The new recipe for men looking to be sexy on Instagram is an actual recipe

In that setting, the actor Timini Egbuson might not show up washing his hands under a silver faucet in a dimly lit kitchen or slicing paddies for burgers.

Then there is something else.

The generation that birthed fitness videos, reset videos, living-alone diaries, home tours, and January dumps has found a new format that involves cooking in the kitchen but is not the culinary lesson one might expect. It also would not guarantee one feisty follower posting “Can I be that sausage?” in your comment session.

The actor Efa Iwara (Instagram) Pulse Nigeria

The actor Efa Iwara has posted a cooking video (Instagram) Pulse Nigeria

Already, Nollywood leading men, Kunle Remi, Timini Egbuson, and Efa Iwara have all coalesced on this new frontier of the modern sexy Instagram man –– sexy cooking videos.

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Food has always been in the mix when love is concerned and with it the sexy chef, who has also been for years part of the zeitgeist. Love stories of new couples cooking in tiny kitchens were the plotlines of countless of late aught Nollywood flicks. Remember shirtless Alexx Ekubo making lunch for Monalisa Chinda in that movie?

While the idea of the sexy chef has been with us for years, a new wave of 30-plus men in tight clothes or without any clothes cooking on Instagram has aggressively dumped us in a loophole of endless sexy cooking videos.

The chef, who simply goes by Chef Cupid perfected the act, building his entire growth strategy off these videos. In his videos, food items; chicken, yam, and hotdogs immediately take new meanings with ingredients acting as accelerants.

As the debates over who should handle the kitchen in a marriage rage on in the e-feminist and alpha male mentality circles in the dark corners of social media, modern Nigerian men are embracing public display of cooking to position themselves as young men worthy of love in a new dispensation of the African family unit.

Timini Egbuson (Instagram) Pulse Nigeria

“It is appealing for a guy to cook,” Chiamaka Dike, who works as an editor at the women’s magazine Marie Claire said.

For her, it also signals the foundations of the old gender guards cracking. “There are so many misogynist stereotypes that directly or indirectly place women in the kitchen, which should not be so. Men now advertising themselves as cooks shows signs of increasing awareness in gender equality,” she said.

While some will see this as the markings of a new era in the genre role debates, others caution that the real test of the sexy cooking videos and what it means in the culture lies in wait at home.

“Cooking is something that women admire in men. Women love it because it can be sexy in some ways. Nothing is wrong if men cook and publicly film it. It is not bad,” Joseph Olaoluwa, the journalist who contributes to the TechCabal newsletter NextWave said. But he added, “Nobody would honestly expect them to cook or actively cook.”

That the videos have found mass appeal racking in thousands of comments underscores that the world is paying attention to them. But do they signal a change in the order of things?

“If you notice most of the interested parties are women in the comments. Women are usually swayed by these acts or dramatisation amongst actors. They like it for the gossip, thrill, and fun,” Olaoluwa said.

This, he added, is simply part of showbiz for actors who know they have primarily women as their fanbase. “These actors are actors making appealing romantic moves. Many women don't generally have men cook in this patriarchal society, so it could be quite sexy and appealing to most women,” he said. “If it will increase appeal, bring in more movie roles, sell more movie tickets, of course, male actors would do it. It's showbiz,” he added.

The actor Kunle Remi (Instagram) Pulse Nigeria

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While the gender debate rages on, these sexy cooking videos are already achieving their aim. On Efa Iwara’s Instagram, the video of him cooking (or better still caressing tomatoes) has seen the highest number of comments on his page in recent times.

It has performed better than the one of him shirtless and the one pinned to his account with fake tattoos down his arms. There is only one video on his account with more comments. It’s a kissing scene of him from the series The Men’s Club.