Gigantic Uni (Sea Urchin) Catch and Cook!

It's a negative 1.9 tide today and my wife said she wants some uni, so I'm going to get her some. And if you've never had uni before, or if you don't like it, I'm going to prepare it in a way that will make you love it and crave it every night. Maybe not every night, but low tide is at 3pm today, so I'm going to go get some breakfast first. I guess you'd call this a king tide, because right now it's high tide and it's 7 feet, and later it's a negative 1.9, so over an 8 foot tidal change. At low tide, you'll be able to walk out over a mile in this lagoon. Can I get one white clam chowder please? One white chowder. Here you go. Thank you. Spud Point Crab Co, one of the best chowders I've ever had. I'm not going to crab here, but this is a really good crabbing spot. East Shore Road, Bodega Bay. Don't say I told you. I've been there for about 15 minutes, didn't see a single crab get pulled up, so must be kind of slow over here. We've still got a lot of time, but I'm going to hike down and see if I can get to the uni spot. Man, that was cold. Dressed for success though. Still a little bit early. It's one o'clock and the low tide is a little bit past three, so we've got a little time to kill. We'll look around and see if we can get to the spot right where they are so we don't waste any time. Oh man, that's a lot of good wood to make a driftwood raft out of. I don't see any buoys though this time. The one thing about sea urchin, if you get some good ones, they're usually going to be big, like the big red ones, the big black ones, and it would be really difficult to hike out with more than two or three of those. So I'm going to shuck them out here, get all the good stuff out, save about 95% of the weight. Now the question is, are we too late in the season, or are these sea urchins going to have a good yield? For all you guys who don't like uni, maybe you never tried it, or maybe you've had it and it just wasn't your thing, this is what you have to do to make it the best thing ever. Get you a nice fatty piece of wagyu steak. If they don't have wagyu, get yourself a ribeye. Look at all that fat marbled in there. This steak was $39.99 a pound, so this is just under a pound. Salt this thing up, throw a piece of uni on there, it's the most delicious thing you've ever tasted. It is so good. It's better than uni just by itself, and it's better than just the steak by itself too. The nice thing about it is that the uni and the steak are so rich by themselves that you really don't need too much to get satiated. You don't need to spend all the money on this wagyu steak and have it by yourself. This will be enough for three or four people. Even if you come out here and you don't get anything at low tide, it's always a special time because they're so rare. Anything under a negative 1.5 only happens a few times every year. Oh man, while we wait for the low tide to come, a little monologue. Just been thinking about how much life changes after you have kids. I've got two boys now, one daughter just turned three, and she's the most precious thing in the world. I love her so much. She's growing up so fast, and these times when they're young go by so fast, and they're so innocent. I just want to make the most of it and spend as much time with them as I can. We're even thinking about homeschooling our kids for a lot of factors, but also just ... They're at school so many hours a day, and if they could spend that time with us while we still teach them, oh man, I don't know. It just seems like the right thing to do. At the same time, I hear so many people who are on their deathbeds and the regrets they have in life. So many people say that they wish they had spent more time with their family and friends instead of pursuing some business venture, trying to accumulate wealth, accumulate things that in the end don't mean much. I'm trying to take what they say to heart and not be one of those guys who's on their deathbed regretting all the time that I missed that I could've spent with my kids or my wife or my friends. That's kind of where I'm at right now, and it's just like there's so many crossroads as you go on in life, and it's tough to make the right decisions on when you come up to one, but I'm trying to make the right decisions. So I just don't want to be that guy regretting things in life. Hopefully not. Another hour or two, the tide will be low enough, I'll be able to get some uni, I'll be able to see a big smile on my wife Sarah's face when I bring it home too. I wish they were out here with me now, skipping rocks, playing in the sand, playing in the water, smiling, laughing, making memories. That's what it's all about. Look at these rocks, unlimited, perfect rocks to skip, unlimited. Look at this, look at all this. This is a rock skipper's heaven over here. Beachcomber's heaven too. Look at all these cool rocks, all different patterns. I really like this rock with the white and black. I should take a rock home from every trip and kind of memorialize the adventure. Just look at the rock and all the memories come back from looking at that one rock. Alright, I think that's enough philosophical stuff like that. I mean I guess there's not much to do while we wait to get the uni. Just going around foraging while I wait. Here's a nice one. Don't really have a use for it today though. I've never been here before. This area looks kind of promising. Let's see if we can find any urchins over here. I think we still have at least an hour. Hey, what do you know? Actually here's one, still alive. Not really what we're looking for but at least this will give us an idea if there's anything in these. Hey, not bad. For the little guy, that's a lot of yield. Wow, way more than I was expecting. Pretty good. Oh, I can't wait to have that with steak. I'm looking for the big black or big red ones. Oh, I bet these are going to be good. I wasn't expecting to find anything so I left my backpack and my tools all the way back home but there's a few here and there. We're getting to the spot, I guess. Here's a few nice ones. Oh yeah, look at that. Another one here. For these purple urchins, this is about as big as you're going to get and there's nothing worse than an urchin spike breaking off in your finger so be very careful when you're handling these. You don't trip and fall. There's little tiny barbs on each one of these spikes and they really are difficult to get out. No giant ones but there's a few good ones. A ton of these little guys and I bet the bigger ones are just out of reach but they'll appear soon. When you see shiny rocks like that or shiny seaweed like that, that is the most slickest stuff you'll ever