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.)
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mmm. Engine block eggs. If we can keep these down, we’ll be sitting pretty.
Quiet, I can’t hear the eggs!
I imagine the majority of the current crop of motor vehicle owners are not quite smart enough to realize that the hood even opens to allow access to the engine bay… Nor what parts of it get hot. Or too hot. Or are safe to access, etc. And in our modern litigious society there is simply far too much that can go wrong with this to make it worthwhile for any manufacturer to include as a deliberate feature. Like, rodent infestation in engine bays is already an issue. Imagine adding (potentially forgotten and abandoned!) food to the mix.
Edit: Another wrinkle I thought of is a lack of consistent temperature control. Your engine is designed to move your car, not remain at a consistent temperature.
The utility is also rather limited when you have access to a microwave or a convenience store. Or even a convenience store with a microwave in it, as many do.
So yeah, you can do it to be clever if you like but it’s not cut out to be mainstream activity.
