In the 1970’s and 1980’s there were several books the either had characters that did it or promoted it.
Why is there no cooking tray in my new car’s engine bay?
Is it dangerous? (It would be less physically dangerous if there was a specific spot for it.)
If you have an EV, you can plug in an induction cooktop
It’s very hard to get the car inside the kitchen.
This is very true.
Much easier to plumb water to the garage.
In the 70’s fuel was cheap.
Nowadays, if I need to let the engine run for an hour, I can go to a michelin star restaurant for the same price. (OK it’s an over statement, but there is definitely cheaper and more optimal way to cook a meal on the road)
Op, what’s unsaid here is that there’s planning and enough required knowledge that is a barrier to entry for most people.
Planning: the engine will only get hot enough to do this after a drive of 30-45+ minutes, plus cook time. So for each person, each trip, it means specific planning of what to make, and when you can make it.
Knowledge: engines vary in design, and people vary in their comfort in how much they trust themselves to do things in their engine bay without risking damage. Taking some wire, making a secure spot to hold something wrapped in foil, and it not being in the way of anything AND if it slips or comes lose won’t get caught in a belt is something I feel fine doing, but I do a lot of janky redneck stuff all the time.
Most people barely know how to change their oil, and since the 90s, more and more cars are complex such that they seem designed to be repaired and maintained by someone else not the owner. This makes the simple act of opening the hood intimidating for most people. One survey I found online puts comfort in doing basic cat maintenance at 20% of people. Extrapolate from there an increasingly small group that is comfortable doing weird stuff, ok doing risky weird stuff to their car, and who don’t want to stop at a real restaurant to eat on a road trip (where my spouse will prefer to pee, not the side of the road), and you get a small enough number of people that is not surprising this isn’t common.
Considering the amount of cancers related to exposures to petroleum products, is this a real question asking why we don’t cook on something that runs on vaporized petroleum products and is lubricated with petroleum products?
We have natural gas cooking.
So, yes.And it too, can be quite harmful if not properly ventilated.
I don’t think the vaporized petroleum is supposed to be on top of your engine block, but rather remain quite within it.
I don’t know too many people that actually follow regular maintenance schedules.I wouldn’t trust that just because it’s supposed to be inside, it actually stays inside
Most car trips don’t warrant a stopping for food.
There is very little space in the engine compartment on modern cars.
The engine usually run around 90°C which is not enough to boil water. You could use the exhaust pipe but that is harder to reach.
The 90°C is a big issue as I would need ~205°C (400 °F) for real baking.
Most car trips don’t warrant a stopping for food.
Yes. It would be helpful in areas where the grocery store (or Costco) is 15 to 30 minutes from the eating place (home).
Cause the oil to have near your food is NOT motor oil, cause the exhausts could kill the entire family reunion, cause it’s incredibly wasteful… and so on.
I do not think we have the same idea of the process.
This is not running the car at the reunion to cook. This is cooking while driving to the reunion and using the waste heat. The process is similar to baking on a campfire.
Well your post mentions the engine bay… Doesn’t sound like a good idea anyway, imagine getting in the car and still having last week’s food smell stuck to the interiors, or having some food or the entire pot fall on the floor…
Motor oil? What are you cooking on, an early 2000s Subaru?
Not who you’re replying to. But yeah, there’s plenty of vehicles that old on the road. We’re a couple, and we get by with just a single '06 Toyota Carola. So why not an old Subaru? Cars were better then! They have buttons!
Anyway, it definitely gets dirty enough in that engine bay that I wouldn’t want food in there.
Cars are more complicated now, but generally safer and less prone to rust.
It was mainly a dig at Subarus because they are pretty widely known to have had head gasket issues.
Presumably you’d clean your engine bay first and make sure there are no fluid/exhaust leaks
Mythbusters has an episode (Food Fables) with Alton Brown where they cook a thanksgiving meal in the engine bay. It went surprisingly well, although figuring out where to put everything and the different cooking temps were tricky.
Mythbusters has an episode (Food Fables) with Alton Brown
Thank you. Looks like Episode 196 from Season 13 Episode 7.
My wife’s family once baked potatoes in the engine compartment during a road trip, just to see if it would work. Enough fumes leaked out of the engine that everything tasted slightly of oil and exhaust. Car engines are much tighter now, but I’m sure you still get a similar effect.
It does seem a better seal than “pinched aluminum foil” would be needed.
There’s a diner in town that tastes like this is how they cook their sausage, except it’s done on a 70s era F150.
What you can do safely is get a pack of cookie dough, wait till it’s summer time(hotter the better), be in Texas, Arizona or similar state, put cookie dough on pan and leave on your dash board, go to work.
When you get out of work you’ll have fresh baked cookies and your car will smell amazing!
Love it! A nice treat after work.
One of my co workers at Disney did this, I’ve never tried it but every time I walked past their car with the cookie pan in the windshield I thought it was brilliant.
It is very hard to time your trip so that you get there when everything is done. those who try it either have overcooked food or have to drive around for a while after they get there for the meal to finish.
in the end it works but not well enough to do it. Even truckers who eat on the road find separate appliances better.
Those are good points.
I had been thinking of partly cooking on the engine, and finishing in the oven. (Use case is baking something that needs 90 minutes in the oven.) Actually moving hot food is an issue, though one we deal with normally when baking.
It’s too hard to get direct contact with the engine. And thanks to the invention of plastic engine covers all the heat is trapped largely under them. We heated some burritos once on a trim on my moms grand Cherokee.
Also I have a boxer engine so it’s kinda hard to get down to the engine itself, and the plastic air intake doesn’t get very hot.
I’ve used the combine engine to warm up meals during harvest. About 20 minutes on the turbocharger heats a foil pan of stroganoff quite nicely.
My dad used to do something similar. He used to pack leftovers in tin foil and keep it in the engine bay of the tractor so he could keep going and stay out in the field not have to halt everything to have dinner way back at the house.
