Octopus tentacles

Form

Shelled

Typical weight

100–250 g

Typical thickness

20–40 mm

Cut

Not a cut of anything

The only food in this catalogue where the barbecue is not where the cooking happens. Octopus muscle is built around a great deal of collagen, and collagen needs long, wet, gentle heat to convert — an hour or so of simmering is the usual figure quoted, though BBQHQ holds no source for it and does not publish one. What fire adds afterwards is char and a firm edge on flesh that is already tender, and that takes two or three minutes a side at most. Putting raw octopus on a grate produces something inedible, and no amount of grill time fixes it: the heat is dry and fast and it is the wrong kind of heat for the problem. An already-cooked, chilled state is listed for exactly this, because most people meet octopus already cooked. It is also the reason this food sits at the edge of what BBQHQ can honestly describe — the important half of the cook is not a barbecue technique.

It came out tough

Prawns, scallops, squid, lobster or octopus came out rubbery — 3 distinguishable causes.

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

• 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.