Who said that squids need to be boiled in boiling water for 15 minutes? Forget it! For such a period of time, you will receive a rubber piece of inedible meat that cannot be used for its intended purpose. In order not to spoil the seafood, you must have basic skills in cooking squid. Let's talk about everything in order.
How to choose squid
There are uniform aspects that will allow you to purchase a good product without signs of deterioration.
- So, pay attention to the color of the meat. A quality product is light, almost whitish, but by no means yellow. This shade indicates the low quality of raw materials and its freezing and thawing several times in a row.
- If you buy squid carcasses in a single package, evaluate the very structure of the product. Squids should not be glued together with a block of ice. This indicates that the composition was defrosted. High-quality raw materials assume that the carcasses will be easily separated from each other. This feature is achieved when manufacturers freeze the goods individually, then put them in one pack.
- You should pay attention to the coating - ice glaze. If there is a crust of frozen water on the surface, it is likely that you will overpay 1/3 of the total amount for unnecessary liquid.
- Be sure to read the storage conditions and expiration date. And look not at the sticker that was stuck directly in the store, but at the transparent packaging itself. It is marked from the moment of packaging. Often the dates on the two elements are different.
- If possible, buy squid carcasses of relatively equal and small size. The meat of such seafood after cooking comes out juicy and tender, eliminating the possibility of getting a rubber piece.
Squid preparation
- Before you start cooking seafood, you need to remove the skin. It spoils not only the taste of the finished dish, but also the aesthetic appearance. If this is not done, you eat squid with a bitter or sour taste.
- To make the skin peel off easily, send the carcasses to a container of boiling water (temperature about 70 degrees), leave for 1 minute. Then pour cold water over, the skin will quickly come off.
- The squid carcass has a backbone, or chord, which must be removed. The cartilage is easy to remove from the cavity of the meat, just pull on the free edge.
- After all the manipulations, the seafood is rinsed with room temperature water and dried on towels. Then you can start cooking according to the chosen method.
Cooking squid in a double boiler
- pea pepper - 3 pcs.
- laurel - 2-4 pcs.
- squid carcasses (small) - 2-3 pcs.
- After preparing, place the seafood in the steamer bowl. Pour water into a special compartment, supply it with peas and laurel (you can not add it).
- Set the device timer for 9 minutes, wait for the program to complete. Do not open the lid, the steamer cooks in a closed container. Upon completion of the process, remove the soft seafood, taste it.
- If you don't have a steamer, use a steam bath. Prepare the appliance: take a saucepan and a sieve / colander, place the second appliance on the sides of a heat-resistant dish. Pour water into the pan, and pour the squids into a sieve. Simmer after boiling water for 6 minutes.
Cooking squid in the microwave
- water - 80-90 ml.
- salt - to your taste
- squid (carcass) - 2 pcs.
- lemon fresh - 20-25 ml.
- First, prepare the carcasses (excluding the spine, removing the skin). Then rinse the product and leave to dry. Put the squid in a container suitable for cooking in a microwave oven.
- Mix fresh lime with drinking water according to the recipe, add salt and mix. Pour seafood with this composition, cover with a tight lid with steam removal.
- Place the dishes in the microwave, set the power to 700 watts on the appliance. As for the duration of cooking, 2.5-3 minutes is enough. If the power is higher than specified, the time is reduced accordingly.
Cooking squid on the stove
- salt - 25 gr.
- drinking water - 1.9-2 liters.
- squid (carcasses) - 900 gr.
- Pour water into a fireproof cooking pot, add salt and put on fire. Simmer until the grains dissolve. At this time, prepare the squid.
- Dip them in boiling water, then immediately put them under a stream of cold water. Remove the skin. Place the seafood in boiling water with salt, cook for 1.5-2 minutes.
Cooking frozen squid (with defrosting)
- frozen squid - 700 gr.
- seasonings (any) - at the discretion
- table water - 1.8 l.
- Remove the squid carcasses from the freezer, remove from the packaging and place in a bowl to thaw. Leave at room temperature or on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator for 10-12 hours.
- After thawing, drain the liquid, rinse the squid with cool water, let it drain. Scald seafood with boiling water and dip in ice water, remove the skin.
- Prepare a pot for cooking, pour water into it and add spices. Wait until it boils, send squids to the bubbling liquid. Boil them for 2 minutes, then remove and cool.
Cooking frozen squid (without defrosting)
- filtered water - 2 l.
- salt - 20 gr.
