Image via Complex Original
We’ve all been there. For whatever reason you’re on a long road trip and after days of service plazas and rest stops, you get sick of fast-food burger joints and gas station corn dogs. You hate yourself for maintaining a diet similar to a member of Honey Boo-Boo’s family, but there don’t seem to be any better options. You want to do better, but how?
It might be time to expand your horizons. Here at Complex Rides, we are committed to helping you utilize your car in new, adventurous ways. You’ve already use your ride as a powder room when you wake up late for work and have to fumble with a razor as you hit the highway. You’ve already tried to convince your girlfriend to make your car into a kinky boudoir, likely with limited success. Now it’s time to make your car your kitchen. We've found some of the best tools for preparing food while still making good time so you can eat well and drive well at the same time. From hotdogs under the hood to baked ziti with your cigarette lighter, here is A Guide Cooking Food With Your Car.
Test your engine bay thoroughly before you cook anything in it.
The writers of the car engine bay-cooking instant classic, Manifold Destiny (available in both printed and Kindle formats via Amazon), advise giving your engine bay the finger -- after you’ve warmed it up by taking it around the block, of course. Get your engine bay hot, then pull over and turn the engine off. Prop the hood open and start touching flat surfaces to see what’s hot. If you need to pull your finger away immediately, that spot is hot enough to cook your food. If you plan to cook under your hood often, you may want to take notes on relative temperatures for later reference. Places that are simply warm (but not hot) might be good for heating up some dinner rolls or anything that doesn’t require a lot of heat.
Exhaust manifolds are reliably hot, regardless of the age of your car. Engine blocks on older cars are usually hotter than newer engine blocks. Avoid anything covered in plastic -- plastic just doesn’t get hot enough.
Get to know the space where you’ll be cooking before you start.
The space you have in your engine bay varies widely from model to model and year to year. Ideally, you want a space big enough to hold your carefully foil-wrapped parcel of food securely, so it doesn’t slide around -- but not so tightly that your food gets squished beyond recognition. Do a simple space test with a little cone of aluminum foil. Use a ruler or tape measure to make the cone 5” tall. Put the cone in the spot you intend to test in your engine bay, then drop the hood. Lift it again to see if the cone is squished, then measure the damage. This will tell you how much space you have in the area where you’re thinking of cooking.
If your intended cooking space is tall enough, but leaves a lot of sliding room for your food from side to side, wad up additional aluminum foil to bolster your packet of foil-wrapped food. Think of it like shipping something fragile. You want to make a cushion of aluminum foil around your packet of food so that it doesn’t move while you drive.
Avoid placing packets of food near (or under) any moving parts.
Keep your packet of food well away from any belts, fans, or other moving parts in your engine bay. You can use baling wire to keep the packet in place, but don’t let the wire interfere with any moving parts, either. Also, don’t put any stress on hoses in the engine bay, because you can loosen them or cause them to come completely off their mounting points. This should probably go without saying, but stay away from any wires you see snaking around under the hood, too.
Don’t cook overly moist foods in your engine bay.
A little moisture is essential if you don’t want to eat dried pieces of leather, but soups or stews are dangerous because all that liquid will do its best to find a way out of your aluminum foil packet -- no matter how carefully you wrap it. You don’t want that stuff cooking into your engine and creating a mess -- or interfering with how your car is supposed to function.
Only try cooking in the engine bays of cars that are in good working order.
Keep your exhaust fumes to the tailpipe end of the car and away from any food you plan on eating. Although they’ll probably only be harmful to your health if you eat food cooked this way regularly, they’ll taste absolutely disgusting. Why would you want that? Think about the principles of smoked meats, like pork shoulders, chicken, or salmon. The process of smoking food is simple: you’re imparting flavor to your food via the smoke of specially seasoned wood chips as they burn. Burning oil is a huge departure from burning applewood.
Smaller, thinner foods cook faster than thicker ones.
If you want your food to cook faster, or you’re having a problem with chicken breasts that are still raw in the center, pound that food out flat before you wrap it in foil and stick it in your engine bay. Also, when cooking meat, an even thickness is key. To ensure even thickness, season your chosen piece of meat and stick it between two piece of plastic wrap. Then pound it out with a rubber mallet or a frying pan so it’s an even thickness.
This works especially well for chicken breasts, which are almost always of uneven thickness. You’ll simultaneously be evening out the thickness while pounding the seasoning into the meat -- and possibly relieving some work-related stress, as well. Unwrap the plastic and put your nice, flat piece of meat in the foil. Add any vegetables and additional seasonings, wrap it tightly, and cook.
When considering new recipes to try, look for any recipe that mentions the words “en papillote.”
Cooking en papillote is simply a French term for cooking in a little parcel, which steams and bakes the food. While those recipes are usually meant for oven use, you can use the same ingredients and proportions to cook in your car’s engine bay. The only difference will be in cooking time -- and also, you should stick to aluminum foil when cooking in your car. Don’t use parchment paper, which is more common with en papillote cooking.
Use heavy-duty aluminum foil. Don’t be afraid to triple-wrap your food.
And speaking of aluminum foil ... you know that nasty baked-on mess in the office microwave? Everyone uses it, but no one ever cleans it up. Unless you want your engine bay to look like that, don’t skimp on the aluminum foil. Use the stuff that’s labeled “heavy-duty,” and use several layers of it. If you accidentally rip or tear a hole in the foil as you’re wrapping, either replace it with an untorn piece, or wrap an extra layer of foil around your food on top of the torn one.
You’ll be using a lot of aluminum foil, if you get into the habit of cooking this way, so you may even want to hit up one of your friends with a Costco or similar card and get the big, warehouse-sized rolls of foil. If you have a local restaurant supply shop that’s open to the public (or you are or know someone in the hospitality industry who can get you into a members-only place), industrial-strength aluminum foil is the way to go.
