Cooking food on the engine

[mrk5]

I know people do it, but I'm curious how. Do you just wrap stuff in foil and throw it on the intake? Do you have some sort of box or tray?

Specifically I'm thinking about heating up pre-made breakfast burrito. Sometimes when we're going on long trips if we have a microwave where we're staying, we'll buy a grip of breakfast burritos from a local restaurant, refrigerate them, and reheat in the hotel microwave.

 

[Fastereddie]

I just do two layers of foil and toss em on the intake. Have done it on sbc and heavy equipment engines. Never on a big block though haha. As long as it’s not an oily/ gassy pig, I’ve never had it affect the flavor.

 

[Wes Harden]

found many a burrito forgotten on the intake of our fleet truck lol. Yep well wrapped in foil.

 

[HankScorpio]

We do it all the time with the snowmobiles. Little metal box strapped to the pipe. You can buy them but a US mess kit works great too. The fry pan handle can hose clamp to stuff and the other half snaps in place with the foil burrito inside.

 

[HankScorpio]

 

[Babaganoosh]

I have always thought about making a box that hooks onto the heater hose that runs through and creates a heated oven!

 

[obijuank5]

I have definitely tossed a breakfast taco on the running welder a time or two. Flip it every little while for best results.

 

[Blue85]

First of all, when they say cooking on the manifold, they mean the intake. The exhaust will burn pretty much everything to a crisp in short order. Secondly, there's a huge difference between cooking and reheating. The only way I've done it is to arrive at camp with a 180 degree engine, then take the pre-cooked dinner out of the fridge wrapped in tin foil and set it on the intake. A low, flat TPI plenum is a great shelf. As for cooking raw meat, I have no idea. Heating while driving would require some kind of implement, but I imagine anywhere in the engine compartment would work - except maybe in winter.

I can't imagine eating something that had been in direct contact with the engine. Nor would I want the food making a mess underhood and attracting varmints.

 

[beags86]

We toss tamales on the excavators at work.
Cooking and reheating are two different things. Like da yooper said.
I wouldn't cook as much a keep warm.

 

[ZooMad75]

I've tried this one time. Failed miserably. Tried warming up tamales on the intake of the 350 in my '75 on the way up for a snow run. Mistake number 1, the stack of tamales got sucked up to the hot air valve on the stock air cleaner that would normally pull hot air from the manifold. Except there was no tube since that had headers. Couldn't figure out why the engine was laboring on the highway. Duh..

Mistake #2, not enough foil and leaky smelly carburated engine. The tamales had a whiff of 87 octane and burnt engine oil flavor added to them.

Though setting on the radiator after a long day does pretty good to de-thaw some t-bones.

 

[83ChevyK5Blazer]

Ive warmed up many a breakfast burrito with my old patrol car, throw em on when I left the house and after the first call, toasty warm

 

[mrk5]

Yeah, I wasn't thinking full on cooking food, more like reheating.

My K5 had no floor covering and the passenger side of the center hump would get super hot. That was a great spot for warming up burritos.

I just do two layers of foil and toss em on the intake. Have done it on sbc and heavy equipment engines. Never on a big block though haha. As long as it’s not an oily/ gassy pig, I’ve never had it affect the flavor.

I always say every big block does 2 things; guzzle gas and make heat.

 

[Chickntrk]

I used to lay two breakfast burritos side by side on my 4.0 jeep intake, works like a charm...

At windrock @ktmoutfront heated his left over quesadilla on the intake on Saturdays trail run.

 

[ktmoutfront]

I used to lay two breakfast burritos side by side on my 4.0 jeep intake, works like a charm...

At windrock @ktmoutfront heated his left over quesadilla on the intake on Saturdays trail run.

And it was tasty and warm.

 

[vr1967]

We used to do it on deuce and a half engines in the Army, when we were lucky enough to be around them. We’d sleep between the bows of the canopy on back also, if given the chance.

 

[skunked]

I cook burritos all the time. Double wrap them in foil and let the fat block do the rest.

 

[Tnsejed]

I've got a breadpan with a lid mounted to the valve cover. The LS doesn't have much of a good space to put stuff so this was my solution. It takes longer but works.

 

[mrk5]

Follow up on this. For the Rubicon we froze pre-made breakfast burritos before the trip. We threw them in the cooler when we started the trail so they thawed some. We found that they needed to sit on the engine at least an hour, and 2 was better. They were already wrapped in foil, but we did add an extra layer for security. But it worked great.