Making Calamari

The boyfriend finally did what he's been trying to do since I met him, and that is to cook up some squid at home (or is it cuttlefish? I'm never clear on the distinction). Now, it's not that I hate squid, but I'm just picky about how it's prepared. Sometimes it tastes great, and sometimes its rubbery and gross. So, generally, I just avoid it. But, I have tried 어징어튀김 (fried squid) that we might call calamari, and that's quite good, so I finally relented when the boyfriend decided to make calamari. Since I've never seen squid prepared before, I took photos of the process.


You can buy 오징어 (squid) at emart for about 1,000 won a piece, aka super cheap.


First step is taking out the center part of squid. It's full of some nasty brown stuff.


When you take out the center part, it looks like this. Don't eat this. Throw it away!


The boyfriend had some fun playing with the eyes. But, be careful. They will explode and squirt purple liquid. Remove the eyes until you're left with just the tentacles.


Cut off each tentacle and throw away the black mouth part. You should be left with the body and the tentacles to eat. Cut them into strips for frying.


Next, you'll need to prepare your 튀김가루 which is a kind of flour used for deep frying. You can find it at emart in the flour section. According to the directions, first cover it in plain flour, then dip it into the batter, then put it into your pan full of hot oil.


here's the squid getting covered with flour.


Here's dipping the squid into the batter, and putting it into the pan with hot oil.


Deep frying the squid (sorry, this is the best photo I could get). Be careful of spitting hot oil!


Once it's fried, remove it and when it cools down, it's ready to eat! It turned out quite tasty for the first time. Now we have two more squids in the freezer that have to be eaten!

Super easy, huh?

Language notes:
튀김(twikim)- battered and deep fried things
오징어튀김 (ojingaw twikim) deep fried squid (calamari)

튀김가루 (twikimkaru) - flour used for deep frying
밀가루 (milkaru)- Flour
고주가루 (gochukaru) - hot pepper powder
if you add 가루 to the end of something, it generally means it's some sort of powder.