- frozen squid - 900-1000 gr.
- seasoning - optional
- Remove the carcasses from the freezer, put them side by side in the sink. Boil the kettle, pour hot water over the seafood on both sides. Then immediately rinse the carcasses under the tap, get rid of the skin.
- Send the prepared squids to a pot of boiled salted water. Cook over medium heat for 2-3 minutes. After the expiration date, remove and cool.
Cooking squid soft in 10 seconds
- drinking water - 1.7 l.
- squid - 800 gr.
- salt - 15 gr.
- Prepare seafood for further manipulations. Squid must be freed from the skin and spine. After cleaning, rinse the carcasses and let them dry.
- Pour water into the pan, add salt and boil until the crystals dissolve. When the solution boils intensely, start lowering one squid into it.
- Count to 10, then remove and cool. Repeat manipulations with each carcass separately. At the end, cool, cut into rings and send to the salad.
- squid carcasses - 3-4 pcs.
- table water - 2 l.
- salt - 30 gr.
- lemon juice - 40 ml.
- greens (any) - 20 gr.
- Peel the squid from the skin and chord, then rinse, dry and chop into rings about 1 cm thick. Boil water according to the recipe, add lemon juice, salt and chopped herbs to it.
- Start pouring squid rings into the boiling water, do not turn off the fire. Simmer for 1-1.5 minutes, then remove and cool.
- If seafood is cut into smaller pieces, then the cooking time is reduced to 45-60 seconds. After all the manipulations, drain the seafood through a colander.
In order to ultimately find a juicy and healthy seafood, you need to adhere to the main principles of cooking. Squid can be boiled on the stove, in a double boiler or microwave.
Video: how to cook squid
Many are not averse to eating squid salad in a cafe or restaurant, but they do not dare to cook this delicacy on their own. Still, this is not the most common product in Russian refrigerators. Housewives are afraid to do something wrong during cooking. Let's find out how to cook squid for salad.
Where are squid sold
For Russia, this is in some way an exotic product, so you are unlikely to find them in a small shop near the house. But they are always available in large supermarkets or hypermarkets. These mollusks are caught in Southeast Asia, so Russians mostly only have access to frozen, canned and smoked squid.
How to choose the right squid
Buy the product in large stores that can afford high-quality refrigerators. Moreover, in hypermarkets, buyers have the opportunity to closely examine mollusks, the appearance of which can tell a lot.
For example, if pieces of squid are frozen into one layer and covered with a thick crust of ice, this means that they have been repeatedly thawed and refrozen. Such manipulations with seafood are fraught with severe poisoning. But even if unpleasant consequences for the stomach can be avoided, the taste of the dish will turn out to be worse than expected, and when cooked, the squids will burst.
The meat should be white. The shade of the skin is unimportant - the whole gamut from light lilac to silver gray is considered the norm.
If you have the slightest doubt, ask for a quality certificate, be interested in the date of production of seafood and their catch.
Frozen squid is not a product that is worth buying for future use. It is better to cook them on the day of purchase, as a household refrigerator will not provide the optimal freezing temperature. In addition, during transportation from the store to the house, the clams will have time to thaw slightly, which is not very good.
universal way
It is widely believed that you definitely need to cook squid. The time recommended for this “execution” (you can’t call it otherwise) varies between 3-5 minutes. If you ever want to serve wrinkled pieces of rubber to the table, be sure to do so.
After three minutes in boiling water, the squid will literally shrink, become very dense, and it will be unpleasant to eat them.
Boil water in a saucepan. Optionally add a few black peppercorns and any herbs and spices you like. For beauty, you can put red paprika in powder, beetroot juice, turmeric, curry - these components will tint the meat. If you further plan to use squid in complex dishes, then adding salt is optional.
Dip thawed squids in boiling water, wait 15-20 seconds and remove. If you cook carcasses, then do not lower them into the water all at once, but boil them one at a time. Wait for the water to boil before processing the next carcass. Considering that each piece takes 15 seconds to cook, this will not take much time. You can store boiled squid in the refrigerator for two days.
If you didn’t know all this and by the time you read our article you had already started cooking squid, the time can, on the contrary, be increased to 20 minutes. Then the mollusks will become soft again, although a reduction in their size by half can no longer be avoided, and the taste will not be up to par.
How to defrost and clean squid
Before preparing squids for salad, they need to be thawed and cleaned. You can also boil them frozen, but this will increase the cooking time and, accordingly, make the seafood "rubber".
