what are you eating?

[stonehenge]

Nom

[VmaxEngage]

For din last night had calamari and baked oysters with crabmeat and chedda cheese.


Was nom

[BillyJeanKing]

[stonehenge]

hmm, I haven't had calamari before except for small pieces in soup, haven't had baked oysters but hate normal oysters (cuz of slimeyness, not taste). But srsly that sounds tasty as fuck, DFW. I loves me some C-food.

Last night I had subwey this morning had cherios w/ banana slices and now i'm sipping a blue monster.

[BillyJeanKing]

brb stealin calamari pictars and recipe

[stonehenge]

me and wife finally getting our own place (small apt) in march, wife asked me what I want to haz for our first dins in new place

I chose kawtfeesh takos

[BillyJeanKing]

Okay, here's my calamari recipe:

Let me point out that I spent many months perfecting this recipe. Any method you can imagine for deep fried calamari, I've probably tried it. Producing good fried calamari is a lot more difficult than you might think - and most people don't know how to really do it. When I was trying to perfect my deep fried calamari at home, I asked many people for advice and most had little to no clue. "Oh, the trick is to soak it in butter milk over night". Wrong. "Oh, you have to have the oil at 400 degrees". Wrong.

It took me months of experimenting and trial and error before I started to discover what works and what doesn't. Only after speaking with several local fish market and restaurant owners (all of whom produced top notch calamari), did I finally track down all the subtle little tricks that are required to allow you to make really amazing calamari at home.

Okay, the biggest key to making good fried calamari is to tenderize the squid before cooking it. This is the single most important thing - yet almost no recipe on the Internet or in books will mention this. If you don't do this, you might as well not even cook it. I clean the squid and then cut the tubes of the body into 4 to 5 rings (each ring should be about 3/4" to 1" wide). I don't use the tail end of the body (the point), because I want all the rings to end up breaded the same (the tips of the body are too difficult to work with, because they are like a closed cone). I do cook the tentacles also, but just be sure to cut right ahead of the eyes and remove the mouth part. Also remove the two long feeler tentacles as well.

To tenderize, use a small meat tenderizing hammer (the kind with the teeth on it). Mine has two sides, big teeth and small teeth. I use the small teeth for squid. Once you have the rings cut and cleaned, then pound each ring (and the tentacles too) about 3 times. It's a very fine balance between tender and disintegrated. I usually pound once or twice, then rotate the ring a bit to catch the back side and pound once or twice more. If you do it right, the ring should be mashed up, but still a ring. It should be torn apart just every so slightly and have a few smashed holes into it.

I'll say it again, tenderizing as outlined above is the single most important step. If you do not do it, the squid will probably come out tasting like little flour coated rubber bands.

As far as the coating, you can use many different methods, but here is the one I usually use when I'm making it. Take an roughly equal amount of Ritz crackers and club crackers and put them in big zip lock bag. Then crush the crackers up on the counter, until they look about like bread crumbs (they don't need to be super fine, but also no giant chunks either). This will be the outside coating. Sometimes I also toss in some bread crumbs and/or some panko japanese style bread crumbs. Season the bread crumb mixture with salt, garlic pepper and a small amount of oregano (not too much!). Sometimes I add in a little bit of sugar also.

Put the bread crumbs in one bowl, then beat an egg in another. In a third, put some white flour. You can add some salt and ground black pepper to the flour. Sometimes I even throw in some bread crumbs into the flour, but not too much.

Okay, so then you take each calamari ring and toss it around in the flour until it picks up a thin coating on the inside and out. I use my finger to spin open each little ring in order to ensure that the inside gets flour on it also. Then transfer the floured rings from the flour into the egg mixture and let them sit for a few seconds to soak up the egg wash. Using a fork, fish out the rings one by one and toss them into the bread crumb mixture. Using your finger again, spin the rings around to coat them, while opening up the middle area and making sure to get bread crumbs in there also.

Note, you can get creative also and use other methods for the batter & bread crumb part. Sometimes instead of beating eggs and going from the flour into the eggs and then into the bread crumbs, I will make a batter using a mixture of classic coke, corn starch and water (sometimes with a little flour added). It will make a batter if you do it correctly. Then put the rings into the flour, then into the batter, then finally into the bread crumbs. BTW, this wet batter, plus bread crumbs, makes an excellent batter for deep frying onion rings also. Just slice come onions and batter them, then fry them in slightly lower temp oil (maybe around 360). If you have kids, they will love them. Great for chicken nuggets also (cut the chicken breasts into 1" wide strips, then slice the strips down the middle to make them thin. Hit exactly once with the tenderizing hammer, batter and fry at 355 to 360 for 3 minutes). Blows chicken McNuggets away. Your kids will hail you as the new Chicken Nugget Messiah...

However, you do it, when you are done you should have a plate full of nicely breaded calamari rings. Sometimes I place them into the refrigerator for 20 minutes while preparing other stuff in the kitchen, but you can also go directly into the fryer also.

