IF you’ve ever found yourself asking questions like “how do I change a head gasket on a ’74 Cortina” or “what’s the procedure for fitting a clutch on a Ford Capri” then, like all DIY car owners, you’ll have probably picked up a Haynes workshop manual.

Their collection of guides has helped men service and repair their motors for the last half a century. The Haynes manual for the Peugeot 205 has certainly helped keep my motor out of the scrap yard and its no-nonsense advice has made me fairly adept when it comes to basic mechanics.

Hoping to transfer this success from the workshop to the kitchen is Haynes’ latest manual, Men’s Cooking.

Written by Chris Maillard (one of the founding editors of Top Gear magazine), the manual offers a nuts and bolts guide to buying, preparing and cooking food.

As per the Haynes workshop manuals, Men’s Cooking starts by giving users a run down on what “tools” they will need in their kitchen.

“You won’t have much fun in the kitchen if you’re stuck with one of your Mum’s cast-off aluminium saucepans and a blunt charity shop knife,” it warns.

After advising where best to buy said apparatus, chapter two addresses the “components”… or ingredients as women know them.

Witty yet informative, it has the style of Jeremy Clarkson and the substance of Delia Smith as it steers you through essential ingredients, speed shopping and eating within the seasons.

After holding your hand through the first two chapters, the book then lets you loose in the kitchen. “If this were a workshop manual, here’s the bit where you find out which way to turn the screwdriver,” it reads. After a brief lesson in butchery, chopping vegetables, preparing fish and making marinades, the manual offers the first of many recipes.

Happily these all have a difficulty rating, one spatula signifies that the dish is “dead easy, a toddler could do it,” while five spatulas means “keep your wits about you and it’ll all be fine”.

Bizarrely the first recipe is a rather unappealing, five-spatula affair, deep-fried whole turkey, which apparently will serve “6-8 hillbillies”.

However, don’t let this put you off because the majority of the recipes are pretty good. Readers are guided through perennial favourites like meatballs, toad in the hole and roast dinner, but there are also some more exotic dishes such as Thai curry and Tunisian lamb and couscous.

There are salads, soups (“like food, but you drink it”) and a whole chapter dedicated to sweets, which includes a recipe for Victoria sponge, fruitcake and even a Christmas cake.

Memories of changing the gearbox on your old Cavalier are soon forgotten as the manual slowly ups your game in the kitchen. It cleverly makes cooking feel manly and subtly challenges you to be a better chef.

For fitness fanatics there’s a chapter on health foods and one entitled Fluid Check, which assists men in matching food with booze, and helping them decipher wine descriptions.

Like the workshop manuals for cars, the book also boasts a very helpful fault diagnosis page, which sheds some light on what might be going wrong with your cooking and encourages you to try again – just like you did when you messed up that cam belt change on your Escort.

Overall this book is a milestone in men’s cooking; a surprisingly informative, mildly witty, male-friendly manual that holds your hand through the kitchen and makes you cook outside the box.

Ladies, if this book doesn’t get your man in the kitchen, nothing will.

Haynes’ Men’s Cooking is out now, priced £19.99. Come back tomorrow for one of their recipes