Foods & cuts · Globe artichoke
Halved artichokes
Boiled or steamed first, then halved and grilled cut face down. Like octopus, the fire is the last few minutes of this rather than the cook.
What it is
- Form
- Cut vegetable
- Typical weight
- 80–150 g
- Typical thickness
- 30–50 mm
- Cut
- Not a cut of anything
Why it behaves as it does
The only vegetable in the catalogue that must be cooked before it can be grilled, and for a structural reason: an artichoke is a flower bud made of tough overlapping bracts around a fibrous choke, and dry radiant heat cannot get through that to soften the heart before the outside carbonises. So it is boiled or steamed until a leaf pulls away easily, then halved, the hairy choke scooped out, and the cut face put on the grate for colour and smoke. An already-cooked, chilled state is listed because prepared hearts in oil are how most people meet them and they go straight on. It is also the food with the worst yield here — most of what you buy is discarded. No duration is published for either stage.
When is it done?
Food-safety endpoint
BBQHQ holds no food-safety rule for this food. We are not showing you another jurisdiction’s figure in its place — check your national food-safety authority.
When it goes wrong
- Burnt outside, underdone inside
- Dense whole vegetables never getting tender — 2 distinguishable causes.
- Still raw in the middle
- Dense whole vegetables never getting tender — 2 distinguishable causes.
Afterwards
Cooling, keeping and reheating what is left is general guidance for barbecue leftovers. Neither UK authority publishes anything specific to halved artichokes, and BBQHQ does not invent a distinction they do not make.
What we don't know about this
No published barbecue cooking time has been found for this food. The sources that cover it describe how to prepare it or how to keep it safe, not how long it takes over fire.
What we know we’re missing records what was searched for each of these, and what would settle it.