Sous Vide Squid

I continued to experiment the sous vide method of cooking. Sous vide is both challenging and interesting. It opened my mind and eyes to the possibilities: imagine, the key to any successful food venture is consistency. Hainanese chicken poached to perfection, cooked consistently bird-after-bird to meet and satisfy diners' expectations, wow! Souv-Vide provides that key. Once I have perfected my Hainanese Chicken Rice I could start an on-line business catering lunch to office and factory workers. The possibilities are daunting!

OK, I'm done with day-dreaming, hahaha! Now to my notes on cooking squid by sous-vide.

Squid
As my Sous-Vide Magic heater has not arrived, I resorted to using my Spring stock pot.

Fill the stock pot nearly with 9 cups of water using the 500ml Pyrex measureing jug. That is, a total of 4.5 li water in the pot.

Set the heat on high. Meanwhile, prepare the squid. Cut and clean the squid, and score lightly on both sides with a sharp knife. Cut the squid into bite-sized slices, about 1" wide.

When the water starts to boil, turn off the heat, and immediately add 3 bowls cold water to bring the temperature down.

Prepare a bag pouch and steep squid in the hot water for 1 min. Remove immediately, cool under running water to stop the latent heat. Then put the squid in the hot pot again. Repate this 3 times. To maintain the temperature in the stock pot, turn on the heat for 15 sec, then turn off, about once every 30 min for the first 1 hour only. After that leave the squid to steep for another 7 hours. Finally remove the squid.

Comment
Why the 1:9 ratio? As I didn't have an appropriate thermometer - unless you think a medical thermometer, a fish-tank thrmometer, or an oven thrermometer is appropriate, hahaha - I resorted to using a seat-of-the-pant approach, rightly or wrongly, to get roughly a 65-70°C temperature. I would improvise, in fact, do anything to get this sous-vide excitment off my chest! *grin*)

How was the texture? I was pleasantly surprised - the squid turned out tender and not chewy! The texture was difficult to describe - certainly not soft or mushy but just right, titillating my taste buds. I would never get that kind of texture had I cooked the squid the way I always do: steep in a pot of simmering hot water for a few seconds, taking out the squid when the flesh turns opaque.

Update: 20-Apr-2011
The Sous-Vide Magic ("SVM") temperature controller finally arrived. I proceeded to test it out wqith my first experiment, using squid again. I love squid, it's so palatable and the texture never fails to statisfy my palate when it is cooked to just right!

Set up the SVM and boil about 2 li water in pan. Wait for the water to cool down, then put SVM temp controller to probe, the target temperature being in the range 65-70°C. Place 1 whole squid, cleaned and scored, and cut intop bite-sizes into the pot. Noted the water immediately lowered to about 63°C, and went down to 55 after 15 min. I turned on the heat briefly to get the temperature to over 60°C, and stopped when it read 64°C.

All in all the squid was left to steep for 30 min.

Comment
Squid tasted just a tiny tad tough, but still edible. The head was not cooked through because I had left it intact, without slcing it into two.

Yes, 60°C seems to be the limit, above which Harold McGee said the squid muscles would contract and toughen. I was afraid of possible bacteria poisoning, so I had used a higher "kiasu-kiasi" temperature of abOut 70°C, hahaha. In future I would use 60°C.

Flashback: my previous experiment steeping the squid in a stock pot succeeded probably because, rather fortuitously, the temperature was lowered more than I had thought using my "rough" method of adding 3 bowls water to the stock pot containing 9 bowls boiling water.