Car Cooking

What is car cooking?

Car cooking is the practice of cooking food within the engine bay of your car, or van, or truck. I am not sure where it originated, but I've heard that the British military started to teach its soldiers the technique as a survival skill back in the 70s. It would not surprise me if some enterprising person in a military situation realised that they could cook food on the engine of their car.

So I had heard about it from some friends and finally decided to give it a try. This page documents my two attempts thus far, and the lessons learned are at the bottom of the page.

Safety.

Your engine bay is not designed for hands or food. Obviously whenever you open your engine bay the engine should be switched off, and you should take precautions to avoid hot surfaces. Eg, use a tea towel, face washer, gloves etc to handle your food. Engine bays also don't lend themselves to food being placed in to them. Clearly anything you put in there should be secured in place or placed in such a position that it will not move around. Don't place food near moving parts like the fan or fan belts.

Car cooking attempt one.

In this attempt I decided to start simple and see if I could cook some chicken kebabs in my parents car, a V8, because it looked a lot easier to put the food in to place.

Step 1.

Lay out two layers of aluminum foil large enough to lay your food on. You want two layers because thing Alfoil can rip, so two layers offers extra protection against rough surfaces in the car.

Step 2.

Place the food on to the Alfoil and prepare to seal.

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Step 3.

Fold the fabric around the food, making sure you do it in such a way that any juices can not leak out of the sealed package. In my first attempt I folded over both sides over the chicken kebabs and then the ends, being careful with the wooden sticks.

Step 4.

Place the sealed package into your engine compartment against a surface that will get hot, such as the engine or the exhaust. At the same time, the food package should be in a position that it will not fall from, or be dislodged while driving. This is fairly easy in a V8, but I expect it would be a lot harder in a car where the engine is a straight arrangement.

Step 5.

Go for a drive. I ended up driving around on and off for about an hour and a half. As I visited the library, went to two shops and did not drive the car hard, I don't think the engine got very hot, nor did it stay hot for very long. Drive carefully, avoid sudden stops and acceleration, but most of all take care while driving over bumps.

Step 6.

Using care and gloves, remove the food package from the car. I noticed that the package was where I left it in the engine bay.

Step 7.

Unwrap the package and check if the food has been cooked. In my first attempt the chicken was definitely warm, but it was not cooked. I think I needed to drive for longer, and perhaps place the food some where hotter, such as the exhaust manifold.

Car cooking video.

Car cooking attempt 2.

Step 1.

Having learned some lessons from attempt one, I removed the wooden skewers from the meat and also added some carrots

Step 2.

I sealed the package, once again making sure that it was sealed in a way to seal in the juices.

Step 3.

I placed the package inside the engine bay right on the exhaust manifold. This should be hotter and apply more heat to the food. It was a bit hard to choose a spot where the food was obviously going to stay there. In the end I chose a spot where if it slipped, it would not damage anything on the way out the bottom of the engine bay.

Step 4.

I went for a drive. Nice day for it. In the latter part of the drive I could smell the meat cooking, and even burning. I inspected it, but nothing looked like it was on fire so I continued to drive.

Step 5.

After about a 40 minute drive with two shorts stops, I drove back to my parents place. I opened the bonnet and retrieved the food, using a cloth to prevent burning my fingers. I opened the package a bit and was rewarded by a nice smell and some steam coming from the food which you can just see in the photo below.

Step 6.

Taking the food into the kitchen I placed it on a plate and inspected it. The carrots were still hard but warm. They had been cut extra thin to ensure the heat got into them, The meat was cooked, and in some parts burned where the Alfoil had been in contact with the exhaust pipe. The whole meal had a smoky flavor from being burned a bit. Obviously the juices from the meat had burned away and filled the package with burnt chicken flavor.