Many years ago I read an article in a mechanix illustrated on how to season and wrap a roast in foil and place on the manifold of the engine before a longish trip. At the end of the trip, the roast was done. Slow cooked. Anybody here ever try this? Or even heard of such a thing?
Done lot's of manifold cookinb over the years, but IMHO a roast is a little big for that application. with the heat coming from mostly one side the thickness of the foil packet needs to be fairly thin to insure it cooking through.
As for seasoning, just use what you'd normally use in the oven or in a foil packet on the grill.
Remember they're talking intake manifold not exhaust. Using the exhaust becomes a trick proposition. Hit a long hill and the manifold can reach 800-900 degrees on a gas engine and your dinner goes up in smoke.
Heres's a link to Amazon.com that descibed a whole cookbook dedicated to this genre of cooking. It's called "Manifold Destiny". My personal favorite is to reheat a Braum's hamburger on the engine. They come in foil wrappers. My dad was a brakeman for the Santa Fe about 40 years ago and they cooked all the time on top of the diesel engines. The motors were so big and hot, you could roast a whole pig if you wanted to.
Before we RV'd we used to shove all sorts of stuff on the manifold of the Suburban. It works great for small foil packs but a 350 chevy don't get hot enough to cook a roast. Big block 454s get plenty warm but there's less room to put things. We did find it great for reheating pizza (always order larges the night before) and hot ham and cheese sandwiches.
By the way, keep your eye open for a pizza filled foil pack on US-101 somewhere in northern CA. We lost one last trip.
Mark Quasius
2007 Allegro Bus 42QRP - Cummins 400 ISL
2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland
2005 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited
I understand it started in the depression era by the "okies". I've tried it and it works good, but I'm sure it worked much better on the old straight sixes and eights with horizontal intakes that acted like shelves.
Hi I'm the very proud owner of a pristine 1961 Ray Frank Dodge Motorhome, the first production motorhome. This is an actual picture of my original condition motorhome. The inside is just as nice looking. 131 were produced in 1961 and 400 in 62. I'm trying to locate any other '61 or 62's in any condition but have only found 3 62s. In 63 Frank introduced the fiberglass body produced 700 units. Ray Frank even made up the name "motorhome" and is truely the father of the industry. Well nuf soapboxin...I love my machine-Ken
As a geologist, I used to do a lot of field work. When it was cool in the spring and fall, a hot lunch was appreciated. The simplest to do were cans of soup. Just don't put them on too early or they get too hot and burst. We had great luck with ribs. We would buy pre-cooked ribs, wrap them in foil, and put them on the manifold. Since we were only doing lunch, we always found heating pre-cooked items to be the best. We used a Ford Bronco with the 300 c.i. straight six. They had a large, flat area on top of the exhaust manifold to put all sorts of things. (The straight six had all six pipes on the same side so there was lots of heat too). Nothing like stopping in the middle of nowhere, opening the hood, and chowing down on good, hot ribs.
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