Cooking on Engine Block??
Contributors to this thread:General Topic
From: JohnMC
08-Nov-19
Any one have any experience cooking on engine? About to start pheasant hunting a hot meal in the middle of day is nice. Thought about trying this when out. Sometimes a decent drive from one property to the next and could have something cooking on the drive. Would be interested in either cooking something totally or things that a precooked then put in a ice chest and warmed up at lunch.
From: skookumjt
08-Nov-19
I remember there being a book about doing that exact thing when I was a teenager.
From: Grubby
08-Nov-19
Omg, that’s probably worse than my plywood smoker!! My uncle warms prime rib on his manifold every year during gun deer hunting
From: fubar racin
08-Nov-19
My wife and I did a late season elk hunt for our honeymoon we were dirt floor poor couldn’t afford a stove or bbq ect so for our entire hunt we cooked cans of soup on the motor then cans of soup in the camp fire at night lol. That’s the extent of my engine block culinary skills though.
From: coelker
08-Nov-19
We do it all the time. The key is finding a place hot enough. We do breakfast burrito in foil, regular burritos in foil, corn dogs, and anything else you can pre-make and wrap in foil. I have done hot ham and cheese sandwiches, This is all on my older jeep and on my blazer. We have done some on a newer vehicle, but it is a lot harder finding a spot hot enough and where you can put food.
Barbecue chicken, sausages and sour krout, pizza (gets tricky because you need tooth picks to hold foil up from cheese, pizza bites are better,
I can keep going but those are all things we have done on our engine...
From: JohnMC
08-Nov-19
I was thinking on the lines of preseasoning some deer, antelope, elk, or sheep steaks. Maybe adding some onions, peppers, or potatoes and cooking raw in tin foil. Or buying some tamales or burritos and then warming up in foil. But open to any ideas. Although can soup does not hit the spot!
From: 'Ike' (Phone)
08-Nov-19
I’ve done burritos wrapped in foil on them, but that’s about it...
From: coelker
08-Nov-19
If you have the spot to cook it steak would not be bad. I am always cooking for 4 when we do it so I always look for individual things I can wrap and share... Things that take less time and can be easily rotated... We usually use it to reheat not cook, however one time we did cook trout with onion and butter on it.
From: drycreek
08-Nov-19
When I was running a dozer for a living I warmed many a meal on the manifold. Lost a couple in the belly pan too. Bummer ! I don’t think it will get hot enough to actually cook, but I’ve been wrong before.
From: JohnMC
08-Nov-19
Rob and issues with liquids dripping onto engine?
From: Glunt@work
08-Nov-19
We do it with a "Muffpot" attached to the snowmobile exhaust.
From: TooManyBowsBob
08-Nov-19
When I was in Viet Nam, we make a wire basket that we hung on the exhaust manifold. We would throw our cans of C's in the basket in the morning and then have a hot lunch. Didn't work so well with the spaghetti though, the cans would explode.
TMBB
From: JL
08-Nov-19
There was a someone...maybe Fred Trost in Michigan(??) who cooked some straps and taters wrapped in aluminum foil with some butter. He put them on the block by the carb, drove on a tank of gas and when he stopped for the next fuel stop, pulled the package out and it was done.
From: cnelk
08-Nov-19
cnelk's Link
I used to have a snowmobile that had a 'Hotdogger' mounted on the exhaust. It was pretty slick. You put a couple burritos in there, race around the lake / trails and it got your food hot!
See link
From: cnelk
08-Nov-19
cnelk's Link
Here's one just for you JohnMC - its called the Muffpot - see link
From: JohnMC
08-Nov-19
Brad- Would those work on a truck? Says for snowmobile
Not sure I'd drop $40 on it though...
From: cnelk
08-Nov-19
Sure. You may have to attach it under the hood, maybe to the top radiator hose or something
From: longbeard
08-Nov-19
This is a little off topic but When I was in college, I worked on a road construction crew. We had to “patch” the county roads with blacktop to prep them to be stone and oiled. We would walk behind the dump truck full of blacktop and shovel it off as we went along. Anyway we would take turns bringing in lunch everyday to be cooked in the dump truck. We would wrap steaks, chicken, khilbossa as well as corn on the cob and baked potatoes in tinfoil, give them to the drivers. when they went to the plant to load up with blacktop they would throw the “special of the day“ in as the blacktop was being dropped. By time they drove back to the construction site and we shoveled the blacktop off, our lunch was cooked.
From: Swampbuck
08-Nov-19
I’ve done ham and cheese sandwiches on the engine. Also cooked a lot of chili and beanie weenies on the gear case of the tractor
From: JohnMC
08-Nov-19
Would it get hot enough to cook a steak in say 20 mins?
From: GF
08-Nov-19
GF's Link
The cookbook you’re looking for is “Manifold Destiny”.
Here’s one...
From: cnelk
08-Nov-19
If you plan ahead, you could sous vide the steak at home, put it up n a cooler and then just reheat it in just a few mins using the engine heat of some sort.
From: ben h
08-Nov-19
I had heard of this idea before, but never knew anyone who actually tried it. The Amazon reviews on GF's book link look pretty funny and helpful as well.
We always take a small portable grill and just cook on that. Never tried it while driving though, I don't think it would stay lit.
From: Meat Grinder
08-Nov-19
I saw Dan Fitzgerald cook a meal wrapped in foil under the hood of his truck on one of his hunting shows.
Do you think Jeff Foxworthy knows about this? Sounds a little redneck if you ask me.
From: fishnride
08-Nov-19
We used to do a lot of 4 wheeling. Tried a bunch of different things, but the trick seemed to be somewhat thin meats. Not like a roast or anything. The best we came up with was a slab of those precooked ribs from the grocery store wrapped in foil. Turned out awesome every time!
From: DanaC
09-Nov-19
Cooking depends a lot on temperature *control*. 'Nuff said.
From: JL
09-Nov-19
Meat....you're correct. That was Dan Fitzgerald I was thinking of who did that cooking segment. I found the YT of it.
From: elkmtngear
09-Nov-19
Used to stick a can of Raviolis in the exhaust manifold, way back in the day...we were real gourmets back then, lol !
From: BULELK1
11-Nov-19
Never done the engine gig but I have parked in the facing sun and used the dashboard hoagie or something like a burrito in tin foil and had it really nice and warm/tasty after a long morning hunt.
Good luck, Robb
From: APauls
11-Nov-19
I have a hard tonneau cover and have put my charcoal grill on there while driving around ice fishing right behind the cab but that’s as close as I come
From: 8point
12-Nov-19
Back in the 60's my buddy and I were hunting Caribou on the Denali Highway west of Paxon. We were driving a 52 Willys Jeep wagon. It was bitter cold and in the morning, we put C rations on the manifold to thaw them out, not necessarily to cook them, that is after we had to build a small fire under the block to get the jeep started.
From: RD
13-Nov-19
When I was in College Bemidji sate Mn we used thaw out our frozen Beer that way.
From: Jeff_T
15-Nov-19
efgt
From: Patdel
15-Nov-19
You can do a can of soup on the dashboard. Put defroster on high. Takes a while but it works.
