Squid: More than Just Calamari

Squid: More than Just Calamari

0:00:00.5 John Sheehan: My kids love calamari.

0:00:02.3 Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, me, yes. I never used to like squid. Now I try calamari and I'm like, wait, this is amazing.

0:00:09.3 JS: Do you like those tentacle bits?

0:00:10.4 S2: Yes, I like like like the crust on it and like the squishy of it.

0:00:15.4 JS: If it's on a menu, it's their go-to item and fortunately calamari, or squid, pops up a lot in restaurants and is prepared pretty consistently. You have the breaded fried rings and often the little squiggly tentacle bits and for a long time I thought that was basically all of the squid, the body and the tentacles, right? What else is there? It turns out quite a bit more.

0:00:37.5 Denise Skonberg: 50% of about 65 million pounds of squid that are landed every year, so about half of that is tossed out as waste.

0:00:44.3 JS: This is Dive in With NOAA Fisheries. I'm John Sheehan and today we'll hear about a team of food scientists who are working to reduce those wasted parts of the squid, the byproduct, starting with the completely edible squid fins or wings, which are almost always discarded.

0:01:00.4 DS: So if you think of a squid's body, it's this tube and on the sides of the tube there are fins that sort of splay out on either side and those fins are typically called the wings.

0:01:12.2 JS: This is Denise Skonberg, a professor of Food Science in the School of Food and Agriculture at the University of Maine.

0:01:18.3 Robert Dumas: Squid are skinned during processing and when they're removing that skin, a lot of times the wings are coming with that skin.

0:01:26.1 JS: And this is Robert Dumas, the school's food science innovation coordinator and facility manager. He's also a trained chef, which for reasons that will become clear in a moment, was pretty important. Denise and Robert, along with their colleague Dr. Brianna Hughes, who works in the seafood industry, are all recipients of the Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant, one of NOAA Fisheries mechanisms for supporting and promoting US seafood.

0:01:50.2 DS: This project is focusing on short fin and long fin squid, which are harvested mostly off of Rhode Island, and trying to create a new, convenient frozen food product out of those squid wings.

0:02:03.4 JS: Now, I think it's probably useful to back up for a little Squid 101. When a fresh squid is prepared, the tentacle portion is separated off and then the innards and what they call the quill or the hard internal cartilage is removed, leaving only the body with those fins or wings on top. Then the skin is removed along with those wings, leaving the cleaned white body or tube that gets sliced into rings.

0:02:28.1 RD: I would say that for the vast majority of chefs that are working with squid, the viscera has been removed, the quill has been removed, the skin has been removed, and they are getting either a whole tube and tentacles or they're getting tubes that have been cut into rings. It's very uncommon to have chefs receiving either fresh squid or whole unprocessed squid.

0:02:50.3 DS: But the wings are made out of the same exact muscle material and so there's really no reason why they should be wasted. And so that's why, you know, we're focusing on those.

0:03:00.2 JS: How did you get the idea to do this? What was the genesis? What were you like, hang on, these pieces are good too?

0:03:08.4 DS: The reason we decided to start our research collab with wings is because we wanted to start first with food. This just really represents some of the first work here at School of Food and Ag where we were able to blend some seafood science research, which is what I do, more of the scientific stuff with product development with somebody who has that skillset because he has, you know, a chef background when he came. So, and we're starting with the squid wings. So I feel like this is a really cool thing for us to start working on.

0:03:39.4 RD: Yeah, and you know, as a classically trained chef, it was, you know, absolutely hammered into me that if you are going to be successful as a chef, you are gonna have to minimize your food waste. And you know, there are these popular terms like nose to tail cookery, you know, as you think about something like pork or beef. And so I wanted to apply that same concept to seafood. So very much in line with my philosophy around food too, is to use every edible portion.

0:04:07.4 JS: How did, how did it go from an idea to a practice? Were you just taking a bunch of squid fins and, and testing them out in the kitchen? Or did you approach it with a bunch of grad students?

0:04:17.5 DS: So one of the things we were thinking about when we get the squid wings, logistically, what's the process gonna, how is it gonna unfold before you actually come up with the product? Both the species we're working with are quite different from each other, even though we harvest, they're harvested in the same area. So we wanted to assess the species, we needed to look at the effects of freezing, because they're frozen, and then we're making a frozen product out of them. So we needed to look at how stable they were to freezing over time. And so we all, Rob and Dr. Hughes and I all worked together and thought about what product forms we would have, like a ground product, like you might grind meat for a hamburger, versus more of a chopped product. And we needed to see how well those things withstand the freezing process. Then the next step was then to come up with different types of food products.