Don’t plan on cooking anything unless you’re already planning on a long drive.
Cooking in your engine bay is a great way to cook low and slow -- sort of like a slow-cooker, but more dry. A short trip to the gas station won’t cook anything to your satisfaction. Running the engine for longer periods of time is what you want. Also, speed doesn’t really matter -- keeping your engine running at any speed is what does the cooking. That’s also where iron engine blocks come in handy -- they retain heat, and will keep food warm even after you’ve stopped stopped the engine
Buy A Car Food Road Map
We could write a book on all the different ways that you can prepare food on your engine block, except it was already done in the late 80s. Remember that book we mentioned in the first slide, Manifold Desiny? It's fantastic. From Cajun-style shrimp to stuffed peppers, Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller have cooked it all on their cars, lived to tell the tale, and have shared their secrets with the world. These authors, a photographer and a travel writer, are seasoned road warriors who will not only give you great recipes, but offer helpful tidbits along the way. Without Scheller and Maynard's insight, we would never have known that although a Toyota Camry can only cook three servings, it boasts a built-in bun warmer under the hood, which makes it an ideal car-cooking vehicle.
Buy moist towelettes when you’re planning your roadside feast.
These are a good thing to keep in the car anyway, but you’ll especially want them if you’re eating out of foil packets by the side of the road. You don’t want to drive with sticky chicken marinade all over your hands. If you do, you’re not getting in our car.
Grill A Steak On Your Car's Engine
Now that we've given you plenty of tips for preparation and knowledge about the entire idea of cooking with your car, let's get to some more specific ideas. This is probably the most badass way to prepare food with your car, and let's face it, for anyone aspiring to become an automotive chef, this is the dream. As with most things that are awesome, engine block grilling is pretty easy to screw up. First off, most car cooking recipes are based on mileage, not minutes, so if you are trying to cook a ham hock while you're sitting in traffic, then you need to factor in time spent idling. Don't think you can throw a side of meat on any part of your engine and expect results either.
Another way to test what parts of the engine are hottest is by drizzling some water around to see what evaportes/steams most and fastest. Remember, be careful of meats that give off excessive amounts of liquid. Fatty juices are about as combustible as they come. Give your meat some flavor with a little salt and pepper, maybe some garlic, a little brown sugar (seriously, only a little), paprika and maybe some red pepper flakes, toss some sliced onions and peppers in there, and you're ready to roll.
Bake Cookies on Your Dashboard
We've all heard that joke on sweltering summer days: it's so hot, you could cook an egg on the sidewalk. It turns out that with the right amount of heat, you can also bake cookies on your dashboard.
We figured that you'd have to be in the hottest parts of Texas or Florida to do this kind of baking in your car, but we found a video of a Minnesota local news team giving it a shot. Because car interiors can get be up to 40 degrees warmer than outside temperatures on a blistering day (especially if they're dark leather and plastic), the inside of your car could easily approach 150 degrees on a hot summer afternoon. This is enough to bake cookies if you leave the dough to sit on your dash for a couple hours. There have been more ambitious dashboard cooking stories as well, such as an Arizona man who prepared a steak dinner on his dash that ended up a perfect medium rare, but we suggest you start with the easy stuff. You have to crawl before you can walk.
Heat Up Sandwiches in Your Footwell
When you're cooking a meal under the hood, you're looking to get your meal hot fast. If you're heating up a sandwich or some rolls and you'd rather not burn them to a crisp, you'll have to look for a solution with a softer touch. If you don't mind a little heat, you'll be able to warm up sandwiches in your car's footwell. All you have to do is wrap your food in foil and crank the hot air. Of course, we recommend that you only try this on the passenger side, as you'll feel pretty stupid if your cold cut sub stops you from being able to apply your brake, and you find yourself in a carbohydrate-caused collision.
Solar Cooking Through Your Windshield
If you've mastered the art of baking cookies and crisping bacon on your dashboard, and want to take your driver's side cooking to the next level, it might be time to invest in a HotPot Cooking Vessel. Although even cold-weather states can hope for a day or two for baking cookies in the summer heat, the HotPot will work best for our friends down South. Even if you live in a warm weather state, many of the HotPot's recipes take up to six hours to execute. If you are going to try the HotPot on a day when the heat isn't quite stifling, HotPot recommends that you position your windshield shades to add extra reflective power to the solar cooker.
Cook Chili and Soup on Your Turbo
We're sure you're aware of the performance benefits that come with a turbo, but it turns out that there are some serious culinary benefits as well. Although your engine block is not the ideal spot to cook liquids, as a wrong turn could gunk up your machinery, you can cheat a little bit and use some canned food (hey, plenty of people use it in their normal kitchens, so why not with your car?).
There are a few spots, like next to the turbo, that it will snugly stay tight. After you beat Vin Diesel in a street race, you can add insult to injury by downing a bowl of chowder during your victory lap.
Warm Up Leftovers With Your Exhaust Manifold
We've all heard of grilling on your engine block, but what if you just want to heat up some leftover lasagna? As the exhaust manifold (the tubes coming off of your engine block) collects fumes from the engine, it doesn't generate nearly the level of heat that your engine's body puts off. This makes the exhaust manifold the microwave to your engine's oven when it comes to automotive cuisine. Of course, you still have to cook the food so that you actually have leftovers, but you should know how to do that by now.
Stores and catalogs that cater to truckers sell 12V slow cookers if you want to cook in your car but don’t necessarily want to cook in your engine bay.
If you want to be completely stubborn and ignore everything else we've just run through because you find cooking in your engine completely disgusting, there's always a slow cooker that you can find with a plug that works with 12V cigarette lighters. But that's not fun. It's just boring and uncreative.
