Vietnamese recipe for 4 as a starter or as a main alongside other dishes people, takes only 5 mins; recipe has cornflour, plain flour, black pepper, peppercorn, vegetable oil, squid, spring onion, red chilli, cucumber, red onion, rice wine vinegar, caster sugar and fish sauce.
Salt & pepper squid
Course: Vietnamese
Servings
4 as a starter or as a main alongside other dishes
servings
Prep time
20 mins
Ingredients
- Vegetable Oil: sunflower or vegetable oil, for frying
- Red Chilli: 1 red chilli, finely chopped
- Red Onion: 1 small red onion, finely chopped
- Spring Onion: finely sliced spring onion and green chilli, to serve
- Cucumber: half cucumber, finely diced
- Caster Sugar: 1 tbsp caster sugar
- Plain Flour: 85g plain flour
- Rice Wine Vinegar: 100ml rice wine vinegar
- Fish Sauce: 2 tsp fish sauce
- Squid: 400g squid, cleaned and cut into strips (see tips, below)
- Black Pepper: 2 tsp black pepper, cracked
- Cornflour: 85g cornflour
- Peppercorn: 2 tbsp ground Szechuan peppercorns, roughly crushed
Directions
- To make the dipping sauce, mix all the ingredients in a small bowl until the sugar has dissolved, then set aside. Mix the cornflour and plain flour with both peppers and 2 tsp sea salt in a large bowl, then set aside. Line a tray with kitchen paper and make sure you have more salt to sprinkle with.
- Heat about 7cm of oil to 180C in a deep fryer, wok or deep pan. If you don't have a thermometer, you can test it with a cube of bread - it should brown in 20 secs. Coat the squid well with the flour mix and fry in batches for about 2 mins each or until crisp. Use a slotted spoon to lift out the squid, then drain on the kitchen paper and sprinkle with a little more salt. Serve the squid scattered with the spring onion and chilli, with the dipping sauce on the side.
