[warning: post not suitable for the squeamish]

It was an easy recipe: I was going to take the cleaned squid and score it in a criss-cross pattern, season it with some salt and pepper, char it for a few minutes in a very hot griddle, and then splash it with garlic, lemon juice and olive oil. It’s a simple preparation, quite pretty, and tastes delicious.

So I needed a squid.

You probably can get frozen squid at Trader Joe’s, but I wanted fresh squid, and I wanted to clean it. I’ve cooked with pre-cleaned squid before, but I had never cleaned my own, and was up for a culinary challenge.

I headed over to a pan asian market with a bustling fish counter, where you can have your fish cleaned, gutted, even cooked for you. I found myself in front of the large container of jumbo squid, with my hand in a plastic bag ready to pick up my chosen specimen. Having never chosen a squid before, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for, and perhaps my first mistake was not asking someone. Squid are supposed to be cream colored and firm, with eyes clear and full. I think mine looked good, but to be honest I can’t be sure.

As I picked my squid, a British woman, who seemed very out of place, and slightly horrified at the frenetic pace and general “whole animal” aspect of the fish section, asked me what I was going to do with the squid. As I began to explain, she lost complete interest, and let out a gasp at the “live frog” box next to the squids. “You should probably just ignore those,” I smiled at her coyly. At least I was.

When I got home, I put the squid in the fridge, and waited until the next day to attempt the procedure. (Mistake #2, if you buy a fish or squid, use it as soon as possible.) Somehow I managed to psych myself out a little bit. I’ve butchered a few different types of animals, but I wasn’t looking forward to having to hold the gelatinous little creature and cut right below his eyes.

Cleaning the squid: (a few simple steps that work perfectly)

Surprisingly, this part was quite easy! I lay my squid out flat, used my sharp ceramic knife, and cut right below the eyes, to remove the tentacles. If you cut right below the eyes, you get a ring at the top that holds the tentacles together, which is convenient, and keeps things clean. I rinsed them, and put them aside in a bowl, ready to cook.

The next step was to separate the head and innards from the body. After taking a firm grasp on the squid’s head and body, I pulled on the head, and it came cleanly out of the body, innards in tow. I looked around for the ink sac, but it was tiny, and wouldn’t have produced any quantity needed in a recipe, so I threw both the innards and head in a double wrapped trash bag (to avoid a smell) into the garbage.

The next step is to take the body, and remove the clear pins (the spiny part) and the skin. I reached in, and grabbed the pins which came right out in one piece, and then proceeded to get under the skin with my knife and then pull it right off. In all, I’d say the whole process took no more than ten minutes.

Mistake #3 The Smell:

It was around this time that I was starting to get complaints from the next room. “It smells awful!” Devon, my faithful taste tester told me. Indeed, the squid did smell fishy, and after rinsing it, the smell didn’t seem to go away. This should have been the giveaway. It can’t be bad though, right? Right? Well, I’ll just go ahead and start cooking it. I scored the squid, salted and peppered it, and put it on my smoking grill. It was cooking beautifully, but let’s just say, it smelled, foul, terrible, nauseating, erm, “not pleasant”.  Now, I’ve grilled cleaned squid before, and the smell of charred squid is generally a delicious one, but although this wasn’t the case, I still didn’t want to call it a failure. “I’ll just taste it!” I thought. BAD IDEA. BAD IDEA. BAD IDEA.

The result was awful. I can’t express it, but lets just say, it goes up in my memories side by side with the day I chugged a whole container of soured milk at the beach, or the day I first had rancid peanut butter in a pb and fluff sandwich, or the day I used some olive oil that had been sitting in the burning summer sun for an entire day.

Le grand sigh. It was a complete foodie failure, but I assure you, I won’t let it stop me. I’ll just wait a few weeks before trying again. A few longish weeks. And maybe I’ll get some of that pre-cleaned squid.