The Biggest Squid I've Ever Seen

This is the biggest squid I've ever seen in person. This is a diamondback squid. A squid that is fried in Japan for its sweet, tender meat. One of our local fishermen caught it last night and gifted it to me. He was out last night sword fishing and this squid was swimming by on the surface minding his own business. What surprises me the most is how dense it is. This thing is heavier than I would have expected it to be, but let's find out exactly how much it weighs. 23 and a half pounds. That is a massive squid. I cannot wait to get this cleaned up and cooked up for you guys. What an absolute beast of a fish. Look at the size of those eyeballs. These two longer tentacles on the diamondback squid are its feeding tentacles. They're retracted until they're ready to capture prey and they shoot out and grab their prey and bring it in. And then its eight arms will pull it into its beak. This thing is gnarly. So when cleaning our massive squid, first thing we wanna do is we wanna remove the head with the base still attached. Separate it from the top. Now the whole thing should pull out nicely. We're gonna gently tug on the head and all the guts will come right out just like this. Then we've got this long piece of cartilage that acts as the only bone in the squid's body. I mean, it really feels like plastic, totally gnarly. That's called the gladius and it's also called a quill or a feather. Now let's cut the head up and see what the inside looks like. We're only keeping the tentacles from the head and I wanna show you guys what the eye and beak look like. They're totally gnarly looking on this huge squid. Look at the size of this one single eyeball. Wild looking. These beaks cut right through flesh and bone of fish, crustaceans, and they'll even eat other squid. Now we're gonna cut the tentacles off, cut it right at the base, just like this. We're gonna put it off to the side to deal with later. The ink sack of a 23 pound diamondback squid has enough ink to write for over 300 miles and boy does it make a mess. We're gonna get it all cleaned up and then we're gonna take the skin off the outside of our squid. We wanna get a nice incision right at the front, slide your hand right underneath, just like this. You wanna get a good grip. You wanna do it nice and slowly, peel it off so that we can get them off in one big piece or as few pieces as possible because if you just pull it quickly, it'll tear apart and then you're gonna have to get it off in a bunch of small pieces which takes a lot longer. These fins peel right off just like this. Absolutely insane. There's a line that you can follow along where it literally looks like it's just resting right on top of the body, wild looking. We're gonna flip it over and we're gonna remove the skin off the second side as well. Again, sliding our fingers right underneath and then peeling it off in as big of a pieces as we can at a time, just like this. Now that we've got all the skin off, we're gonna get the outside host off nicely then we're gonna split it all the way down the middle. That way we can open it up and clean out the inside. There's still gonna be some guts and some slime and membrane inside of this squid. And right here we have the base of the gladius. That's where the big spine was connected to. We're gonna split it right down the middle just like this. Now we're gonna make a salt water and ice bath. We're gonna put a generous amount of salt into a big bowl of water, mix it up. You wanna make sure that all the salt dissolves except for a little bit. Then fill it up full of ice. That's how you make a perfect brine. Now we're gonna throw these pieces into that brine, get it soaking and that's gonna help us get the rest of this membrane off the inside of our squid. It was sticking a little bit and the salt water and ice bath is gonna help it peel right off. And look at this massive piece of squid. Both of them together come to 15.3 pounds. Absolute monster. And now we're gonna bring this over to one of my favorite restaurants, The Grove, where Chef Tony is gonna make something special with it. I know Tony's seen diamondback squid before but have you ever seen one this big? Heck no, man, that's massive. 23 and a half pounds, absolutely insane. And what blows me away the most is the density of it. It's a thick piece of calamari right here, bud. We'll give it our best shot. I think I got some ideas for it. Can't wait to see it. Start out here, okay? I think this, you know, if you go to a sushi restaurant, you know you have some of the logs of fish. I think that'll be our first cut right here. Some calamari saku blocks. Yeah, exactly. So we'll do one of those first and I think for our, you know, Milanese or my family on the wife's side of things call it the schnitzel. We'll do the schnitzel right there. So I'm gonna cut this here in half. I think we'll butterfly it from here. Oh yeah, that's a dense piece right there. Score it so it gets in there. I've always had this in more of