Squid dishes are ready to surprise any gourmet with their variety. You can cook them and soup, and snacks, and salads, and even meatballs. The main thing is to choose the right squid, so that they please you with their taste and useful qualities.
Selection tips
For squid dishes, the quality of the main ingredient is of great importance. Therefore, when buying, pay close attention to the appearance of the carcass itself. It is best that the squid is small with a bright white fillet. If he has eyes, they should be clear, and a pleasant unsharp sea smell should come from the carcass. It is important that the tentacles and squid skin are not damaged.
In domestic stores, you can often find frozen squid. In this case, you need to pay attention to the fact that the fillet was pale pink, without cuts.
Fresh squids are stored in a refrigerator in a separate container with a tight-fitting lid. In this state, they can be no more than two days. Before cutting, the carcass must be thoroughly washed.
There is still no consensus on how much to cook squid fillet. Someone cooks for at least an hour, while others only five minutes. Most are inclined to the fact that for readiness it is enough to dip the squid for five minutes in boiling water. If you digest them, then to your taste they will be similar to rubber.
Snacks
One of the most common dishes is a squid snack. There are a large number of varieties. For example, some prefer squid stuffed with mushrooms, cheese, and eggs. In general, these mollusks can be stuffed with almost anything. This is one of their main advantages.
To cook this squid appetizer, you will need:
- three squids;
- 200 grams of fresh champignons;
- five chicken eggs;
- one bunch of dill;
- 100 grams of hard cheese, such as "Russian";
- salt, olive oil and ground black pepper - to taste;
- one tomato
To prepare this squid dish, first go in for mushrooms. Mushrooms should be chopped and fried in olive oil. The eggs break there. Salt and pepper as much as we see fit. Wait for the eggs to set, then immediately add the dill and grated cheese.
Squids must first be thoroughly washed. We stuff them with mushrooms and stab with a toothpick. The dish itself is cooked in the oven, heated to a temperature of 200 degrees. Before putting squids in it, grease them with olive oil. In the oven, they should cook for about twenty minutes.
Serving this appetizer is recommended by decorating it with tomatoes.
Fish cakes
For many, this may sound surprising, but from squids successful cutlets are obtained. The following ingredients will be required for this dish:
- 400 grams of squid;
- one onion;
- two chicken eggs;
- 50 grams of loaf;
- cooking oil for frying;
- breadcrumbs;
- half a teaspoon of salt;
- a pinch of ground black pepper.
The recipe for squid cutlets begins with the fact that a slice of the loaf is soaked in a glass of ordinary boiled water. Pass squid carcasses through a meat grinder on a fine wire rack. Add the soaked bread and onion to the mixture.
One of the yolks is also sent to the minced meat, having previously separated it from the protein. Stuffing is considered finished after we add half a teaspoon of salt, a pinch of pepper. Mix everything well.
Beat egg white until light foam appears. And we send it to the mince. Mix again. Please note: if the minced meat turned out to be liquid as a result, you can add a few teaspoons of breadcrumbs to help shape future squid cutlets. We give the prepared stuffing a quarter of an hour to brew in the refrigerator.
In parallel, mix the egg with a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of boiled water. Beat this mixture. You can start frying the cutlets.
Pour vegetable oil into a pan with a thick bottom. We form small oval cutlets, moisten them in an egg and breadcrumbs, and then fry them over moderate heat until a characteristic golden crust forms.
Cutlets are recommended to be served with sauces, mashed potatoes.
Squid soup
There are a wide variety of squid-based first course recipes. Most of them will look very exotic for our people, which means they can pleasantly surprise almost any of your guests. For example, consider the recipe for making Honduran sea soup. For this soup we need:
- salmon head;
- 400 grams of squid;
- one kilogram of large shrimp;
- one kilogram of crayfish;
- 500 grams of mussels;
- two onions;
- two stalks of celery;
- two green chili peppers;
- eight cloves of garlic;
- four limes;
- 400 ml of coconut milk;
- 20 ml of olive oil;
- 20 grams of basil;
- 20 grams of oregano;
- 20 grams of sage;
- one tablespoon of granulated sugar;
- 3 grams of zira;
- sea salt to taste.
For squid soup, you must first prepare a saturated broth. To do this, pour celery, onion and salmon head with three liters of water. Bring the brew to a boil, and then leave it for another hour on medium heat. Foam should be removed regularly, and then pass the resulting broth through a sieve.
We arm ourselves with a capacious and deep stew-pan, in which we heat the oil and fry onion on it, cut into half rings. We also send there zira, chili peppers and garlic. Fry for several minutes, stirring constantly. The onion should become golden, after which you can take on vegetables.
Sprinkle them with sugar, fry for a few more minutes and pour the broth. Add finely chopped basil, sage, oregano and coconut milk to it. Once the broth boils, pour the crayfish into a saucepan and cook the soup for another three minutes. Then add the squid (another three minutes on fire), at the very end - mussels and shrimp. They should be allowed to cook for five minutes until cooked.
The soup is seasoned with zest and lime juice. Salt to taste and serve.
Simple dishes
As you already noticed, the previous recipe was quite complicated. It will require a large number of fairly rare components, and it will take a lot of time. Of course, the result will pay off, but for those who do not want to spend so much time on sea delicacies, there are simple squid dishes. For example, squid cooked in batter.
Three to four servings of this dish will require very few ingredients:
- 600 grams of squid;
- a third cup of starch;
- half a glass of flour;
- two chicken eggs;
- one glass of milk;
- salt and pepper to taste.
