Photo: Jorge Díaz from San Francisco, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0
Calamares en su Tinta (Squid Stewed in Its Own Ink)
A Spanish stew of squid, body and tentacles, simmered gently in a long-cooked onion and pepper sofrito with white wine for about 45 minutes, then finished with its own ink into a black sauce. Served with white rice. Squid is tender cooked very briefly or very long, and this is the long way.
Ingredients
- Squid
- squid · whole, with ink sacs1 kg
- squid ink · if the sacs are missing or few; two 4g sachets8 g
- Sofrito
- onions · finely chopped2
- green pepper · finely chopped1
- garlic · chopped3 cloves
- ripe tomato · grated1
- olive oil4 tbsp
- Liquid
- dry white wine150 ml
- fish stock or water250 ml
- bay leaf1
- salt to taste
- white rice · to serve for 4
Steps
- ⏲ 15 min
Clean the squid, lifting out the ink sacs without bursting them into a small bowl. Cut the bodies into 1.5cm rings and the tentacles into two or three pieces, and pat dry.
- ⏲ 26 min
Cook the onions and pepper in the olive oil over low heat for 20 minutes, soft and without colour. Add the garlic for a minute, then the grated tomato for 5 minutes more.
- ⏲ 6 min
Turn the heat up, add the squid and cook 3-4 minutes. When it gives off its water, pour in the wine and boil 2 minutes to drive off the alcohol.
- ⏲ 45 min
Add the stock and bay leaf, cover and simmer on the lowest heat for 45 minutes. It is ready when a knife tip slides into a ring with no resistance. Still tough, give it 10 minutes more at a time.
- ⏲ 5 min
Crush the ink sacs into a few spoonfuls of the liquid and pour it through a sieve into the pot (dissolve bought ink the same way). Simmer 5 minutes, stirring, until the sauce coats a spoon.
- ⏲ 1 min
Taste, then salt. Serve with white rice.
Variations
- Chipirones en su tinta. The Basque version with small whole squid (chipirones).
- With fried potatoes. Served in place of rice.
- Black rice. Cook rice in the same ink and you have the black rice listed among the variations of paella.
Tips
- Do not stop at fifteen minutes. That is when it is toughest.
- Lowest heat. A boil tightens the flesh further.
- Ink only once it is tender. With the ink in, the pot goes black and you can no longer see the squid.
- Sieve the ink. It keeps the membranes of the sacs out of the sauce.
- Salt at the very end. Many bought inks are already salted.
More detail and the reasons why (1)
- The far end of the squid curve. Ojingeo-sundae writes: "Squid muscle begins to firm at around 65°C, and it is tender either very briefly (one to two minutes) or very long (past forty), with rubber in between." Ojingeo-bokkeum finishes inside the near window in ninety seconds; this dish goes to the far one. Spanish Wikipedia adds that the dish usually takes time, which is why it is so often sold in tins in Spanish supermarkets.
The basics behind this dish
- Browning and the Maillard ReactionMeat fails to brown for one of three reasons: it is wet, the pan is cool, or you put too much in at once. Plus how the brown film stuck to the pan becomes your sauce.
- Cooking Meat: Temperature, Resting, and Cutting Against the GrainDoneness is a core temperature, not a number of minutes. What resting actually does, how to handle a thick cut, and why the direction you slice changes the texture.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
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