Car Cooked Food For Freaky Friday...!

Nearly as far back as the invention of the automobile, folks have been trying to cook with it. Crazy, huh?

Well, believe it or not this notion is still going on (to a certain limited degree)! One invention was even featured in the 1930 Magazine Modern Mechanix, so someone took it as a workable idea! Some craziness just never dies, does it?

Cooking With Car Exhaust

Photo credit: Modern Mechanix

The more adventurous of us may have tried to warm up lunch by placing it atop a hot engine block. A few might even cross over to the crazy side and make a grilled cheese sandwich on the engine manifold. Well, it turns out that’s not exactly a new development—engine-cooked food has been around almost as long as the car.

Way back in June 1930, Modern Mechanix magazine featured a pressure cooker that could be mounted on the rear bumper of a car, with a hose that hooked directly to the exhaust pipe. The idea was for the “hot gases” from the exhaust pipe to heat a pressure cooker, with the inventor claiming that an hour’s drive was “sufficient to thoroughly cook meats and vegetables.” Hopefully the family’s pot roast and potatoes were kept well-sealed away from the disgusting fumes being used to cook them.

Just to prove that a bad idea never dies, a 2015 design competition saw an Iranian team submit a small grill intended to be attached to a car’s exhaust. The Iranian invention was just large enough to grill a single hamburger patty, with the clam-like design hopefully keeping the noxious exhaust away from your meat. If you’ve ever been overcome with the desire for a single, slow-cooked burger wile driving alone, then this is the invention for you.

I guess that craziness in one form or another has been around as long as the car. I reckon it may never truly stop as long as we tend to be a little lazy about some things. Just seems to me that take-out would be a lot less trouble, ya know?

Coffee out on the patio this morning!