Cooking Salt And Pepper Squid

Our answer

Nigella's Salt And Pepper Squid (from NIGELLA BITES) tosses bite-size pieces of squid in seasoned cornflour (cornstarch) before frying them until crisp. The cornflour coating should turn golden brown as it cooks, though the squid itself will turn from opaque to a pearly white. It is important not to cook squid this way for too long, otherwise it will have a rubbery texture.

If the squid coating did not turn golden then it is probably as the oil was not hot enough. The oil needs to be very hot but not smoking (around 180-190c/350-375F) and if you drop a small piece of bread into the oil it will sizzle immediately and start to turn golden at the edges. Heat the oil well to start with and let it heat up again in between each batch of squid. The other problem could be that there are too many pieces of squid in the pan at once. This causes the oil temperature to drop quickly and the squid steams rather than fries, meaning that the coating will not turn golden. So cook in batches of 3-4 pieces only, depending on the size of the frying pan.