How to cook a steak in a boiling hot car during an Australian heatwave

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If your car feels like an oven on a hot day, you may as well try and use it like one.

An Australian man has turned lunch into a science experiment, sticking steak in his car on a boiling hot day to see if it'll cook.

In the experiment, titled "Cooking a steak in the Australian Sun, on the dash of a 2005 Holden Monaro CV8," reddit user chumblet placed two steaks on a tray in the back seat of his car. It was as the city of Adelaide had an absolute scorcher on Thursday, with temperatures climbing above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

Steak in the car

To ensure they were ready for lunch, the steaks were left to cook in the car from 10 a.m. and the heat was monitored during the morning.

Unfortunately, the initial placement of the meat between the seats of his Holden Monaro didn't seem to do anything, so the tray was placed on the dashboard where temperatures reached 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit). That's a little less than the high heat setting on the stove, making this a very slow cook.

By 12:20 p.m., the steaks were ready with an internal temperature of 63.2 degrees Celsius (145 degrees Fahrenheit), finished off with a gas torch to make sure they don't make someone ill. It turns out the steaks were "a bit dry" for the chef's liking, so the method may need to be refined for future attempts.

It mirrors a similar experiment by Australian chef Matt Moran, where a leg of lamb was placed in a car on a hot day. It was part of a campaign to warn about the risks of leaving children locked in cars over the summer.

TL;DR: Cook your steak in the car, not your kids.