Cooking squid is not difficult and it is important to be aware of that. Too many cooks quit before they even begin, not knowing how straightforward this type of seafood is to prepare. Read the following squid cooking tips and find out how to prepare and cook this wonderful ‘fruit of the sea’.
Step by Step Guide
If you are faced with a whole squid the first thing you need to do is pull the tentacles away from the body. Reach up inside the body for the quill, which is going to feel like a shard of plastic. Pull this down, out of the squid, and throw it away. Rinse inside the ‘hood’ (squid body) with cold running water.
What’s next in our squid cooking tips? Well, you see the wing-like flaps? Those are the ears. Pull them off the body. Also pull the mauve-colored skins away from the ears and body. You only want the white meat left. Slice below the eyes to cut the tentacles off and check each tentacle for the hard beak. If you find it, throw it out.
The Squid Ink and Insides
Either keep the ink sac to use in your next risotto or seafood pasta recipe, or throw the guts out. Now you have a whole squid hood.
You can either slice it into rings if you want to fry some calamari or, if you are in the mood for one of our stuffed squid recipes, leave it whole. See how useful these squid cooking tips are?
Another idea is to cut down one side of the hood, open it out and scrape off any bits of guts left on there.
Score the inside lightly using a cross-hatch pattern. This stops the squid curling up when you cook it. Make sure you dry the squid using paper towels before cooking, no matter how you are preparing it.
Squid Cooking Tips: Should You Clean Squid Yourself
This really comes down to personal preference. If you are super-squeamish and it has taken you this long to even search for stuffed squid recipes, never mind clean out a squid, then you are probably better off buying your seafood ready-cleaned. You can get cleaned squid from a fishmonger or from the market or you can buy frozen squid hoods (bodies) from any Asian food store and many other types of grocery store.
If you don’t mind doing it yourself then go for it. Like with most kitchen tasks practice makes perfect. Cleaning your first squid might seem to take ages (and it probably will!) but by the time you have done this a few times you’ll have it down pat and you will be able to clean a squid in a couple minutes.