The squid is defrosted at room temperature. Just leave the carcass in the open air for 1-3 hours. In this way, the maximum of useful substances is preserved.
Defrosting in cool (about 20 degrees) water is acceptable. But you should not use hot liquid for this purpose, and even more so boiling water, otherwise the squid fillet will darken and the taste will deteriorate.
You can clean both before (preferably) and after cooking. Hard plates, transparent cartilage should be removed from the carcass, the tentacles should be removed and the film removed from the mollusk.
After cooking, it will be easier to make the latter, but an unpleasant smell may appear. And the skin is very bitter and can easily spoil the taste of the dish.
If you clean before cooking, then it is more convenient to remove the film with a knife under running water. To simplify the process, first place the carcasses in a liquid heated to 60-70 degrees for five minutes. Then the skin is easily removed by friction, and the remnants can be removed by washing the seafood with cold water.
Cooking squid for salad - simple ways
It is not necessary to conduct heat treatment with boiling water before preparing squid for salad. They can be eaten immediately after cleaning, but in general, even for sushi, squid is treated with boiling water. We recommend doing the same.
A versatile and quick way: boil the kettle, pour boiling water over the squids, drain the water and sprinkle the clams with vinegar.
Or place the sliced squid in a bowl, add salt, pepper (red or black), any spices or herbs of your choice, a tablespoon of lemon juice or wine vinegar. Pour the contents of the bowl with boiling water and strain the water after 5 minutes.
Calamari and microwave
Delicious microwave squids are a rarity. But this method can help out if there is no stove. For example, if you are preparing a snack at work or in the country. We warn you that the first time it is unlikely that you will be able to achieve softness and juiciness of seafood. You will have to try several times, varying the temperature and time in search of their optimal combination.
Cut the squids so that they are reduced by half. Arrange on a plate in a single layer. Salt and pepper as desired. Fill the squids with water so that it covers them halfway. Send the plate to the microwave for 1-4 minutes depending on the power.
You can try boiling squid in your own juice. Also arrange them on a plate, sprinkle with oil and lemon juice, sprinkle with spices, but do not add water. Microwave for 1 minute at maximum power.
Salad with rice and egg
Now that we figured out how to "cook" squid soft, it's time to move on to salad recipes.
For this hearty dish, take 2 medium onions, cut into half rings and place in hot water for a few minutes. Prepare a pound of squid in any way described above. Cut into strips 2 boiled eggs.
Mix 3 tablespoons of boiled rice, eggs, squid and onions. Salt and pepper to taste, season with mayonnaise.
Salad with grapes and cheese
This is already a more refined salad with squid, and the dishes should be appropriate. Therefore, take half a bunch of lettuce leaves, coarsely chop or tear, place in a salad bowl and mix with the juice of a quarter of a lemon.
Put on a squid carcass cut into thin strips, 150 grams of sultana grapes and the same amount of feta (or Adyghe) cheese cut into cubes. Season with salt and gently drizzle with olive oil.
Festive salad
Take 750 grams of squid (already peeled and treated with boiling water). If you cooked seafood without salt, then rub the carcasses with it from the inside and cut them into rings. Scald 3 ripe tomatoes with boiling water, remove the skin and finely chop.
Pour half a glass of olive oil into a saucepan and put the squid and tomatoes in it. Add 3 chopped garlic cloves, chopped fresh parsley and 125 ml dry white wine. Simmer covered over low heat until soft.
You can decorate the resulting squid salad with pitted olives, sliced \u200b\u200bcircles, and parsley leaves.
diet salad
Cut 2 carcasses of squid, add 1 grated apple and 200 grams of chopped apples to them Season with sesame oil and soy sauce.
We told you how to cook squid for salad, namely, the correct observance of this procedure is the main secret of dishes with these mollusks. Now he is known to you. It remains to choose the appropriate salad recipe, of which there are a great many.
Mediterranean cuisine is famous for its recipes for preparing a variety of shellfish dishes. Seafood is rich in easily digestible proteins, iodine, phosphorus and iron.
Beneficial features
A special place in the list of cephalopods is occupied by squids. Their meat is recommended for those who are trying to lead a healthy lifestyle, eat a full and varied diet. A large supply of potassium, B vitamins, valuable fats allows you to maintain stable heart function, maintaining health for many years.
