How to Clean & Grill Squid | Zesty Fennel, Lemon & Chilli BBQ Recipe

🔥 Fire up the BBQ for this fresh, flavour-packed squid recipe! 🦑 In this video, I’ll show you exactly how to clean, prepare, and cook whole squid from start to finish.

We begin by cleaning the squid — removing the tentacles, discarding the eyes, taking out the cuttlebone, and giving it a thorough clean. I’ll also share a simple trick for scoring squid into a concertina pattern — it looks fantastic and helps the squid cook quickly and evenly on the grill! 🔪✨

Once prepped, the squid is coated in a mix of olive oil, freshly ground fennel seeds, salt, and pepper for bold, aromatic flavour. 🌿 It’s then grilled directly over hot BBQ coals on the Big Green Egg for just a few minutes until tender and lightly charred. Don’t have a BBQ? No worries — you can easily cook this on a hot griddle pan indoors too! 🍳🔥

To finish, we whip up a vibrant dressing made with lemon juice & zest 🍋, fennel seeds, fresh red chilli 🌶️, extra virgin olive oil, and fresh mint 🌱. The hot squid gets dressed generously, then served with lemon wedges and extra chilli for a bright, zesty seafood dish that’s perfect for summer dining! ☀️

This easy BBQ squid recipe is simple, fresh, and packed with bold Mediterranean-inspired flavours. Whether you’re a seafood lover or cooking squid for the first time, this is a must-try recipe! 💯

📝 Ingredients:
Fresh whole squid 🦑
Fennel seeds 🌿
Olive oil 🫒
Salt & pepper 🧂
Lemon (juice & zest) 🍋
Fresh red chilli 🌶️
Fresh mint 🌱

🔥 Key Techniques You’ll Learn:
How to clean and prepare whole squid
A simple trick for scoring squid (concertina style)
How to BBQ squid perfectly over direct heat
Making a fresh lemon, fennel & chilli dressing

🌊 Perfect For:
BBQ seafood recipes
Quick summer dinners
Mediterranean-inspired dishes
Grilled seafood lovers