0:05:06.3 DS: And for that, we did a Big Chef Innovation Session, which actually Rob was in charge of that session. So Rob, why don't you, uh, lead off to talk about the innovation part?

0:05:16.4 RD: Yeah, and John, I'll just back up just a little bit. So, you know, when Denise engaged me about this potential work, I said, what was a squid fin, right? 'Cause I had no experience with squid processing. And for me, the initial education began with kind of understanding the anatomy of squid and the current processing of squid. We actually started with kind of looking at what other, you know, cultures in the world, how they prepare and eat squid, kind of how do we go beyond calamari, right? 'Cause we knew calamari was not gonna be an option. We knew that we were gonna have to do something other than, you know, bread and fry this thing. And so we also needed to navigate the obstacle or challenge that the skin provided. If you cook the fin, you know, with the skin on, in a calamari style preparation, the skin is too chewy. It has a toughness to it, right? So I kind of quickly realized that we were going to have to figure out uses for a ground or a chopped product.

0:06:09.4 RD: We started to land on some uses where maybe we could use squid as a filling, or maybe we could use squid as a cake, you know, maybe a sausage or something like that. And then after we had some kind of early work in the lab, we invited the down east chapter of the American Culinary Federation to come in for an innovation session in our commercial kitchen. And so we took that group of about a dozen chefs. We gave them a market basket of ingredients. So your typical stuff like celery, onion, bell peppers, carrots, you know, dairy, cream, butter, etcetera, wine. And then we kind of took the tablecloth off of the cart and on the cart were these four bowls of squid. And that was their first introduction to this product as well. And we divided them up in teams, we gave them time limits, and we went to work in the kitchen for kind of a iron chef or something like that, battle squid fin. And it was fun. The chefs came up with some really good ideas, and, and their ideas were, were very much in line with kind of our early prototypes as well. From that session and from our early work, we kind of narrowed our focus into what we felt like were maybe some of the most, I guess, appealing options for using this. And so we really felt pretty strongly that a dumpling was a great vehicle for squid fins.

0:07:24.5 RD: You know, ultimately, John, the University of Maine isn't going to become a squid fin manufacturer and make dumplings, right? We are gonna need to ultimately court someone out in industry to say, oh, that's a great idea. We really should be using all of these squid fins and not, you know, having them go to waste. So in our lab, we have been hard at work in terms of refining a dumpling preparation, where we use a, you know, a wheat wrapper, fill it with a seasoned ground squid mixture, and then you can steam or you can pan fry it like you would for a potsticker. And it's been really well accepted by, by folks that have tried it so far. I would say our next step is a sensory study. We'll invite in, you know, students, staff, and community members. Well, they will provide feedback on the different species. So it should be fun.

0:08:11.3 JS: I wanna back up a second and ask you a little bit more about this battle squid scenario. When you had all the chefs coming in and, and, you know, coming up with how to prepare these, these squid fins, what other recipes or what, what other products were they coming up with?

0:08:28.2 RD: I recall the chefs approaching that ingredient in a variety of ways. I would say some of the more successful products that were made were a fresh fried lumpia, like a rectangular wheat wrapper, cabbage, carrot, ground squid, seasonings rolled up and deep fried. Absolutely delicious. I could have eaten 100 of those. We had another chef who treated it similar to like you would make a meatball. He combined a mixture of breadcrumbs, eggs, cream, ground squid, seasoning, and formed it into like an Italian style meatball and served that with a red sauce. And I thought that was quite good as well. And honestly, that same meatball mixture could be used as a stuffing. You know, that could be put inside of a fillet of fish and rolled up for like a seafood fish papillote would be the French preparation there. But those were both highly successful. I remember another chef also attempted a torchon or a sausage, you know, taking the squid mixture, seasoning it, rolling it up in plastic film in order to make like a nice round log. However, I will say, and we've experienced this in our lab too, I think that the skin gets in the way of the proteins bonding together nice and tightly.

0:09:42.3 RD: And so when, when they took their cooked log out and opened it up, it, it didn't hold together. It was, it was a little too loose. But, umm, but yeah, I think there were, there were several successful things. One of the chefs made like a ramen, so a broth, brothy soup, and then put, umm, bits of fried squid fin on top of that, though he removed the skin from each piece of fin, which was tedious, uh, and maybe not commercially viable. But, umm, you know, if you're a super famous chef and you've got an army of interns, maybe you have them peel squid fins all day long.

