How to Make Fried Calamari Like in Italy 🇮🇹 | Authentic Italian Recipe

Today I'm going to show you how to make fried calamari and it's actually a lot easier than you think. If you've tried different recipes or tried different things and didn't get the right like consistency or texture that you wanted you're in the right place and I'm telling you this recipe is so easy there's really not a lot of ingredients and this is really the way they do it in Italy because they kind of celebrate fried fish. It's usually served up in like a fritto misto with other fish. It's just like a simple dusting fried and they enjoy it just with a little lemon and salt and that's pretty much what we're going to be doing today celebrating the fish. So let's run through the ingredients. I have calamari here. These are fresh. We have double zero flour, semolina flour, some lemons, and salt and that's really it. There's no egg, no parsley, bread crumbs, seasonings, nothing. That's it. It's that simple and it's so good. So if you're trying to figure out how to make the perfect calamari this is it. So the first thing we're going to do is I'll show you the calamari. These are fresh from the market. I just ran them on the cold water. We're going to take the legs out. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to clean these legs. Now usually I just cut off this top piece right here. I'll set that aside and then I just kind of split these in half and that's it. So those are perfect. Got one really long leg there so we'll cut that off and we'll set those aside. Now there's usually two little fins on the side. I don't know if they're fins. I'm not, you know, like a marine biologist but we're going to cut those off. We'll set those aside. All right and now you're left with the tube. So now this we're just going to cut it in strips. You want to cut kind of even strips and that's really it. So if you look at what we have here, we have the rings. We have these little kind of fins here and if you want you can even cut these even smaller. All right and then we have the legs. I split them in half and I cut off this top piece. All right I'll do another one. So we got the legs here. Pull that out. We'll cut this top piece off. Get rid of that. We'll cut this in half and that's it. We'll set that there. Now these little fins and you could leave them on if you want but I like to usually just cut them off. Cut that one off and then we'll cut this in rings and that's really it. That's really that's all there really is to it. A lot of people feel a little overwhelmed with calamari but there's really not much to it. All right so this is where things get a little complicated so follow along with me. We're going to take all the calamari, cleaned, prepped, and throw it in a bowl. All right and now in that bowl you're going to add in equal parts of double zero flour and semolina flour. Just like that and now you're just going to get in there with your hands and mix it up. Just kind of toss them and I didn't dip them in egg. There was no batter. They were literally just wet from being rinsed in the sink and that's just enough to allow the coating to stick to them. So this looks pretty good. You don't really have to worry about getting in there. I mean you could see the flour it got all in to the inside of the rings and the outside. Everything's got a nice light coating on it and that's exactly what you want. So we're going to set this aside and we'll fry them up. All right so you're going to want to fry these in either sunflower oil or peanut oil. Those two oils I think are the best. They complement the fish. I would probably stay away from vegetable or corn oil or olive oil. Those two oils to me are the best to fry in. And now I got this heated up. I don't have a thermometer so we're going to go a little old school. We're going to stick this in here to see if the oil is hot. If the oil is hot you'll see bubbles. So obviously right here you can see the bubbles coming up. All right so this oil is is pretty hot. So we're going to start putting in the calamari. We don't want to crowd the pan and we also want to just quickly just make sure these are coated and then we want to kind of like shake off some of the extra coating because then it'll just kind of sit on the bottom and burn. We'll go in do another little little bunch here and these cook really quick. Once they're golden and crispy they're ready. So you don't want the oil super hot otherwise they'll just burn on the outside and not cook through and you don't want to overcrowd the pan. Just kind of keep these moving. And if you like the way these come out you could do this with shrimp, cod. Recently in the summer I did a fritto miso with shrimp, cod, and calamari. It's really good. A lot of people do this for the holidays however like I think if you're going to do this for the holidays I would probably do them fresh like as people get there. I feel like you have to eat these right away while they're hot and crispy. I feel like when it sits it starts to taste a little weird. All right so these look pretty good and nice and crispy. I'm going to put them on a paper towel. All right so these look perfect. You can see the color. They have a nice color and texture to them and the yellowness is from the semolina flour. They're nice and crispy. We have them over here just kind of draining some of the oil. You don't want them oily. Now we're going to put them on a serving dish. A little fresh lemon and some sea salt. That's it. Perfect. I feel like I should have a fork babe. So good. There's not much to them. It's so simple but it's so good. It really doesn't take much to put these together and these are about a pound of calamari and that's exactly the portion you get with a pound. It's a great appetizer just like even during the week. I mean me and my wife we make this during the week as an appetizer and it's great. We love it. It's almost like you're in a restaurant at home and I mean if you look at the calamari, I'm not kind of, if you look at the coating, the breading, well I'm saying breading but there's no bread in here but the coating is nice. They're all nicely coated on the inside and on the outside and they're nice and crispy and that's exactly what you want and all you want to do is just literally just take fresh fish, fry it, a little salt, lemon and that's it. If you want to taste the way they make it in Italy, follow my recipe and if you do, let me know how you like it in the comments and don't forget to like and subscribe.