Cooking With Par Cans

[MRW Lights]

Thought about waiting for a Throwback Thursday for this one, but seeing as I rarely know what day it is anymore and I was hungry when I cam across these photos I thought it would be a fun one to share. Feeling a little nostalgic for an old friend and great mentor in Grad school several years ago who joked about how they used to cook lunch from 711 on the dock with parcans... that inevitably turned into us teaching thermodynamics and electrical curves in our stage electrics class by you guessed it... cooking with pars. I've lost my notes in the days since, but if memory recalls we used the range of WFL to NSP's and an Express 24/48 for temperature control... If I recall other than pictured the menu included: Frozen Pizza, Tater Tots, Bagels, Hot Dogs, Smores and grilled ham and cheese. Enjoy! (no pars were harmed in the making of this meal also don't try this at home )

 

[rsmentele]

Ah yes, the ol' PAR-B-Q

 

[Lextech]

I was doing a weekend long dance marathon many years ago and at one point the floor ACLs behind the drum riser started looking very odd. So I go up and take a look. It seems one of my students had decided that his pizza slices needed to be reheated and he had placed a slice on each of the four lights.

 

[StradivariusBone]

I do this with my HS kids! Smores seem to be the easiest, we tried frozen pizza one time (mushy) and jiffy pop works decently as well! Goes a long way to explaining why gels wear out after use.

 

[macsound]

Couldn't do that with one of those new fangled LED pars.
I used to work at a church that had no insulation. We usually showed up at 6am for a quick runthrough before the 8am service. Someone would always ask to turn the heater on in the winter, I'd reply with "I'll turn the lights on and it'll be warm in no time."
At least once a season, I'd be at work sick and accidentally indulge someone asking to turn the heater on. With both the heater and stage light, the AC would be on by halfway through the 8am service.

 

[almorton]

There's a photo somewhere, possibly even video, of bigclive frying bacon on a par can atop Edinburgh castle, during the tattoo run.

 

[TimMc]

Infrared cooking. That's how Ruth's Chris Steak House does it. Over 700°F at the cooking plane, almost 1500° at the burner. They have a patent on it.

How many PAR cans, of which beam width(s), would it take? I like my rib eyes medium-rare....

 

[derekleffew]

Amateurs!

In high school, we used single-plate resistance dimmers to reheat pizza.

Cruel trick: a small handful of raw popcorn in the drip tray of your buddy's carbon-arc followspot.

 

[Michael K]

The only PAR cooking video I found on Clive's channel was (coincidence?) for popcorn:

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I haven't done any PAR cooking, but they do make nice foot warmer/dryers on a soggy day, and I once set up a few to dry a freshly painted furry stuffed prop (wasn't the right color or something).

 

[almorton]

I have a feeling the still photo I saw wasn't on Clive's channel, it was on a tangentially related site.

 

[mrtrudeau23]

At the end of my senior year in undergrad, we (it was the TD's idea) popped the lens out of a 12" Fresnel and made Jiffypop. Worked pretty well, if I recall correctly.

 

[jmabray]

Alton Brown did a pizza oven when out on tour a few years ago. Called it the ”MegaBake”

 

[StradivariusBone]

I saw his show a year or two ago. He took a huge fresnel and made popcorn with it. He's a really funny guy!

 

[Ted jones]

I knew a guy that used to roast hot dogs in carbon arc Supers. I, of course, would never do anything like that.

 

[What Rigger?]

I've cooked plenty of leather sleeves for rope slide stunts on par cans to form and break in the leather. But did not serve for lunch.

 

[MNicolai]

Here's the Alton Brown video.

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