Seafood Preparation -
Cuttlefish, Octopus & Squid

When preparing your fish and seafood for recipes, below are some useful tips and information that make life easier!

Cuttlefish Preparation:
Cut the body cavity on the soft side, open out, remove and discard cuttlebone and gut.  If ink sac is intact, it can be removed carefully and the ink extracted over a bowl to add to the dish being prepared.  Cut off tentacles from head, just below eyes, remove beak, discard head.  Pull off skin from body and rinse well.  Cut body in squares or strips.  Squares can be 'honeycombed' by scoring in diamonds; these curl up during cooking.  Rub skin off tentacles with a cloth dipped in salt.  Rinse well and drain.

Octopus Preparation:
Octopus is usually tenderised when purchased; if freshly caught, tenderise by holding by one tentacle and beat it thoroughly on a rock, about 40 strokes should be enough, gripping a different tentacle each few strokes.  This has a better tenderising effect than beating with a mallet.  Cut off head/body section just below the eyes to remove tentacles.  Cut out eyes and clean body cavity.  Push beak up through centre of joined tentacles and cut off.  Cut Octopus into pieces or leave both sections intact.  Wash thoroughly, paying particular attention to tentacles as the suckers can contain sand.  To clean small, whole octopus, cut up back of head/body and remove gut.  Push up beak and cut out, cut out eyes, wash thoroughly.   Skin is difficult to remove from fresh Octopus.  Skin can be left on for cooking; to remove, parboil for 5-10 minutes in a little water, then skin when cool enough to handle and proceed with recipe.

Squid Preparation:
Pull off head and attached tentacles, the gut should also come away from the body (hood).  Discard gut, pull out quill-shaped bone from the hood cavity.   Cut off section of head containing eyes and beak, discard.  You will be left with tentacles joined together with a section of the head and the hood.  Pull off fine purple skin to expose the white body.  Skin may be rubbed off the tentacles if desired - use a cloth dipped in salt.  Rinse well and drain.  Leave hood intact with flaps attached for stuffing; gently pull off flaps if slicing hood into rings; or slice hood and flaps into strips according to recipes.  Chop tentacles or leave intact as required; intact tentacles from small Squid make a good garnish as they curl up into rosettes during cooking.

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