step on so it's better to walk around with three points of contact. I was only expecting to get these after three and it's only two o'clock so I'm going to start shucking some of these and put them in my container and maybe even start cooking that steak. This is that slippery stuff and if you have to walk on them, try to find the flattest spot possible. I've seen many people walking back from the tide pools with bloody knees. If you're going to clean these sea urchins and transfer them this way, you should really have a large container to give them two or three baths and get them really clean before you put them on ice. This is going to work out great. I practically have this cleaning station in the tide pools and I don't even need my buckets. This one looks good, a lot smaller than the first one but that's why I'm trying to look for the big red ones and the black ones because you get so much more yield for the same amount of work. Oh wow. The other one was much more of a yellow brown color but this one is like bright orange. See if there's any flavor difference. Flavor's not as strong as that one but it's good. Delicious actually. Uni is growing on me a lot. If you've watched my videos from years ago, I never liked it but now just having it alone, it's good. I've spent about 15 minutes shucking these four and this is the yield on the last one. A little bit bigger, it's good. That was the first, second, and third. All different colors but they taste about the same. What I really need is a team. Some people to go out and get them and some people to shuck them back here. All these are about equivalent to one big one so I got to find some big ones and the sun is starting to go down so I better get a move on. That is a sad looking haul so far. It only takes one big one to turn things around though. This is kind of cool to see. You don't see this every day. Nice size abalone right there. That would be a keeper, you know, if abalone season was open. If you see abalone, there's a good chance you'll see those big urchin too. Man, it's hard to walk on this slippery stuff. I'm slipping all over the place. But the tide is definitely low enough. Waves are kind of breaking far out now. They can't get in here anymore. Urchins, where are ya? There's a bunch of small ones. The big ones are usually mixed in with the small ones but usually on the bottom more. Don't see any yet. Look how these sea urchins are following the seaweed because that's what they eat. Yeah baby! Found one! All right, now I know I'm in the spot. This is what I'm talking about right here. Oh yeah! There it is! Look at the size of that thing! That thing is a monster! If I can get like four of these, that would be equivalent to like 30 of the purple ones. Now if you're trying to do urchin, keep the population under control, yeah, it's the purple ones that are causing the problems. That's why abalone season is closed but if you're going for urchins to eat, that's the one to get. Since we got this one and the tide is still going out, I'll shuck it and then we'll see how big this one is. Oh, that feels good. Oh, it's crawling around in my hand too. All right, we got a big one. A really nice one. Let's see what's in here. I'm just going to shuck it the same way. Look at it move. Crazy little creature, huh? Whoever saw this thing and said, I want to eat that. Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. It's loaded. Oh my gosh. Clean this out. I don't even want to show you yet because this is some spectacular stuff right here. Oh my gosh. All right, look at this yield compared to the other ones. This is the sea urchin's mouth right there. You take that out. Wow. Oh my gosh. That's as good as you can get. Oh my goodness. It's so firm. It's not milky at all. This is going to be the perfect gift for Sarah and the perfect thing to go with the steak. Wow. Oh my goodness. I'm not even the biggest urchin fan, but just finding something like this is really rare from shore. It's like PB Urchin. Just look at these three pieces. Crazy huh? And there's always five of those things in one sea urchin. All right, let me try a little bite. Look what I was wasting my time on earlier. Is that crazy? Look at this little thing. Still good though. Almost sweeter. I think the most efficient thing for me to do right now is to cook this steak, which I kind of mangled trying to get this thumbnail picture, and basically just have the uni with it. I got the cast iron. Please don't tell me I forgot the propane. All right, I think I have everything today. Didn't forget a thing. Look at this piping hot. Generous amount of salt. There's pepper on there too. Right on the cast iron. The steak's fatty enough. I don't need any oil at all. Oh yeah. I know you're probably going to disagree with me on this, but one thing I found with having the uni with the steak is if you overcook the steak, it doesn't really matter because the uni is just so rich. It's like adds the perfect texture back to any steak. It's almost better if it's overcooked a little bit, especially if it's a Wagyu. Can't believe I'm about to have this whole steak by myself out here with the uni. Oh my gosh. I was only going to eat half, but I'm hungry. I'm going to eat it all. Oh yeah. We'll let that rest. Oh my gosh. That thing is juicy. Oh my gosh. It's so good. Really nice treat to have once in a while. I'd say that's perfect. Little fatty piece right here. Oh man. I'm going to take a piece of that steak, take a big old chunk of that uni, and enjoy. Oh man, that is super rich. That is super rich. That's a good combo. Half fat, half meat. I think one of those giant uni is just, it's almost too much. So just a little piece. Dude, this one sea urchin, I haven't even eaten half of it yet. One of those sea urchin will go for about $25 or more if you bought it fresh from a boat. It's good, man. Really good. I only got this little chunk of meat left. I'm actually going to save this for when I do the walk up the hill. I'll have something to chew on. If you don't like sea urchin, I think trying it like this is worth a try at least once. Every winter and every summer, there's always a few negative 1.9 even up to negative 2 tides. So keep an eye out on those. They always increase from a negative 1.1 to a 1.5 to a 1.9 to a negative 1.4 to a negative 1, and then back up again. So if you see that big one, you have several days on either side of it. Well, thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to spend quality time with your family, friends, and loved ones. Peace. See you on the next one. I found four more nice ones. That sure beats hauling up the whole sea urchin by itself. Perfect timing. Have a good one, guys. See ya.