A few months back a friend was preparing to take a cross-country trip on a budget and asked about Car-B-Q. Car-B-Q? That's cooking food on your engine while you drive. His query piqued my interest so I did a little research and found that truckers and other travelers have been heating and cooking food on their engines for years. My search also lead me to a cookbook, titled Manifold Destiny, in which the authors provide many techniques and recipes for cooking on the road.

I decided to give it a go and a roll of aluminum foil later, I can now say I'm a Car-B-Q chef. It actually went quite well for a first attempt. Watch the video to see how it turned out.

Just so you know, the food is not cooked by the exhaust itself, but rather, by the heat radiating off the pipes in the exhaust manifold. The food was wrapped in three layers of Reynolds Wrap heavy duty, non-stick foil. Because I'm a car enthusiast I keep a clean engine bay, but even if your engine is grimy your food will be safe as long as you wrap it tightly in foil.

While this may not be for everyone and I likely won't do it often (maybe never again), it was fun to try it. If you don't want to cook food you can also use your engine as a heater. Wrap up some hot dogs on the way to the game and by the time you're ready to tailgate, they'll be warm.