Chorizo Stuffed Squid
Words, images and recipe by our friend and legendary spearo, Daniel Mann.
Squid is synonymous with having a pint at the pub and receiving a greasy bowl of deep fried calamari. I recently speared this 2lb squid and wanted to try something a little bit different. I stuffed it with chorizo, squid pieces and onion although you could add in other things like pieces of feta and tomato. The steps and recipe are below, but if you’re more keen on watching instead of reading, take a look at my catch and cook video below.
Step 1: Clean the Cephalopod
Start by cleaning the squid. Remove the head from the tube and cut the tentacles off in front of the eyes (to remove the beak). These tentacles crisp up perfectly and really help with presentation. The rest of the head and guts can be saved to thread on a hook in hopes of turning it into fish. It makes great bait.
Inside the tube there will be a translucent piece of cartilage that you can pull out and remove. Next slide a finger under the winds to gently peel those off each side. Remove the skin on the wings by sliding a finger under it and peeling it off. Remove the skin on the main tube and begin to inside out the tube like a sock. With larger squid this is more difficult but easy enough. Once inside out you can peel away the rest of the guts and give it a rinse.
Step 2: Cook the Kraken
Stuffed Squid Ingredients:
High Smoke Point Oil
Yellow Onion
Chorizo
Lemon
Green Sauce Ingredients
Parsley
Olive Oil
Garlic Cloves
Capers
Salt (recipe for homemade sea salt)
Pepper
Method:
The squid I speared was too large for two people so I cut it in half and that will be the stuffed section. The forward part of the squid I simply lozenged (cross scored) and cut into strips. Flash fry that in some high smoke point oil with a squeeze of lemon to finish, beautiful.
Finely dice an onion and chorizo then add to a medium heat pan. Chorizo has a lot of oil in it so you don't need to add anything else to the pan. Cook until the oil is released from the meat and the onions have become translucent and taken on the red color of the chorizo.
Remove the mix from the pan but leave the remaining oil in there. Turn the heat up and quickly fry the cubed squid wings, only a minute or so.
Mix together the chorizo, onion & wing pieces together and stuff inside the tube. Seal off with a toothpick. Don't overfill the tube as like most meats, squid will shrink once cooked and may burst if packed too tightly.
For best results grill the squid tube on a hot barbeque. You want intense heat for a short period to stop the squid getting tough and chewy. I don't have a barbeque so a hot pan with a snifter of high heat oil like rapeseed will get color on the tube quickly. Also toss the front tentacles in for presentation later.
Once cooked for two minutes on each side, place the tube on your serving tray. Slice halfway through several times to reveal the stuffing.
I topped mine with a green parsley sauce. Nothing too technical, a big handful of parsley, stalks and all, clove of garlic, juice of a lemon, big splash of olive oil, a few capers and salt & pepper. Throw it all into a blender and voila, green sauce.
Bon appétit!
About Dan the Mann:
I started spearfishing in 2005, late in high school, and never really stopped. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia, afforded me a perfect spearfishing playground with countless target species to choose from up and down the coast. In 2012 I was given a GoPro from my fiancée to record my spearfishing antics. I soon taught myself to edit and was working for a spearfishing magazine in Australia shooting and editing content round the clock. I moved to London in late 2015 to be greeted by the dreaded UK winter. With nothing to do while I found a job, I started a YouTube channel with the footage I had collected over the years in Australia and Tonga. I soon gave up my career as an electrician and moved into the world of film. Luckily for me my jobs were based all around Europe and I often got to dive when I was away. Highlights include spending a month in Timor-Leste diving and filming every day for a blue whale and plastics documentary, shooting a bluefin tuna fishing show in Ireland as an underwater, drone & topside cameraman and nearly missing a flight back from Denmark after work one trip as I was packing a cod into my luggage. I've dived in 14 different countries with water temperatures ranging from 0ºC to 32ºC, if there is water, I'll dive it.