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Today we’re firing up the grill for something light, fresh, and absolutely packed with flavor. We’re cooking barbecue squid with a zesty fennel, lemon, chili, and mint dressing. It’s quick to cook, perfect for summer, and quite honestly, it is a dish that disappears in seconds. I hope you’re all well. I’m Shane. Welcome back to It’s Cooking Good. So, first off, we need to turn our attention to the squid. And I’ve got some lovely squid here. Thank you to Ron Fowler and Son. If you’re in Bookham, make sure you pay him a visit. Look at that bad boy. I’ve actually got three of them. I’ve saved one. I’ve prepped the other two and Constantine them, which I’m going to show you how to prep it and Constantina it in a second. I’ve got another two in there. And I’ve saved this one for us to do together. So, we’re going to get that onto our board. And honestly, guys, this is so much simpler than you think to do. So, we’re going to start by pulling out our tentacles. Pull them out like that. And then we’re going to keep obviously the tentacles, but we don’t want the eyes and such like. So, we’re going to put that into our tray. Get rid of that. And then on the squid, oh, there’s a spare one. You’ve got these, which are the basically the wings. Okay. And we’re going to take those off. Just peel them off. They come straight off like that. And then with these, obviously, we’re not going to waste them. We are going to cook them up. Get your knife and just lightly score it. Just let the weight of the knife glide its way through. One. two. Sorry, I’m trying to keep my hands out the way so you can see it. And then you’re left with the main part of the squid. And in here, you’ve got like a a twill, like a a bone. We don’t want that. And then just check inside. And any goubbins that are in there, we’re going to pull those out. There we go. I have washed these first, so they’re pretty clean. I’ve just left all the inards in. And that’s that. And then to Constantina it, I have a little technique that I use, we put a knife in like that. Excuse the horns. And you just get your other sharp knife and just gently all the way down. Make this as thick or as thin as you want. What we’re trying to do is achieve something that obviously doesn’t go right the way through. Push your knife back in if it comes out. It’s just going the slits are sort of going halfway down. There we go. Pull that out. And then you end up this lovely sort of constantina effect. Don’t worry, it should just pull apart like that. There we go. Okay, so they’re done. We just need to season it up slightly. Can use a little bit of olive oil. Not loads. Probably about a teaspoon and a half. Something like that. I want some pepper. Some nice crap black pepper on all of that. And and the tentacles. I love the tentacles. One of my favorite parts to be fair. Imagigen will devour at least a whole one of these. We’d be lucky if we get a look in. And then some salt as well. And then to that I’ve got here fennel seeds. And I’ve just ground them down into a powder, but you can probably buy uh ground fennel anyway. So just use that. And I’m just going to sprinkle some of this all over. I’m doing like a Mediterranean version. If you wanted to do more of like an Asian version, you could use Chinese five spice instead of this. If you were doing more of an India version, by all means, use like a curry powder. A mild curry powder, I would suggest, would work really, really well. That’s it. And we just want to make sure it’s all nicely coated in that fennel. That looks good to me. These are ready to get on the barbecue. We’re going to go straight over the coals. And these are going to probably take only about 3 minutes. We’re going to flip them halfway through. Let’s put some of those tentacles on as well. Put those around here. They might char a little bit too much cuz there’s some long pieces on there, but that’s absolutely fine. Okay, while that’s cooking, obviously a good excuse to have a little sip of wine. Lovely. And we’re going to make our dressing that’s going to go on this when it comes out of the barbecue. So in here, I’ve got the juice of a lemon. I’m adding the zest of said lemon. Also, I’ve got a teaspoon of fennel seeds, whole, not ground this time. And then one deseeded red chili, finely chopped. And then we’re going to add some extra virgin olive oil. So I’ve done one tablespoon of the lemon. So, I want three of the extra virgin olive oil, which is probably about there. And then finally, we want some mint. So, I’ve got some fresh mint here, and we’ll just peel it off. Never does what you want it to do when you’re filming yourself, does it? Let’s just strip it like that. Put as much or or as little as you like in. I quite like the minty flavor. Okay. And then just give that a rough chop. Just bunch it together. Nice and chunky. Perfect. And get that into your little pot there. And then just give it a little mix around. And that is our dressing ready. Cannot wait. Okay, let’s go and check on our squid and see how it’s doing. Oh, it smells delightful. Let’s give it a flip. Nice. Got some nice char in there. We don’t want this overcooked, but we do want some nice color on there. Flip our tentacles over as well. There we go. We’re going to give that another minute and then we can dress up the final dish and give it a taste. See how we’ve done. Okay, so our squid is out. Looks fabulous. We’re going to give it a drizzle in our lovely sauce just over the top. You want a bit of that chili, bit of the mint, bit of everything on there really. Just give it a little drizzle around. Oh yeah. Wow. And we’ll dress it with couple of lemon wedges at either end there. And I do like a little bit of fresh chili as well, just scattered around because I like it hot as you all know. Well, certainly if you’ve watched the channel before. And there we go. And there it is. My barbecue fennel mint lemon chili squid. Let’s give it a go and see how we have done. Okay, let’s tuck in. Got to cut one of these bad boys open. A nice piece off there. It’s still lovely and tender. The knife is just gliding through there, which is exactly what you want. you overcook this, it’s just going to be really, really rubbery, and you definitely don’t want that. Wow. That is absolutely stunning. Stunning. All of those flavors, the mint, the chili. I’m going for a little bit more on there. Coming through. The fennel has worked wonders on it. It’s fresh. It’s vibrant. And it is super tasty. That will not disappoint on any level. This is definitely one to give a go, guys. You saw how easy and quick that was to do. And hopefully now you feel more confident if you’ve never done it before to actually address the squid and gut it and cook it yourself at home. That’s it from me for today. A short one for you. I really do appreciate you tuning in. If you haven’t already, please do subscribe. Please also like, share, and comment. I’d love to hear from you. If you try this or if you’ve got a variation on it, let me know. I will respond. I’ll put all of the details of today’s barbecue, lemon, chili, fennel, mint, squid down below in the description as always. And all that’s left for me to say is until next time, it’s cooking