable? Pansplainers, it’s over to you.