0:10:13.5 DS: And also a thing to keep in mind is everybody was given both species and ground and chopped, but not every team used all four of those ingredients. One has more wing material in it, uh, more skin in it than the other one. Because of the way when they're doing the primary processing, the skin actually sticks to the meat more in one species compared to the other. And the two species don't taste the same.

0:10:36.4 JS: Are long fin and short fin squid prepared the same way for calamari? Are they sort of interchangeable in a commercial calamari creation? Like, do they just get a whole bunch of short and long fins with not really caring which is which and then just throw it into the calamari machine? Is that?

0:10:52.2 DS: No, no, they're definitely, I mean, the, the long fin is a higher value species. There are two different genus of squid. And so the long fin is considered the high value squid. They're harvested separately, they're kept completely segregated, they would definitely not mix those two things together at all.

0:11:09.3 JS: As an ingredient, what is it similar to? How would you compare it? Or how would you, is there, is there something else that has a similar preparation?

0:11:18.5 RD: I would say that the closest comparable product would probably be like ground or chopped shrimp. It doesn't bind as well as shrimp does. You know, if you were to, you know, chop up shrimp and add a little bit of seasoning and stir it vigorously with chopsticks, it would become quite sticky and become quite a cohesive mixture in a way that the squid fin needs, umm, a little extra help, uh, to accomplish. But that's probably what I would use as a, as a, you know, the best kind of substitute or comparison.

0:11:48.3 JS: If you taste it, are you like, oh, that's squid or that's calamari? Is it, is it familiar in that way?

0:11:53.2 RD: I would offer that it definitely tastes like seafood and that it is, you know, reminiscent of squid. I would say once it is in a ground or chopped form, particularly for like our dumping application, and this might be the first time I'm mentioning, I would say probably our other leading concept, which was to make a calamari cake, right? Where we made kind of, umm, you know, a little oval patty of the filling and breaded it and fried that. In both of those applications, I think that, you know, if you had a discerning palate, you would perhaps be able to identify it as squid, but, umm, you could also as a, you know, manufacturer, you know, say it's a seafood dumpling, especially if it was paired with, you know, cabbage or mushrooms or other vegetables. I mean, it would just simply have a kind of a pleasant seafood flavor, umm, and not be, you know, overly identifiable as squid per se.

0:12:43.4 JS: So you mentioned that you're going to be putting your product through a sensory study. Umm, does that mean taste testing this product?

0:12:50.3 DS: Yep. And we're hoping to do that within the next like six weeks. We have to get, anytime you work with consumers, you have to get it approved by the institutional review board. So that's where we are right now. And so what we, for these, we like to try and get 100 people to come in and they're gonna be trying four products. There is trying the dumpling, but from the different species and the different preparations. And so we need at least 400 dumplings. And that's something that they're gonna be working on in the pilot plan. They got to make all those dumplings. They come in, they're given these four different samples and they're asked to rate different attributes of the sample, like rate the appearance, rate the flavor, rate the texture. And then we also ask them different questions about like, how often do you eat squid? And then at the end, we will say, we're interested in developing this new dumpling product.

0:13:43.5 DS: And if you were gonna buy a box of like 10 of these frozen in the grocery store, how much would you be willing to pay? You know, all kinds of questions like that. So it's a really important next thing to do because, you know, we have to have a certain number of people for statistical evaluation. It's very different than just when we sit around and try and go, God, this is so good.

0:14:05.2 RD: And John, I would just add to that, that that is part of what makes the university unique is we've got Dr. Skonberg's expertise in the seafood lab. We also have the pilot plant for food processing and we have a full sensory lab. And that's kind of, umm, that's unique in New England that we have that kind of, umm, you know, full scope of research capability here.

0:14:28.5 JS: Well, Denise Skonberg and Robert Dumas, thanks so much for talking with me.

0:14:32.2 DS: Thanks. It was fun.

0:14:33.4 RD: Yeah. Thanks so much, John. It was a pleasure to speak with you.

0:14:35.3 JS: Denise Skonberg is a professor of Food Science in the School of Food and Agriculture at the University of Maine. Robert Dumas is the school's food science innovation coordinator and facility manager. They, along with Dr. Brianna Hughes, are recipients of NOAA's Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant. The grant is awarded yearly and funds projects that lead to the promotion, development, and marketing of US fisheries. You can learn more about their work or about other Saltonstall-Kennedy grantees at our website, fisheries.noaa.gov. I'm John Sheehan and this has been Dive In With NOAA Fisheries.