Foods & cuts · Aubergine
Aubergine slices
Cut into slices about a centimetre and a half thick and grilled over medium-high heat, roughly five minutes a side. The one vegetable where the flesh is structurally a sponge.
What it is
- Form
- Cut vegetable
- Typical weight
- 250–500 g
- Typical thickness
- 12–15 mm
- Cut
- Not a cut of anything
Why it behaves as it does
Aubergine is mostly air held in a lattice, which is why it drinks oil and then collapses. Iowa State's figure is about five minutes a side on medium-high for half-inch slices, brushed with oil. The thickness is doing more work than the time: cut thinner it goes limp before it colours, cut much thicker and the centre stays squeaky while the outside blackens. It is also the vegetable most likely to cause a flare-up, because the oil it absorbs runs back out as it softens.
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.
Texture endpoint — how you actually know
Collapsed and silky rather than squeaky
The flesh gives completely under a turner and the slice has darkened at the edges. An aubergine that still squeaks against the tooth is undercooked, whatever colour it has.
How long it takes
Aubergine slices, grilled
Estimated cooking window
10 min
Low confidence
What this rests on
BBQHQ publishes a window for this cook.
- Observations
- 1
- Documents
- 1
- Publishers timing this cook
- 1
Iowa State University Extension and Outreach
Why confidence is not higher
- At least one source does not state the cooker temperature.
How the sources were combined
ONE PUBLISHER, AND A PER-SIDE FIGURE MADE INTO A TOTAL. Iowa State gives 5 minutes per side on a medium-high grill; the 10–10 published here assumes one turn, which is the arrangement the article describes. That step is BBQHQ's and is declared rather than absorbed.
What makes the window as wide as it is
- Cookers hold temperature imperfectly
- Individual animals and pieces differ
When it goes wrong
- Burnt outside, underdone inside
- Vegetables charred outside and hard in the middle — 2 distinguishable causes.
- It stuck to the grate
- Food sticking to the grate — 2 distinguishable causes.
- It caused flare-ups
- Flare-ups — 2 distinguishable causes.
- It went watery or soggy
- Vegetables went soggy instead of browning — 2 distinguishable causes.
- It never browned
- Vegetables went soggy instead of browning — 2 distinguishable causes.
Afterwards
Cooling, keeping and reheating what is left is general guidance for barbecue leftovers. Neither UK authority publishes anything specific to aubergine slices, and BBQHQ does not invent a distinction they do not make.