It’s been a super busy season – it seems like I haven’t had time to draw a breath in a month. Today was the first day I feel I really got back to pottering around in the kitchen and finally got my head space back. I realise in the past few weeks any spare time has been consumed by attempts to just catch up on sleep.
I decided to grill squid today. Squid is not something we often eat at home even though we all adore it. This is because my dad has squid allergy and so we have to avoid it for his sake. But my parents who live with us have been overseas for a long trip and this was my chance to cook forbidden food. I was having some friends over for dinner and actually my main staple was Japanese chashu ramen and so I was doing an experiment on a head-to-head comparison of instant pot versus sous vide rolled chashu. I’m not going to post the chashu recipe because sous vide won hands down and the recipe is already on the blog.
Instant Pot chashu on the left and sous vide and the right and the sous vide was definitely melt in the mouth quality. Sous vide won.
So despite being distracted by my in-house chashu challenge, I wanted to have another stand alone dish to serve in addition to the chashu ramen, which is where the grilled squid dish came in handy.
I went to the wet market and I got the fishmonger to give me his largest squid. In the end I felt a little cheated because on cleaning the squid I found another fish tucked away in the fish belly, that had another fish tucked in its own mouth. Talk about a food chain! Small fish eaten by big fish eaten by squid. I definitely paid too much for this because I had to discard the weird fishes inside the squid belly!
Anyway the grilled squid was also another great opportunity to dig out my grill plate for cooking – I had previously envisaged making inched thick cowboy steak on the grill plate and serving it but somehow never got down to doing it. And finally I got to use it for this squid dish instead.
Making squid is really fast because it takes no time to cook at all; it’s a great dish for serving for company as it can be served last minute just for a little wow factor. Definitely it looked good on my Japanese-themed dinner!
Pre-grilled beauty
Grilled Squid in Low Carb Teriyaki Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 large squid
- 1 inch knob of ginger, peeled and grated
- 1/4 tsp salt
Low carb teriyaki sauce
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
- 2 tbsp mirin
- 2 tbsp sake
- 2 tsp sugar substitute (I used monk fruit sweetener)
- 1/4 tsp xanthan gum
Method
- Clean the squid by pulling out the head and tentacles and cut off the inner spine and innards (slice off just above the eye). Strip off the membrane off the body and as much of the tentacles as possible.
- Marinate for 15 minutes in the fridge with the grated ginger and salt.
- Preheat the oven and put on high grill mode.
- Mix the ingredients of the teriyaki sauce together (soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar) and when the sauce has started to simmer, sprinkle the xanthan gum on top and stir vigorously. The sauce will thicken up. Take off the stove and set aside.
- Bring a large pot of boiling water to boil and salt the water. Immerse the whole squid and tentacles for 15 seconds and transfer immediately into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process.
- Carefully slice the body of the squid almost half way through at about 1 cm intervals. Lay the uncut side of the body of the squid down on a grill pan or serving pan. Arrange the tentacles neatly on the pan as well.
- With a brush, carefully brush the whole surface of the squid with the teriyaki sauce.
- Grill the squid for 6-7 minutes. Depending on how hot the oven is and how close the dish is to the grill, the best way to gauge is when the tips of the tentacles started to slightly crisp up and turns a little brownish.
- Serve immediately. This is definitely a dish that should be eaten immediately.
Still Feeling Peckish 