Full question
I made the Greek Squid and Orzo - delicious and easy. Tastes like being on holiday too! But I found that by the time the squid was tender, the orzo was a bit overcooked. Why was this, and should I cook it in the sauce for a while before adding the orzo?
Our answer
Nigella's Greek Squid And Orzo (from SIMPLY NIGELLA) is an easy one-pan dish. The flavour of the fennel, tomatoes and orzo are soaked up by orzo pasta (named kritharáki in Greek) as everything cooks together in the oven. Squid either needs to be cooked very quickly or braised slowly, as it is here, to be tender.
The orzo pasta will be quite soft at the end of the cooking time, rather than "al dente", so this should be expected. We are not sure if you used the stated oven cooking time of 1 hour and 20 minutes, or if extra time was added. But in our experience, the squid should be tender after this amount of cooking. The tenderness of squid can vary slightly, so we would suggest trying to buy smaller squid tubes as these will be much more tender than larger ones. In addition, it may help to buy frozen squid and thaw it overnight in the fridge before using, or follow the instructions on the packaging) as freezing and thawing can help to tenderise the squid by breaking down some of the tough muscle fibres in the squid. Also just make sure that when you cook the vegetables and squid in step 3 that there is some liquid in the pan so that everything braises rather than fries. If the pan is dry then add a splash of water to help with the cooking.
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