Comparisons · Two cuts
Salmon fillet or Tuna steak
Two oily fish of similar thickness and completely different serving conventions, and the pair where BBQHQ has to be careful: one is timed from a published rate and the other is conventionally served at a doneness no food authority endorses. The page says which is which rather than averaging them.
What each one is
Salmon fillet
A fatty fish with delicate muscle structure, which fails in the opposite direction from meat: it falls apart rather than toughening.
Tuna steak
A dense steak of dark muscle, very commonly served rare in the middle — which puts the culinary endpoint and the safety endpoint further apart than for any other fish.
What actually differs
| Aspect | Salmon fillet | Tuna steak |
|---|---|---|
| Typical weight | 120–220 g | 150–250 g |
| Typical thickness Thickness governs timing more than weight or cut name does — Weber's own chart roughly triples the time between a one-inch and a two-inch steak. | 20–35 mm | 20–30 mm |
| What BBQHQ's evidence gives for time Windows from the cooking profiles, at the conditions each profile states. They are not comparable to the minute — the profiles differ in cooker and configuration — and are shown to give the scale. | 10–12 minutes | 6–12 minutes |
| How it is usually cooked | direct heat, two-zone fire | direct heat |
| What tends to go wrong From BBQHQ's troubleshooting index. Choosing between two cuts is partly choosing which failure you would rather risk. | came out dry, stuck to the grate, caused flare-ups, fell apart | came out dry |
Can one stand in for the other?
Not a substitute for this
BBQHQ does not treat these as substitutes. They want different methods, and swapping them without changing the cook is how one of them comes out badly.
Food safety — read this first
This swap changes the safe endpoint
These are different food forms — fillet and steak — and form governs the safe endpoint rather than species. Do not carry a temperature across this swap; check the endpoint for the one you are actually cooking.