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.)
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.
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
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…
It’s very hard to get the car inside the kitchen.
This is very true.
Much easier to plumb water to the garage.
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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.
I don’t really know, but I would assume that taste represents quite a bit of random poisonous stuff in your food. Probably if you do it a couple times, it’s fine, the human system can take a lot of abuse in short doses. But if you made a habit I think it would mess you up.
It does seem a better seal than “pinched aluminum foil” would be needed.
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)
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!
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.
Love it! A nice treat after work.
Mmm. Engine block eggs. If we can keep these down, we’ll be sitting pretty.
Quiet, I can’t hear the eggs!
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.
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.
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.
If you have an EV, you can plug in an induction cooktop
They did this on Top Gear (or Grand Tour maybe, can’t remember). Personally, cooking doneness aside, I wouldn’t want some exhaust leakage from the engine or burning oil that’s seeping from a gasket to taint the flavor of the food even if there were a guarantee of no carcinogens from it.
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).
Too much stuff to remove to get to either of my car’s electric motors. Also that might cause a legit warranty denial someday…
With an electric car one may be able to plug an actual oven in…
Everyone’s overlooking that op asked why cars weren’t designed for cooking with the waste heat from the engine.
I think you could easily have a loop out of the radiator that was used as a heater for an enclosed air frier.
Totally a waste but it would be feasible
That’s literally how your car’s heater works. But it didn’t get that hot because the radiator dissipates most of the heat.
What you really want is to replace the water in the radiator with fry oil, and have a little basket for deep frying things in there glove box.