Squid carcasses need to be thoroughly washed. All the entrails and the chord were removed from them. We clean the dark peel and dip it in boiling water for literally a couple of minutes. Water must first be slightly salted. Then we throw the squids into a colander, allowing the water to drain as much as possible.
The carcasses of boiled squid are cut into rings, if this is not possible, just cut into strips about one centimeter wide.
Cooking batter for squid dishes. We mix flour and starch in a large bowl, in the center we make a recess in which we pour milk. Mix everything thoroughly. Add proteins to the resulting foam, mix with dough, salt and pepper.
In a frying pan with a thick bottom, heat the vegetable oil. Dip each piece of squid in batter, and then fry until a golden appetizing crust is formed.
We take out the finished pieces using a slotted spoon and spread it on paper towels in order to get rid of excess fat. After drying the squids, they can be served to the table.
Squid salad
In many families, you can find squid salad with egg on the festive table. Cooking it is very fast, so even if the guests are already on the doorstep, you can still manage to please them with this delicious and original dish.
To prepare a squid salad with an egg, we need:
- two large squid;
- three chicken eggs;
- 40 grams of salad onions;
- two tablespoons of mayonnaise;
- salt and black pepper to taste.
For this salad, it is quite possible to use frozen squid. Thawing them, you must remove the film and clean all the insides. Boil the eggs for eight minutes, then cool them in cold water, so that it is easier to peel them from the shell.
We cut the eggs into large cubes, but lettuce, on the contrary, cut it as small as possible, peeled squid, cook for another minute in salted water. We give them time to cool down. Cut them as large as the eggs.
We put all the ingredients in a large plate, salt, pepper, generously season with mayonnaise. Mix thoroughly. Ready salad can be served immediately after cooking.
What to do with frozen squid?
In domestic stores, you can often find mollusks in frozen form. This should not confuse you at all, there are a huge number of recipes that will help you decide what to cook from frozen squid. Many are attracted to stuffed squid carcasses. To prepare them you will need to take:
- peeled squid carcasses;
- boiled rice, which is required for the filling;
- carrot;
- bow;
- hard cheese;
- fat cream;
- salt.
The amount of ingredients depends on how many stuffed squid carcasses you are going to cook, how many guests you expect.
Fry the carrots and onions in a pan, cook the rice, and grate hard cheese on a fine grater. There should be enough cream so that the filling does not turn out to be too liquid.
Mix and stuff all the ingredients with the squid carcass stuffing. The resulting semi-finished product should be wrapped in foil, and then sent to the oven.
Preheat the oven to a temperature of 180 degrees. Sprinkle squid carcasses with grated cheese and bake for ten minutes. Now you are guaranteed to know what to cook from frozen squid.
For the second dish
It is worth noting that squids are suitable not only for appetizers and salads, although it is in this form that they are known to most of us, but also for main dishes, which can become an adornment of any table, including a festive one.
As a second squid, you can cook seafood paella. To do this, stock up on such ingredients:
- 150 grams of rice;
- 120 grams of squid;
- four mussels;
- 100 grams of cuttlefish;
- 500 ml of shrimp broth;
- 70 grams of sweet pepper;
- 5 grams of parsley;
- 120 grams of tomatoes;
- 20 grams of shallots;
- a pinch of saffron;
- 50 ml of olive oil;
- 50 ml of water;
- 10 tiger shrimps;
- half a lemon.
We clean the garlic, chop it large and squeeze it. We remove their pepper seeds and membranes, cut into large cubes. We peel and cut the onions in half rings. Finely chop the leaves and stalks of parsley.
Tomatoes need to be cut in half and grated on a coarse grater so that you have only the skin in your hands. Dilute saffron in 50 ml of boiling water and let it brew for four minutes.
Use a toothpick to remove the gut from the shrimp, trying to do this without removing the shell. Unpeeled shrimp need to be fried along with cuttlefish and mussels over low heat. It will take a little time - about two minutes. The main thing is to stir constantly, and at the end add garlic and parsley, sautéing for another half a minute.
After that, take out the mussels and add the saffron infusion, shrimp broth and tomato paste. Pepper and salt the paella. Bring to a boil and spread the rice. Cook on low heat for a quarter of an hour, stirring occasionally. After adding the squid and shrimp, cook for another ten minutes until all the liquid has evaporated.
Serve paella on a beautiful dish, laying out the diameter of the mussels, and placing a lemon in the center. For decoration, you can sprinkle with parsley leaves. This is a delicious squid recipe that should suit your taste.
Eastern squid tentacles
The squid uses not only carcasses, which are used in most recipes, but also tentacles. If you are thinking about what to cook with squid tentacles, then the answer will be found in this article.
For this dish we need:
- one kilogram of tentacles;
- one onion;
- two cloves of garlic;
- a little red hot pepper;
- salt, soy sauce and sugar - to taste;
- one tablespoon of sesame;
- one teaspoon of vinegar, it is better to take 9%;
- four tablespoons of cooking oil for frying.
The tentacles must be thoroughly cleaned. Pour boiling water, let it brew, and then drain the excess water. Fry the onion in a pan, add chopped tentacles, vinegar, sugar, salt and soy sauce to it. Remember that soy sauce itself is very salty, so do not overdo it with this component. Garlic pre-pass through the press. Together with red pepper and onions, mix everything and serve.
Diet salad
The culinary asset has many diet recipes from squid. For example, a salad for which carcasses need to be boiled in a slow cooker, and then cooled and chopped.
In the salad, add two large fresh cucumbers, diced, salad onions in the form of half rings. Mix everything, salt, pepper, add garlic if desired. After that, the salad can be served on the table.