Foods & cuts · Courgette
Courgette slices
Sliced lengthways about half an inch thick and grilled four to eight minutes depending on which source you read. High water content, so the enemy is steaming rather than burning.
What it is
- Form
- Cut vegetable
- Typical weight
- 150–300 g
- Typical thickness
- 12–15 mm
- Cut
- Not a cut of anything
Why it behaves as it does
Two independent extension services disagree usefully here. Iowa State gives four to five minutes a side on medium-high for half-inch lengthways slices; North Dakota State gives six to eight minutes total for half-inch slices. Both are right about their own arrangement and BBQHQ keeps them apart rather than averaging them into a number neither publisher wrote. The variable underneath is water: a courgette is mostly it, so a slice cut too thin releases its water and stews in it, and the grill marks people want come from the surface being dry enough to colour before the inside gives up its moisture.
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
Tender with defined grill marks
The slice bends without snapping and carries dark bars where it met the grate. Water pooling on the surface means the heat is too low and it is stewing.
How long it takes
Courgette slices, grilled
Estimated cooking window
6 min–8 min
Moderate confidence
Why this is a range, not a number
- Cookers hold temperature imperfectly
- Individual animals and pieces differ
Cook to the endpoint, not to the clock. The window tells you when to start checking.
What this rests on
BBQHQ publishes a window for this cook.
- Observations
- 2
- Documents
- 2
- Publishers timing this cook
- 2
Iowa State University Extension and Outreach · North Dakota State University Extension
Why confidence is not higher
- At least one source does not state the cooker temperature.
How the sources were combined
TWO INDEPENDENT LAND-GRANT EXTENSION SERVICES, AND THEY DO NOT QUITE AGREE. North Dakota State gives 6–8 minutes as a total; Iowa State gives 4–5 minutes per side, which is 8–10 if the food is turned once. BBQHQ publishes the NDSU total because it is stated as a total and needs no arithmetic from us, and keeps the Iowa State figure beside it rather than averaging the two into a number neither publisher wrote. Where they differ they differ about arrangement — cut, heat and turning — rather than about the vegetable.
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 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 courgette slices, and BBQHQ does not invent a distinction they do not make.