For deep frying, there are a couple of key points. First, I typically use peanut oil for deep frying. I have a large/heavy cast iron pot that I use on the stove. Second, the cooking time and oil temperature are extremely important. I see many recipes on the internet that say cook for 3 minutes, etc. That's nonsense. What I do is get the oil up to 365 to 370. If you err by 5 degrees + or - it will ruin the squid. It needs to be very accurate; not above 370 and not below 365. Fry the squid in batches of 15 to 20 rings at a time. Fry for about 45 seconds or so.

The trick with calamari is to almost under cook it. You aren't making fried chicken here. Calamari is almost like a form of sushi when done correctly. If you go much past probably 60 seconds, then you have cooked it too long. It's just in, fry and out. I would say probably 45 seconds or so. Not very long. After you get good at it, you can hear the noise change slightly as you cook it. Right after you hear a change in how it sounds while frying in the oil, that's about when you start getting ready to take it out. The noise from the oil will die down a bit. It will pop and crack, then smooth out and settle down - that's when you pull it out. Mainly, you want the coating to have a nice golden color, but not too dark. Keep in mind it will keep cooking for a second once you take it out of the oil.

Remove and let stand for about 1 minute on some paper towels. Don't serve immediately. The taste improves a bit as it cools. If it's too hot, it will kill your taste buds also. Allow it to stand for about 60 to 90 seconds after coming out of the oil. I typically sprinkle just a touch of sea salt on it also (right after I remove it from the oil).

For dipping sauces, you can either buy tartar sauce or cocktail sauce (both of which go nicely) or you can make your own. The sauce that I often use with this recipe is easy to make and compliments the taste well. I use a mixture of honey, ketchup and a small amount of yellow mustard and it comes really good as a dipping sauce for the fried calamari rings. The mix is roughly 3 parts honey, 1 part ketchup and 1/4 part yellow mustard (to taste).

I also squeeze lemon wedges over the calamari rings after they have cooled down for a minute.

Anyway, that's my recipe. One a scale of 1 to 10 (ten being the absolute best calamari I've ever had), I would give my recipe probably an 8.5 or strong 9. You can play around with the seasoning for flavor, but basically this recipe should produce very good fried calamari. Let me finish by saying there are a lot of fried calamari recipes floating around the Internet. However, if you follow most of them (especially the, cut/clean, flour, deep fry at 375 for 3.5 minutes), the results will be horrible. Turning out really good calamari requires several tricks that most people won't tell you about. First is tenderizing the rings with a tenderizing hammer and the second is limiting the frying time to much less than most people realize. As mentioned, the calamari should just be barely cooked. Finally, the temperature of the oil is absolutely critical. It must be between 365 to 370 when the rings go in. If you are off 5 degrees in either direction, it will have a terrible negative impact on the final product.

Making great fried calamari is more of an art than you think. However, when you hit it on the nose and everything comes together just right, then the results will be far beyond what most restaurants are able to produce.

Enjoy.

Ray

dat fUdz

---------- Post added at 11:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:17 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Juan!

me and wife finally getting our own place (small apt) in march, wife asked me what I want to haz for our first dins in new place

I chose kawtfeesh takos

enjoy teh takos and bamf new place

[.GARY.]

zomg calamari nomz

[stonehenge]

Originally Posted by KOURKE

[IMG]http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk79/kourke/c15aa9ac.jpg[IMG]

dat fUdz

---------- Post added at 11:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:17 AM ----------



enjoy teh takos and bamf new place

DFW TO NOMZ THAT

will be tiny place but will finally haz teh cable to stream pr0n moar better

[BillyJeanKing]

moar better pr0nz you say

[stonehenge]

satellite = pr0n be buffering mid-fap

[.GARY.]

My lunch

[race2c]

Real quick lunch...

[Cez★]

Orange bag doritos

[stonehenge]

Kroger brand chicharrones

[VmaxEngage]

Originally Posted by kourke

omg

[BillyJeanKing]

nomming bacon burgers for dinner

don't be jelly

[apedestrian]

I prolly gon have some portillos fo dinner

[race2c]

figured a pizzah would be good today...so i got a digornio pizzah...

[BillyJeanKing]

[Manbearpig]

Fuckin CAPTAIN CRUNCH BITCHES

[BillyJeanKing]

fts

[stonehenge]

Bout to go pickup dat Lucky Wishbone. Be local bamf place w/ frai sheekin, fraiz, toast, etc. I got dem tenders.

[BillyJeanKing]

[stonehenge]

picked up nomz, came home, they forget le wifes fries and toast



wife called place and was like "wtf no fraiz bish" and they was like "if you wanna come back we'll give you dem fraiz and a refund for the meal we messed up"



got there and they gave fraiz/toast plus full refund so got all nomz fo free bishes