Will It Be Sous Vide? Wonderful Squid
Hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of Will it Sous Vide? , a weekly column where you tell me what to cook with my Anova . Last Monday we got together and chose juicy seafood.
Confession: Actually I am a little partial to seafood cooking as I am always terrified that I am going to overcook expensive scallops or something. This made me particularly worried about the squid, because not only was it much less overcooked in Anova, but also – as far as seafood – it is quite cheap. (It was $ 8 a pound at my nearest grocery store, which is a damn expensive grocery store.)
There are several different recipes for cooking squid on Anova’s website and elsewhere on the web and – while they all agreed on a cooking temperature of 59 degrees Celsius – they varied quite a bit in cooking times, with some suggesting only testing one. – hour mark and another saying that you can continue up to four o’clock , which seemed excessive. Some have also noted that, unlike other proteins, squid can be sous-ingested and will soften and fall apart if you’re not careful. However, since this is a sous vide, the window you have to fiddle with is a matter of hours, not minutes, so it’s still much less stressful than other, more traditional cooking methods.
Instead of making a specific recipe like Fra Diavolo or something, I wanted to find a cooking method that, once cooked, would allow you to use the squid in a wide variety of applications, be it salads, pasta or chips. I prepared three bags of peeled and chopped squid (three bodies and three tentacles in each bag) and seasoned them with salt and pepper. I added melted butter to one bag (worth a stick), half a glass of olive oil to another, and left the last one “unadulterated.”
These bags were lovingly placed in a water bath and tasted after one, two, three and four hours of cooking.
- One Hour: An hour later, the squid was still soggy, felt firm and slippery in the mouth. The “regular” formulation seemed the least “slimy”, probably due to the lack of additional oil sliding over the surface.
- Two hours: Almost everything is perfect. As a result of all three preparations, tender, juicy rings and tentacles were obtained, which were enough to chew.
- Three o’clock: The tentacles were still pretty much the same as at the two o’clock mark, but the rings began to get a little soft.
- Four o’clock: Both the rings and the tentacles did not gnaw at all. If you love super soft, squishy squid, you’ll love this. (I don’t know anyone who likes this.) The suction cups also detached from the rest of the tentacles after four hours, which pushed me away.
Given the fact that sous vide is supposed to prevent digestion, this surprised me a little, so I consulted my favorite book in the world, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking . According to this magnificent tome, the key lies in dense, dense flesh, composed of many reinforced layers:
Like abalone and shellfish, squid and octopus need to be cooked either briefly and briefly to keep the muscle fibers from hardening, or over long periods of time to break down collagen. Quickly cooked to 130-135 ℉ / 55-57 ℃, their flesh is moist and almost crunchy. At 140 ℉ / 60 ℃, it curls and contracts as the collagen layers contract and squeeze moisture out of the muscle fibers. Continuous, slow boiling for an hour or more dissolves the tough, compressed collagen into gelatin and leaves the meat silky juicy.
By the way, “Silken Succulence” is the name of my new band.
By comparing the squid one hour and three hours later (see photo above), you can see that there is significantly more shrinking and curling in the later batch. The squid also lost a ton of fluid in its four hours in the hot tub, which you can see in the photos below.
Thus, two hours seems to be the ideal point where collagen has disintegrated to the point of “silky juiciness”, but has not yet turned into a cephalopod. As for the vegetable oil, you really don’t need it. Although my favorite batch was the one cooked in butter, the “simple” squids were just as tender and flavorful. (I just really love butter for butter’s sake.) The texture of the squid cooked in olive oil was great too, but the herbal flavor of the butter outweighed the delicate sweetness of the seafood.
So, when you have perfectly cooked squid, what to do with them? Well, first you have to drain the excess liquid, but after that the world is your oyster … or, uh, squid. Some ideas:
- Combine some olive oil, fresh lemon juice, tomatoes, and thinly sliced raw onions. Top with garlic toast and drizzle with lemon juice and large crispy flakes of salt.
- Add rice with soy sauce, mirin and green onions to the sushi.
- Add to fresh pasta with your chosen sauce.
- Just dip it in ghee and put it in your mouth.
Returning to the burning question: will the squid be sous vide?
Answer: Yes, it will! And it will be great, but you just need to pay a little more attention than usual when viewing protein. While you don’t actually run the risk of eating tough, chewy squid, too much time in a bain-marie will cause those collagen layers to shrink and then soften to gelatin, which is only good until a certain point, which is two hours.