a raw preparation, especially in Japan. They literally would slice it super thin, of course, for sashimi over sushi rice and just score it. And just scoring it helps, you know, give it that little tender bite, easier to chew and break down. Reed, if you wanna help me, I got a bin of buttermilk dressing right there. Nothing special here, a little salt. If you wanna crack some pepper in here. I got the glove on so I'll get my hands dirty. We'll put these bad boys in here. So again, this is tenderizing it and this is gonna be for our schnitzel. We're gonna wrap this up and throw it in the cooler for about an hour and then we'll bread it. So we got our calamari in the buttermilk already, chilling for about an hour. In the meantime, we're gonna start working on our cold preparation. I'd like to thank our sponsor for this video, Delete Me. Did you know your personal information was being bought and sold by data broker companies? Most people think, yeah, my info's out there a little bit. No, it's everywhere. There are hundreds of data broker sites that have your name, your phone number, and your home address. Stuff you never knowingly put out there, just listed and sold. And it's not just sitting there, it's constantly being shared, updated, and spread around behind the scenes. Which means random people can look you up, companies can profile you, and your personal life becomes way more exposed than you'd ever choose. That's why I like Delete Me. They go in and find where your personal information is living across the internet and actually gets it removed. And not just once, they keep checking and cleaning it up over time. Because once it's out there, it doesn't just stay gone, it keeps coming back. So instead of you trying to track this down piece by piece, which would take countless hours, they handle it for you. Quietly, in the background, doing the work you don't wanna do. If you wanna clean up your digital footprint and take back some control, go to joindeleteme.com slash re20. And use code re20 for 20% off. All right, let's get back to this massive squid. It's nice center cut right here, and we're gonna slice it. Kind of like when you go out to a Japanese restaurant, sushi style. Go to your pantry, I'm sure you have it, some seaweed. Everybody's got kombu in their pantries, I think, I would hope. All right, so we got our kombu. I cut them down, because I wanna lay out the thin pieces of fish in here. I'm gonna press it against it, and we're gonna be curing this. So, we'll just do a couple slices here, okay? So just being pressed in the kombu cures it? Yeah, it's gonna cure it. It's gonna be the transfer of almost salt, it's almost seasoning it. And we are gonna get that saltiness, umami flavor from the kombu. So I'm doing it pretty thin. Again, this is kind of reminiscent of, you know, eating at a Japanese restaurant. I'm gonna score this a little bit, so we get the salt in there. Nice little lines. We'll just lay that here. We got our squid scored lightly, okay? All right, Reid, so this one has now been curing 30 to 34 minutes. So this one, I decided to do just one, so it's one-sided, so we can see what the texture is on that one. And then these ones are the ones that were pressed between, and you can kind of see, look how translucent it's getting. You almost see the seaweed through it. Curing it, essentially, is drawing out some of the moisture of it, and essentially, almost kind of cooking it. You know, when you have something cured like a ham, you're packing it with a bunch of salt, it's pulling out moisture, it's concentrating flavors, and that's kind of what the whole plan with this kombu was. This is the one that's been cured on both sides. Cheers. Whoa. You actually taste the seaweed, and the salt mixed with the slight butteriness of the calamari. That's really good. That's, so far, a win. First try, hitting a home run, can't complain. I got everything prepped here. We don't want to do a ton of salt on here. Gonna grate a little lime on here. Little lime zest. A little lime zest, or a lot. And then we'll hit it with a little lime juice. You're making me wish I had a steady supply of massive diamondback squid. Well, I mean, let's see. If it's out there, I would definitely recommend this recipe for anybody that wants to pick it up. Warm sushi rice, the ponzu. And I'm gonna give you a little scallion and ginger relish on top. All right. Another little drizzle of ponzu. And I mean, I really wish I had some fresh wasabi in house. One thing I'm missing on this, but I think this is gonna be great. Cheers. That's really freaking good. Thank you, man. Next one, Reid. All right, so we had the kind of play on temperatures. This one, I'm gonna give you straight ice cold, nice ponzu. Pretty straightforward with the squid, okay? I grabbed my little kind of quote unquote chimichurri. Herbs right here, a little Fresno chili, cilantro, basil, lots of basil. I think basil's just such a refreshing herb. Put this on the bottom here because I don't want to cover up the squid. So I figured this would be a nice vessel on the bottom. And then I'll take, kind of peel these off here. This looks so good already. And we're gonna drizzle a little bit of this shallot oil on there. And with the shallot oil, we have to do some crispy shallots. And we're gonna serve that just like this. This looks freaking awesome. Little shallot in there. All right. Cheers. Cheers. That is so good. I don't know which one I like better. Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, the acid on this one makes it a little more of a lively bite. The herbs, the Fresno chili in there. And that shallot oil kind of finishes at the end. All right, Reid. So we have our marinated buttermilk calamari. It's been about a little over an hour. We're gonna make calamari, squid, Milanese, schnitzel, tonkatsu, whatever we wanna call it. We have fine panko in here. And then I take the Japanese milk bread, I'll freeze it, and I'll put it on the box grater. To give it a little bit more of a texture feel. So we go flour first, okay? One hand stays wet, one hand dry. So our dry hand's gonna be on my right. Then we go to our egg wash, okay? And here, get that coated nice in egg wash. It's a good noise. Yep, and into our panko. All right, all set. Got our vegetable oil here. We're gonna fry up our calamari steaks now. So we're gonna add some butter here. So you're putting the slabs of calamari in before it's really like ripping hot. I want it to brown kind of at the same temperature it is, a ripping hot pan. That's gonna burn our brioche faster, our milk bread, before it actually starts caramelizing and getting a milder reaction, like before it starts toasting. Being such a thick piece, I don't wanna say low and slow, but we do wanna kind of go on the slower side of things. We're putting it in at around a medium and then letting it build up? Exactly, yep. So we'll keep this going. Shake your pan, make sure it doesn't stick. And again, this is shallow frying. We'll be able to see the sides. Oh yeah. All right, so I'm gonna pop this in the oven. We like to keep our oven on 350 degrees, full convection, so the fan's going. For the side dish, I have some fregola sarda. So that's gonna be an Italian bead pasta that's toasted. Tomato water beurre blanc, so a tomato water butter sauce. We blend up some tomatoes and some herbs, let that strain out, and then take the tomato water and reduce it down. And then we add in a bunch of butter, a little bit of cream, a little bit of a seafood stock right here. You know, you don't really wanna mix chicken stock in here, being it's a seafood dish. We're gonna add a little bit of mirepoix that we lightly blanch, carrots, celery, and onions, because everybody needs their veggies. And same garlic roasted cherry tomatoes. And of course, a little bit of butter. You wanna soften this up. Some fresh basil. Toss it in there. It's coming together. Tomatoes are releasing their juices. Oh yeah. All right, let's pull out this calamari steak. Golden brown. Oh yeah. That's nice right there. All right. Okay, we're gonna plate this right in the middle here. Get some of these tomatoes. That's gonna be nice. Oh yeah. All right, so this is our tomato water beurre blanc. And I figured, since the squid has those buttery notes, I think this would complement it pretty well. And this, after we make our tomato water, so there's a bunch of pulp left, the red pulp with the basil and the other herbs that we put in there, and a little bit of espalette, so a little spice. So what we do is we dehydrate that piece of it and then we blend it with olive oil. So that's gonna go on here. So you have tomato water beurre blanc, a little tomato oil. I'm always a big fan of finishing fish with a little bit of acid, a little bit of lemon juice. So we're gonna do a little lemon zest. Nice squeeze of lemon juice. All right. Clean it up, presentation-wise is always key. Okay. Oh, listen to that crunch. Oh yeah. Put that right on top. That is our diamondback squid, a little mixture of Japanese and Italian, and we're good to go. All right. Whoa. I think if you serve this to someone, even a seasoned chef, I don't know if they would know what they're eating. It has the flavor of calamari, but like the most mild, buttery calamari you've ever had in your entire life. Yeah, it's like a pork kind of chicken type of vibe where it is a hearty steak, but I think this one's actually marinated properly, that it's not too chewy. It's not tough. We're not sitting over here gnawing on it. I think that's a proper marinade and a proper cook. And I did not expect the calamari this thick to have a buttery, melt-in-your-mouth consistency. You and me both, man. I got nervous. This is one of my favorite restaurants. It is such an honor to be here. Tony, thank you so much. My pleasure, man. Thank you for the challenge. You guys, thanks for watching. Have a killer day. I'd like to thank our sponsor for this video, Delete.me. Go to joindelete.me.com slash re20 and use code re20 for 20% off.