Sea salad - general principles of preparation
Seafood is valued by foodies around the world. The seas and oceans give us a huge number of its inhabitants: fish, plants and various invertebrates, which are the hallmark of Japanese cuisine and are considered indisputable delicacies in the west. At the mention of seafood, each person has his own associations. Someone’s imagination depicts the bottomless blue expanse of the ocean, in someone’s mind recalls memories of an exotic country or a heady sea voyage. In any case, tasting a sea salad, everyone at least briefly plunges into the atmosphere of a light holiday.
Crustaceans (shrimps, crabs, lobsters), mollusks (mussels, oysters, scallops), squids, sea fish, sea cucumbers, octopuses, sea kale and other animals perfectly fit into light sea salads, which bring great benefits to the body. All seafood is extremely healthy and widely used in clinical nutrition, due to its high content of iodine and minerals. In addition, sea salad is a very light meal; the ingredients are easily digestible and do not contain many calories, so marine life is a frequent element in diet food.
If you want to preserve all the valuable properties of seafood, then we recommend that you cook it exactly sea salad, which will certainly appeal to all family members. It is advisable to season such salads with olive oil (you can use other vegetable oils or mixtures thereof) by adding natural lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, salt, horseradish, mustard and ground pepper. Dishes containing sea fish can be poured with mayonnaise mixed with salted caviar. Fried shrimp and mussels in a salad are extremely tasty with mayonnaise or tomato sauce. Scallops and shrimps are ideally combined with sour cream. However, in the choice of culinary material for dressing, focus solely on your taste.
Sea salad - preparation of products
In the preparation of invertebrates do not require complex and painstaking processing. They usually go on sale in boiled, frozen form or as canned goods and salads. If you purchase frozen goods, you should defrost it on a separate shelf of the refrigerator, periodically draining the released liquid. It is impossible to expose seafood to long-term heat treatment! Otherwise, they will turn into a banal "rubber".
Frozen shrimp are first thawed, then washed and boiled in salted water for about ten minutes (boiled are dipped in boiling water and boiled for about three minutes). Trepangs are soaked for 24 hours in cold water before cooking, after which they are gutted and boiled on a slow flame for 3, 4 hours. Boiled mussels are thawed in cool water, constantly changing it (so that the sand is washed out), and then boiled for about 20 minutes from the moment of boiling.
Squids are first soaked so that the skin is easily removed from the pulp, and then boiled in boiling water for only 3 minutes. Shellfish in the salad can be added raw or slightly boiled. The scallop muscle is cooked for fifteen minutes, and after cooling, the meat is cut across the fibers or manually divided into thin slices.
Sea salad - the best recipes
Recipe 1: Assorted Sea Salad
A wonderful recipe taken from Greek cuisine. Salad of mussels, shellfish and other marine inhabitants, typical of Mediterranean cuisine, will appeal to everyone. A light and satisfying dish at the same time fits perfectly into any festive or romantic menu. Satisfied will remain and adherents of a healthy diet.
Ingredients:
- 1 kg of mussels
- 500 gr. peeled clams
- 2 glasses of shrimp
- squid 3 pcs.
- clove of garlic
- olives (pitted)
- any greens to choose from
- vegetable oil (preferably olive)
- juice of 1 lemon
- salt, ground black pepper
Cooking method:
1. Boil the shrimp, cool, remove the shell, antennae, viscera (from the back). Boil the mussels over high heat for about 7 minutes, until they open. Then remove the pulp from the shells.
2. Boil the clams. We clean the squid, cut the body in half rings and simmer in a heated frying pan under the lid until soft (in olive oil).
3. Next, put the sautéed squid in a deep dish. Finely chop the greens (you can take parsley or celery), chop the olives, grind the garlic into gruel.
4. Cooking salad dressing: mix olive oil with lemon juice, pepper, salt, garlic, olives and herbs.
5. Mix the ingredients: mussels, shellfish, shrimp and season with the resulting seasoning. Ready salad on top is decorated with boiled shrimps. Serve the dish better when chilled.
