Living on the mid Atlantic east coast, I've never had good fresh uni until trying it in Sea-Tac. I was thrilled finding live uni at a new to me Asian market. So I picked a "live" large one and got it home. It was really light and kind of rough from shipping (almost all spines were broken) so like I've done with other live seafood prepped a bucket of seawater (reef tank nerd) plopped it in and set it outside so it stayed cold (52f/11c water temp). I do this typically to revive and sometimes purge shellfish which results in a better taste. This morning it was barley alive so I decided to process it before it perished.
I split it in half gently by hand, scooped out the gonads with a spoon and placed in icy water. Then scooped by hand rinsed with cold water trickling from the tap and placed it as you see. Some of the dark stuff is not rinsing of. By the time I rinsed the last one, I noticed the orange ooze on the first one. The picture is within 4 minutes of cracking open the urchin.
Did I do something wrong in my process, pick a bad urchin, was already degrading?
More importantly, is it even going to be good or safe to eat?
by crashandwalkaway
22 Comments
Cleaning fresh uni is pretty difficult to do well. You look like you did alright but the ooze is from rupturing the individual eggs that make up the whole tongue. It is almost impossibe to get them entirely clean with out rupturing some.
This isnt 10/10 uni but certainly looks nice enough to spread on some toast or top on some pasta!
Well considering a lot of people just pop a hole through the mouth and scramble the insides and drink it out of the shell I think this looks pretty good! Also I have heard that there is a slight difference in color from male to female but I’m nit entirely sure I haven’t looked it up because it doesn’t matter much to me. Hopefully it tastes great.
This looks amazing to me.
Well it looks great to me, what matters in the end is the taste though, it really depends on the season and the location of harvest, you don’t have much control to that.
I didnt look at the sub and thought these were undercooked chicken tenders
The black line I’m pretty sure is natural for that type of uni, and the juice/ooze is just from the uni being damaged while harvest. Should taste fine if you eat it sooner then later. I live in the mountains and 1 out of every 10 or so uni boxes we get looks like this due to poor handling by the delivery company.
This looks aces in my opinion
Uni, the most romantic sushi…
It’s for YOU, and I.
Sorry, had to.
I don’t eat uni by itself, but love mixing it in a bowl of rice, some ikura, baked salmon (not fully cooked, gross), and nikiri (soy).
I would never try this myself. I say that as a preface to say this looks like a good job to me, for someone who is an amateur. I would not be thrilled if it were a restaurant, and I was served it as made by a pro.
The other two factors with uni are (1) it is intrinsically disgusting looking, so if you’re into it — as I am — to begin with, you’ve gotten over that it looks like something I won’t say, because when a friend pointed that out I could not get it out of my head and I resent that friend for the remark; and (2) people eat all sorts of parts of seafood, e.g., not all places devein their shrimp if it is served shell on (and I do that myself at home, even shell on, and, man, I find it not easy), or crab innards, which I will sample if others are enthusiastic but I can’t say that on my own I am looking to consume that.
So, yes, I hope you are it. Would you post a report about whether you did and how it was?
PS Thanks for sharing. This is a fun sub-Reddit for posts such as this. Kudos to you for that, beyond your kitchen skills.
Looks perfectly fine to me!
I used to work in a high end restaurant and sometime we would get live Maine urchins and clean them ourselves, then other times we would order trays from Japan. When you buy the nice trays you are paying more because you only get the best of the best tongues and don’t see all the B grades that don’t make the cut. When cleaning our own we would always have to separate and use all the B grade for sauce work. We would also rinse 2-3 times in a separate bath each time.
I typically remove the gonads under light running water. The dark stains come from the digestive fluids that are in the main section of the urchin. Keeping running water minimizes this problem. Remove the membrane with sharp, thin tweezers and remove gonads with a thin wide metal spool. Drop into salted water to form up.
I prefer to eat them with a bit of citrus and/or lightly torched. Firms it up a bit. For whatever reason, I’m really sensitive to the flavour and 30% of uni tastes like cleaning fluid even if other people don’t taste that.
Do you mind sharing where you got this? I’ve been having trouble finding uni recently.
I do refrigeration for a place that brings in uni. It’s wild the process it goes through. All by hand.
I grew up with this stuff constantly available locally, I can say that this is what sea urchin looks like when prepared at home. It looks normal.
That texture gives me chills in the worst way 😵💫
BOY I THOUGHT THAT WAS FRIED CHICKEN
This is all normal
I can’t edit the picture description, so in case anyone is wondering– WOW. Just. damn. I get why it’s a delicacy now. I’m kind of pissed at all the times I spent almost $20 for one “tongue” (cute alternative for the gonads they are) and it tasted not great. I got 5 and this was only $7. Unfortunately the store I got them from is 2 hours away and only go there 1 or 2 times a month but will be a reoccurring treat.
Very delicate, non-fishy taste. I wouldn’t even say it tastes like the ocean, more like it tastes like how the ocean smells.
Learned that I like it sashimi with nothing (not really a fan of soy sauce with sashimi anyway). Being nervous I put a little furikakae in the rice which was a mistake. It’s very easy to overpower the taste. Tried it Nigiri with nori and the nori was a good accompanying profile.
Thank you all for the comments and tips!
So this isn’t fried catfish
Sushi chef here, they look fine to eat. Maybe just lower grade. Also try using tweezers to pick out the black stuff on the sides and in between. I think you can see the black lines still. But they look fine to eat, I’d give it a go. 😅
Omg yes. Eat.