How to cook squid correctly? How to cook a tasty and healthy dish of these seafood? We will now tell you in detail. Unfortunately, freshly chilled seafood is practically not found in Russian stores, so gourmets have to be content with what they have - frozen semi-finished products. Most often, in the fish departments, you can buy squid carcasses or tentacles already peeled. However, do not rush to buy. A convenient semi-finished product was most likely exported from Asian countries, where it underwent mandatory processing with chemical enzymes. This preparation allows you to keep the product in a marketable condition for as long as possible. But this process does not contribute to the preservation of useful, nutritious and taste properties. Therefore, when planning to cook healthy food, you need to know how to cook squid properly and which ones to buy are best.
How to cook frozen squid? In the same way as fresh ones, but before cooking they should be properly thawed. Do not place shellfish in hot water to speed up the process. This can destroy beneficial substances and significantly impair the taste of the product. Frozen squid must be placed in the refrigerator. At a temperature of about five degrees, keep the seafood for two hours, preventing complete thawing. A product that has not been completely defrosted is easier to process. Thawed squids should have a slight marine smell of iodine, this confirms their freshness and freezing in compliance with the technology. If the shellfish have no smell at all or, even worse, they smell like old fish, this indicates that the product has been frozen and thawed repeatedly. In the process of cooking, such pulp will spread and acquire an unappetizing grayish color. You can eat such seafood, but there will be very little benefit from this food.
How to properly clean squid?
Having thawed the semi-finished product to the desired condition, you should proceed to the next step - cleaning. If the squid is completely unprocessed, then the head and tentacles should be torn off the carcass with a sharp movement. Together with them, the insides will also be separated. It remains only to remove the chitin plates and remove the thin skin from the carcasses.
When it is possible to acquire headless squids, they usually do not have tentacles either. The hostess is left only with external processing. If the product was not completely defrosted, but retained a light tissue strength, then this will greatly facilitate the process of cleaning the carcass from a pinkish-gray film. For cleaning, it is convenient to use a sharp knife with a thin blade. Prying off the skin in the place of the cut left from the head, you should pull it towards the tail. Usually a thin film is separated without much difficulty. In the case when the seafood has completely thawed, it becomes more difficult to cope with cleaning. Then you need to choose a knife with a rounded tip and scrape off the skin with it, trying not to damage the carcass. The peeled squid pulp has an even white color.
After thorough processing of the carcass, carefully rinse it under running cold water. If the water temperature is high, this can significantly reduce the taste of the product, making it less juicy.
Cooking time
How to cook squid correctly? This question is often asked by housewives who do not cook seafood dishes very often. There are some tips on this, but most importantly, you need to know exactly how much to cook squid in time. The consistency of the finished product and the preservation of nutrients and beneficial properties depend on this. Boiling seafood should take no more than three minutes. Otherwise, the pulp will become hard and inedible.
Cooking process
So, how to boil squid correctly? Now we'll tell you. Prepared carcasses should be dipped in boiling water, pre-salted and flavored with bay leaf and a few peas of black pepper. In order not to make a mistake with the cooking time, you can apply the following move. After lowering the squid into boiling water, wait for the water to boil again and start counting to ten. After finishing the countdown, you need to immediately remove the clams with a slotted spoon and let them cool. A sign of the readiness of the product will be a rich white color of the pulp.
If the cooking time is maintained, the meat will turn out to be unusually tender and juicy. Do not immediately cook a lot of squid. This significantly reduces the temperature of the water, and the process of re-boiling takes much longer. It is better to boil semi-finished products in small portions, putting two or three pieces into the pan.
What to do if the re-boiling was missed?
If suddenly the main rule of cooking is violated, then you should not fall into despair - the situation can still be saved. Having delayed the end of cooking, you do not need to remove the product from the pan, let it continue to cook further. It will take at least half an hour to be fully prepared. Squid meat will again become juicy and tasty, but the volume of the finished product will decrease significantly. Unfortunately, useful substances in it will also decrease.
Cooking in a marinade
Not everyone knows about the features of how to cook squid for salad. To properly prepare a semi-finished product, it should be boiled in a marinade. To do this, in cold water you need to dissolve two tablespoons of table salt and three tablespoons of granulated sugar. When boiling, pour in two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and add a few black peppercorns and a couple of bay leaves. Thanks to the prepared mixture, the squid pulp acquires an unusual juiciness and piquant taste. Seafood cooked in brine can also be consumed as an independent dish.
Now, knowing in detail how to cook squids correctly, you can cook on their basis a considerable number of various salads and snacks. It is in cold dishes that the taste of seafood is revealed especially brightly and subtly. Below is a description of a simple salad recipe that can be prepared not only for a family dinner, but also for a festive table.