Recipe 2: Sea Salad with Laminaria
We offer a healthy, nutritious and very delicious recipe for preparing a salad based on a sea cocktail or assorted squids, shrimps, mussels, etc. with the addition of kelp (seaweed) and avocado.
Ingredients:
- sea platter (or cocktail) 400 gr.
- one jar of seaweed
- avocado 1 pc.
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
- greenery
- salt
Cooking method:
Thaw the seafood a little and fry in a pan for about 3-4 minutes. Put seaweed in a salad bowl, draining the liquid. Cool seafood and mix with cabbage. In order to prepare a filling base, mix olive oil, lemon juice and whisk the mixture until thickened. Peel and cut avocados into cubes, place in a salad bowl. Sprinkle with chopped herbs (for example, parsley) and season the salad with a sauce of oil and lemon juice. The dish is ready to serve!
Recipe 3: Sea Salad with Mayonnaise
Squids, shrimps, mussels - a sea cocktail will be appreciated by all, especially women. Light and tasty salad, the benefits of which are very great for the figure, and for health, and to achieve sexual harmony (seafood are natural aphrodisiacs - substances that increase sexual desire).
Ingredients:
- Seafood Cocktail
- green salad (leaves)
- 2 chicken eggs
- 2 fresh cucumbers
- parsley
- olive oil
- mayonnaise light (or greasy) 2 table. l
- salt
Cooking method:
Cook eggs, chop. We cut cucumbers, lettuce and parsley. Seafood is slightly boiled (if they are not boiled), chopped into approximately equal pieces. We mix all the ingredients and season the salad with mayonnaise. Before serving, cool the dish a little and pour olive oil.
Recipe 4: Sea Foam Salad
Chic salad, designed primarily for the festive table. Airy, like sea foam, salad will be loved by all, without exception. All incoming components will be laid out in layers.
Ingredients:
- 1 can of squid
- boiled carrots 1 pc.
- 2 chicken eggs
- hard cheese 100-150 gr.
- Red caviar
- a pair of garlic cloves
- mayonnaise
- salt
Cooking method:
We clean the boiled eggs, grate. Finely chop the squid, rub the carrots and cheese. Pass the garlic through a garlic squeezer and mix it with mayonnaise. We begin to spread the salad on a flat plate around the set glass in layers:
1 layer - grated eggs
2 layer - evenly distribute squids
3 layer - carrots
4 layer - grated cheese
Next, cover the salad with mayonnaise, salt, and on top with red caviar. Fatter lovers can grease each layer with mayonnaise (or through the layer). Before serving, do not forget to remove the glass from the center. Enjoy your meal!
Recipe 5: Smoked Chicken Seafood Salad
Amazing combination! Smoked chicken, sea cocktail, fruits and white wine. The excellent spicy salad is perfect for a romantic dinner. It will take very little time to cook it. Arrange yourself and your loved one a few minutes of pleasure.
Ingredients:
- sea platter 400 gr.
- chicken fillet (smoked) - 300 gr.
- an Apple
- one orange
- salt
- mayonnaise
- white wine
Cooking method:
Boil seafood. Chicken cut into small pieces, mix with chopped seafood. Put the grated apple on the bottom of the salad bowl. Mix the mayonnaise with white wine (1: 1) and separately season the chicken mixed with a sea cocktail. We spread the resulting mixture on top of apples and decorate with orange slices.
Sea salad - useful tips
Experienced chefs advise seasoning salads with dressing and salt just before serving. You can slightly cool them in the seasoned form, but not more than an hour, otherwise the salads will begin to become sour.
Fresh clams should be tightly closed. It is on this fact that you need to pay attention to when buying. Dead mollusks have open sashes and meat with a grayish tinge. In addition, they no longer smell like the sea. When buying crustaceans, pay attention to the shell - it should be hard, and the meat should be dense and with a distinctive moist shine.
And the last valuable advice: defrost any seafood is allowed only once. With repeated thawing, they will fall apart and lose their unique taste.
