Thread: Car Engine Cooking

Just reading the latest Discover mag, and one article talked about oil consumption, and saving $ and time by cooking chow while you drove. I remember eons ago, friends cooking turkey and chicken on their engines. I found a few websites, but just wondering if you chefs have done this. Would have been fun in Thailand on trips to national parks and stuff. No more yuk stall meals. I'll try it when we go up the mountains or to the beach this year.

GIs used to do it in their Jeeps. Now they have chemical heaters in MREs.

oil infused Turkey?

Have cooked or warmed a lot of lunch stuff on the engines in Earthmovers or Cats and have sometime worked them a little to hard with a can of Pork and Beans [Baked Beans to Brits] behind the turbo and ended up with them blowed all over the under side of the hood.
Stinks for awhile too.

Geez, BG, just like at the campfire, you have to open the can first.

There's a book called "Manifold Destiny" which is all about car cooking.

I can remember seeing adverts for "ovens" which fixed on top of the exhaust manifold but I don't think they still sell them now

Originally Posted by blackgang

Have cooked or warmed a lot of lunch stuff on the engines in Earthmovers or Cats and have sometime worked them a little to hard with a can of Pork and Beans [Baked Beans to Brits] behind the turbo and ended up with them blowed all over the under side of the hood.
Stinks for awhile too.

In the days when I was field servicing cat machines had a wierd one!
had a callout to a n OEM customer who had CAT hydraulics in a mine rock heading machine.
Total Hydraulic failure !
This machine ran the Hydraulic oil reservoir at atmospheric pressure and had a large filler cap - this was the problem !
The dickhead of an operator had,for a couple of days previously , been hanging a can of beans on a wire and hung it in the tank for his midday break .
This was when cans had paper labels.
Labels had come off and clogged the main oil filter- the emergency bypass had opened ( the bulb in the warning light was bust so he didnt know) and a glob of snotty paper had passed into the main control valve and F*cked it 100% !!!

Bloody expensive beans - 8400 US$ to fix it !

I think it was with Gordon ramsey. Anyway, according to him the food tasted like shit. It tasted of petrol/oil fumes etc. As you'd expect.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Geez, BG, just like at the campfire, you have to open the can first.

NO, If you were to open em the can would be full of dirt and crap, the fans on Cats are reversable so during warm weather they blow foreward and in cold weather they pull and blow warm air in the cab, and if you do not wrap the can in foil it will be packed with dirt.
Some jobs are so dirty that the operator has to breath air that is filtered and blown into a space helmet looking thing that he wears.
So anyway thats why you need to be careful and don't work the engine to hard or it will be like turning the burner on high.
The boss sometimes gets pissed if the beans and beef stew is coated to thick on the engine..

^ Oh...Couldn't you wrap stuff up in tinfoil?
Thet, I heard about that Manifold book.

Originally Posted by kingwilly

oil infused Turkey?

Bg couldn't spot the difference, just as he mistook a mankrut for a lemon.

Here you go
A manifold oven

^^ I wouldnt put my spuds in there Thetters

yuck stall meals??

Originally Posted by Spin

I wouldnt put my spuds in there Thetters

I understand the feeling, I wouldn't want to eat anything that smelt of oil fumes but I cannot find any website that says it tastes of fumes. I reckon the foil must stop it all so that it cooks in it's own juices.

Thinking back to when I used to go rough shooting we would cook foil wrapped pigeons in a fire made of dried cow dung. It was delicious and never smelt of shit.

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

My mother read an article on this once back in the 50s we would spend weekends on the road & she tried it a couple times until pops got kinda pissed off about it "jaysus christ woman! they got truck stops all along the goddam hiway, what's wrong with you?" or something like that.

Can't argue with Pops.

Originally Posted by dennis3506

I think it was with Gordon ramsey. Anyway, according to him the food tasted like shit. It tasted of petrol/oil fumes etc. As you'd expect.

Correct, Dennis. If I remember they did salmon steak, all wrapped in foil. But, as you said, they said it tasted of oil fumes.