SEA CUCUMBERS

SEA CUCUMBERS.

The sea cucumbers or sea slugs have been harvested by the Chinese for hundreds of years. The Chinese consider this a delicacy for centuries. Today, the demand is even greater for the dried sea cucumbers.

The sea cucumber is so called because of its shape. The Chinese calls it “hoy sum’ meaning ‘ocean heart or ocean ginseng’. Many believe this sea cucumber have many useful health benefits.

The sea cucumbers are traditionally sold dried and there are many, many varieties and sizes to choose from. Colors vary from white to black.

The texture is jelly like or crunchy depends on the time of cooking. On its own the taste is very bland, so abit of preparation with sauces are needed to present a tasty dish.

In the old days, sea cucumbers are considered a very expensive item and eaten only on special occasions, like, Chinese New year, grand parent’s birthdays, baby’s full moon and festival days.

It is a very tedious job cleaning and cooking it. Today it is still very expensive but you can order it in most Chinese restaurants.
The sea cucumbers are said to be good for the heart, lower cholesterol, an aphrodisiac and keeps you young.

You can now find cleaned frozen sea cucumbers in fish shops.
The best tasting ones come from Japan, they are about 4” long, dried and black in color, and they have small spikes along both sides. These sea cucumbers are also the most expensive in the market.

To reconstitute the dried sea cucumbers take a few weeks of soaking and cleaning before you can cook and eat it. The sea cucumbers are first put in a pot with clean water, enough to cover them, bring to the boil, and switch off heat, cover and leave to soak over night.

The next day, this is repeated, wash them, add clean water and boil again, soak over night. This is done 3 times. On the 4th day, they are soft enough to cut open the belly and clean out the insides.

They have a lot of sand and guts. Using a knife, scrape off the sandy bits from the outer skin,
sometimes the sellers use lime to preserve them. Washing and scraping would remove most of it.

Put them back in clean cold water, changing the water every day for 7 days. Now the sea cucumbers are ready to cook. Cut them up into bite size pieces, boil them once, strain and stew them with mushrooms.

My grandmother usually stews the sea cucumbers with lots of ginger, garlic and pork leg.

The ginger, garlic are fried in sesame oil, add the cut up pork leg, mushrooms and sea cucumbers, add in oyster sauce, soy sauce, black sauce Chinese wine whole peppers and water to stew. Salt to taste.