Impress your guests with this recipe from outdoor cooking enthusiast BBQ Bill.
- Dish Type: Main
- Serves: 2
- Preparation time: 4 hours
- Cooking time: 10 mins
- Difficulty: Difficult
Ingredients:
- Squid cleaned 2-3 large bodies and the tentacles (fresh or defrosted from frozen)
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Cracked Black pepper (Tellicherry or Kampot are my favourites)
- Chilli Flakes – sprinkle, enough to give a good background heat
- Sea salt for seasoning
- Lemon wedges to serve
- Place the squid body on a chopping board and lay flat, take a sharp knife and make an even line of cuts on one side to the centre line and through to the board to leave a series of cuts along one side. This allows more edges for charring but keeps the body whole and moist during cook.
- Add enough oil to coat the squid but not drench it, including the tentacles. Add fresh cracked black pepper and chilli flakes and mix around with your hands in a large bowl to ensure everything is distributed evenly. Place in fridge to marinate for 2-4 hrs.
- Take out of the fridge 15-20 mins before you are ready to cook.
- Head for the bbq, I use a ceramic kamado style bbq set up for direct cooking at around 250c+ with either the regular or a cast iron grate or griddle. I prefer birch wood charcoal with seafood, but have used beech, orange and regular hardwood charcoal mixes.
- Add a good sprinkle of sea salt right before cooking.
Cooking:
- Place the squid bodies cut side down and lay out the tentacles in a flat layer as even as you can get them. Cook for 3-4mins on this first side to get a charred layer on the outside, you are looking for a medium brown colour and for the squid to turn white rather than translucent as it is when raw. Flip these over, along with the tentacles which also should have charred edges.
- Cook for a further 2 minutes on the second side and until the tentacles have an even char.
- Serve with a squeeze of lemon.
- When chargrilled you can leave whole or serve in large sliced pieces, there will be a pleasant contrast of the charred outside to the clean white of the inside.