Delicious last meal
For two servings of the dish, you need to take one hundred grams of boiled squid pulp and cut it thinly across the fibers into strips. Peel two boiled eggs and cut into small cubes. Also chop boiled potatoes, fresh cucumber and green onions. Tear a few lettuce leaves into small pieces with your hands. Mix all products and add canned or frozen green peas to them. It is recommended to fill the salad with mayonnaise or low-fat sour cream. For taste, you can add a little black pepper and salt. Put the finished mixture in a salad bowl and decorate it with finely chopped dill.
Squid, a favorite delicacy of millions of people, belongs to a subspecies that, in addition to the squid themselves, includes cuttlefish and octopus.
How to cook squid? “Yes, it’s simple,” anyone will answer, “throw it into boiling water for 3-5 minutes.” And it will be wrong. The result of such cooking will please only a very inexperienced person, for whom squids are a rarity.
Cooking squid correctly is a whole art, to which a cycle of classes is devoted in specialized cooking schools (although the plan of lectures also includes butchering cephalopods). And in Sydney, at the famous Fish Market, there is a Squid School, training in which is aimed only at the correct preparation of these mollusks, which can hardly be called mollusks.
So, there are only three cooking methods that answer the question "How to cook squid?" - super-fast, very fast and very long. Also with heat for cooking squid - either fire, or small, small.
It is worth first considering the second, most common method of cooking squid, codenamed "very fast". Cooking squid correctly means practically blanching them in boiling water. In the water for cooking, add peppercorns, bay leaf, salt, you can parsley and dill with whole branches, previously tied into a “bouquet”. We throw the prepared carcass into a cool, quickly count to ten and pull it out with a slotted spoon. All! The squids are ready. It is probably worth mentioning that the squids must first be gutted (cut squids are sold with offal) and peeled. It is better to lower the squid into boiling water one at a time - it is easier to catch and less risk of overcooking while the first squid is pulled out. We launch the next one into the water only when it boils again. The squid that has already passed boiling water should immediately be cooled under running water to stop the thermal processes. Just do not boil squid for the 3 minutes recommended by many cookbook authors. Pity the product!
Italians answer the question "How to cook squid?" in my own way. It is their method that we have under the motto "super-fast". By the way, the majority of Australians support them. With this method of cooking, squids are not boiled at all. Many people know that in order to easily remove the skin from the squid, it must be poured with boiling water for a couple of moments. The Italians believe that after cleaning the squid, it should be poured with boiling water again, and no cooking. After a minute, drain the water, sprinkle the hot squids with vinegar or lemon juice (to taste) and leave to cool. Squids cooked in this way are guaranteed not to be overcooked. But if you overexpose in boiling water, they will turn into a kind of rubber - both in appearance and taste, greatly decreasing in size.
When the squids are still not kept track of and the shriveled rubber hard squids no longer excite the appetite, the third method comes into play - “for a very long time”. By the way, many peoples inhabiting coastal areas do not recognize quick ways to cook squid, believing that you should not eat "raw" cephalopods. A wonderful feature of squid is that the “rubber” product after 30 minutes of heat treatment becomes soft and edible again. True, it boils down almost twice. So, this method is suitable for those who have a lot of these very squids. Small, slow fire, 30-90 minutes of processing and "voila"! This method is suitable for preparing exotic dishes, for example, "Squid stuffed with rice, with fresh tomato sauce, with basil and thyme." The beauty! Here's another: "Squid in red wine with garlic and sage." When cooking for a long time, the saucepan with squid must be closed, and you can cook not only on the stove, but also in the oven, following the same principle: a small fire and more than 30 minutes.
How to cook frozen squid? Yes, exactly the same way: we first completely defrost, clean from the insides, pour boiling water to remove the skin, and begin to think about the topic “How to cook squid?”, Going through all of the above methods in our minds.
In conclusion, it is worth saying that our simplest methods - boil squid and into a salad - can be slightly modified if you marinate after cleaning the squid in milk or yogurt, lime or lemon juice, cook pickled squid on a grill (very quickly) or barbecue, fry in batter (super-fast). Squid can be beaten before frying, like regular chops. There are many different dishes with squid. Even listing them will take a lot of space and time.
Well, the simplest tips on the topic "How to cook squid?" distributed. Now the choice is for those who want to treat themselves to squid: very quickly and gently, or will we go the beaten path and cook for 3 minutes? Everyone has their own answer!
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