Foods & cuts · Monkfish

Monkfish fillet

A thick boneless cylinder with no flake and a springy, almost shellfish texture. The one fish here that can be cut into cubes and skewered.

What it is

Form: Fillet
Typical weight: 200–400 g
Typical thickness: 30–50 mm
Cut: Not a cut of anything

Why it behaves as it does

Everything unusual about monkfish follows from the absence of flake. Cod and salmon are built in sheets of muscle separated by connective tissue that dissolves early, which is what makes them fall apart and why they are turned once and handled with a slice; monkfish has almost none of that, so it stays in one piece, tolerates being moved, and can be cubed onto a skewer without the pieces disintegrating — the only fish in the catalogue that can. The membrane on the outside is the practical catch: it contracts hard over heat and will curl a fillet into a bow if it is not trimmed off first. The other catch is thickness, thirty to fifty millimetres of solid muscle with no seams for heat to travel along, which makes it slower through than its size suggests. No window is published here for the same reason as swordfish.

When is it done?

Food-safety endpoint

Food Standards Australia New Zealand
Use separate equipment for raw and cooked meat, and never put cooked meat back on a tray or plate that held it raw. Throw away leftovers unless there is refrigeration available to cool them quickly.
The rule and its source
At a barbecue, raw and cooked meat must be kept apart: separate equipment, and cooked meat never returned to the tray that held it raw.
Well established
- Food Standards Australia New Zealand — States this directly
  “never place cooked meat back on the trays that held the raw meat”
  The single most common barbecue food-safety failure, and one that no cooking temperature prevents.
  Where it applies:
  Australia and New Zealand.
  About this source · Original · retrieved 2026-08-13
Food Standards Agency
Wash a thermometer stem in hot soapy water before and after each use, and do not put the head in water.
The rule and its source
A thermometer stem should be washed in hot soapy water before and after each use, and the head should not be put in water.
Well established
- Clemson Cooperative Extension — States this directly
  “Make sure to clean the stem of your food thermometer with hot soapy water before and after each use. Do not immerse the head in water.”
  Before and after, not just after. a probe that went into an undercooked bird and then into the next one is a cross-contamination route BBQHQ's food-safety model already recognises between surfaces and hands, and has never described for the instrument that touches every piece of meat on the grate.
  The head exclusion is an equipment instruction rather than a hygiene one — electronics — and is recorded here because it is in the same sentence and separating them would misquote the source.
  About this source · Original · retrieved 2026-08-21

When it goes wrong

It came out tough: Prawns, scallops, squid, lobster or octopus came out rubbery — 3 distinguishable causes.
It stuck to the grate: Food sticking to the grate — 2 distinguishable causes.

Afterwards

Cooling, keeping and reheating what is left is general guidance for barbecue leftovers. Neither UK authority publishes anything specific to monkfish fillet, and BBQHQ does not invent a distinction they do not make.

What we don't know about this

The cooking rates BBQHQ holds for fish are written for 'fish' as a category rather than for this species. Applying them here would be a guess about how this particular fish behaves over fire.

What we know we’re missing records what was searched for each of these, and what would settle it.