How to Make Rhode Island-Style Fried Calamari

Fried calamari rose to popularity here in the U.S. back in the 70s and 80s when a few government programs and vocal activists encouraged chefs to put squid on the menu because it's more sustainable. They also suggested that we use its Italian name, calamari, because it sounded more appetizing. And it worked. Fried calamari is now an iconic appetizer across the country. But today, Keith's going to show us how to make it at home. Yeah. Fried calamari is really simple to make. It's quick cooking. There's not a lot of ingredients. But making really good calamari that's tender and crisp, well, that's a little bit more of a challenge. But I do have a couple of tips I'm going to share with you for the perfect calamari. We're going to start with the squid or calamari, whichever you'd like to call it. Now, buying squid is just like buying any seafood. You want it to look moist. You want it to look shiny. And it shouldn't have any smell. Right. And it's not sitting in a pool of milky liquid. No. And if it has a smell, then ship it back. You don't want it. And we're also going to use whole calamari and prep it ourselves. We found that you have better control over the size if you're prepping yourself rather than buying kind of random rings at the store. So I'm going to start with the tubes. These are the tubes here. So what we're looking for is three quarter inch rings. What we want is the breading to get golden brown before the calamari has a chance to cook and get really, really tough. Makes sense. And sometimes calamari has this little wing on the side. So I usually cut right through it. It's not a big deal. If it falls off, you can just put it in there. It will fry up really nicely. Now we can get to the tentacles. My favorite part. Do you like the tentacles? Yeah. They have a little bit more chew to them, but what I really like is they get all that nice coating on it and it gets super, super crispy. But all we have to do here is that you'll see that there are two long tentacles. And I'm just going to snip those off to match the other ones. Just give it a little squid haircut. A little bit too long. It's like eating a piece of tough spaghetti. That is our calamari. So I'm just going to clean this up, wash my hands, and we can get to breading. So our ideal coating for this calamari was golden brown, crisp, and delicate. There are two components that we're going to look at. So let's first look at the liquid glue. And you want something that's thick enough to kind of stick that flour to the calamari, but not too, too thick. We're going to actually use a half cup of milk. It has enough viscosity to coat the calamari nicely and coat the bread nicely. You don't get too, too much thickness there. But there's also sugars in here and proteins in here that are also going to aid with browning. Rather than adding salt to the flour, we're going to add it to the liquid component because we found we had better distribution of seasoning. So I have a teaspoon of table salt. Okay, so that is our first component, the glue. Now we can focus on the starch. One and a half cups of all-purpose flour. And that's where we're going to get a lot of our color and texture. And we want it to be a little bit more delicate. So what I'm going to add is a tablespoon of baking powder. And that's just going to kind of puff up that flour a little bit, make it a little bit more delicate. I also have a half teaspoon of black pepper for some seasoning. That's it. Super simple. There's not a lot of ingredients, which is perfect. So I'm going to start with putting all of our calamari into the milk. So I'm just going to stir this up really well. And I'm going to take about a half of this calamari, let the milk drip back down in here. It's a little slippery right now. It really did coat well. You don't think of this milk as being really that cohesive, but it is. Notice I'm on a wire rack, and that will allow any excess flour to kind of hit that bottom of that pan and not stay on the calamari itself. So you don't get any big clumps of fried coating. And we don't want a super, super thick breading here. You have a really thick breading, you can't taste the calamari, and it's all about that crunch. We want a nice, delicate balance between the calamari and the breading. Okay, last batch. Now, before I get rid of this flour, we're going to make a Rhode Island-style calamari. I saw these hanging out here. Yeah, so I have some sliced banana peppers here. That's one cup of sliced banana peppers. And I don't need that milk. They already have a little bit of liquid on it. So the flour should stick just perfectly to this. I'm going to add a nice vinegary tang, a little bit of heat. It's probably my favorite way to have fried calamari. Mine too. All right, and I'm just going to distribute this over the calamari. Last two bits. Okay, we could go right into frying right now, but we're going to let this sit for 10 minutes. We found that if we fried the calamari right away, the flour didn't have enough chance to hydrate. You had kind of a starchy feeling on the back of your tongue. And that's going to allow us to heat up two quarts of vegetable oil that I have over in this Dutch oven. And that should take about 10 minutes, which is perfect for the calamari. Julia, the oil is at 353, precisely. And now it's time to fry. So again, this is all about frying quickly. So I'm going to fry this for exactly three minutes. And that's going to be perfect. The flour is going to turn golden brown. It's going to ensure that the calamari doesn't overcook. We want to blast that heat right now because we want to keep as much heat in this pot as we possibly can. And we have a high volume of oil to the calamari. This is all about quick cooking. So when we put the calamari in, we won't lose all that heat. Let's take a spider skimmer. You want to stir it just enough to kind of keep the pieces from sticking. But you don't want to be too aggressive to knock that coating off. Right. So you're cooking this in two batches. Two batches. Oh, three minutes exactly. Quick, quick. Yeah, that's great. So I'm just going to transfer this over to a paper towel-lined tray. What that's going to do is that paper towel will kind of wick away any excess fat that we have on the outside of this calamari. Now, I'm not going to season these. We've already seasoned that milk earlier, so there was no reason to season it again. Okay, what I want to do is get this oil back up to 350 degrees. And while we're waiting for that to come up, I'm just going to transfer this calamari on the tray to a 200-degree oven to keep nice and warm. Okay. Oh, timer. Three minutes. We got to go. This is our second batch, and it's just been three minutes. So I brought our first batch out of the oven where it was keeping nice and warm. So I'm just going to transfer these over to a nice platter. Having this nice golden brown color. I have another half cup of sliced banana peppers that we're going to add. Rest on top here. My mouth is watering. And I'm going to give you a lemon wedge. Oh, thank you. I love lemon. Just a little. Well, I'm going to try the bodies because those are the hard parts to cut. Mmm. Crunchy, and you can taste the squid. The squid's super tender. No toughness here. Super, super tender. All right, tentacle time. Mmm. They're tender as well, right? I mean, they have a little bit more texture than the bodies do, but they're still super tender. Keith, this is delicious. Thank you so much. I'm glad you like it. So if you want to make wonderful homemade calamari, slice the squid into three-quarter-inch thick rings. Coat it with milk, then dredge in all-purpose flour. And fry for exactly three minutes in 350-degree oil. From America's Test Kitchen, a simple recipe for Rhode Island-style fried calamari. Oh, my daughter's going to go nuts when I make this for her at home.