1 Sea urchin – sea urchin – what is a sea urchin?
Sea urchin has the scientific name Echinoidea – the common name of a class of echinoderms, living in the oceans.
Sea urchin is also known by many other names such as sea urchin and sea urchin.
Sea urchins move quite slowly and their food is usually seaweed. However, when living in some seas, they may eat some mollusk corals or some mollusk seagrasses.
Sea urchin has a spherical shape, their diameter ranges from 3 to 10 cm, the shell is from 3 to 4 cm thick and the outside has many spines.
The flesh inside (often called urchin eggs) is very little compared to the volume of their shell. The flesh of sea urchin is made up of a 5- to an 8-pointed star shape, sticking along the shell, orange or yellow.
Sea urchin is known as one of the delicious seafood with high nutritional value. You can enjoy sea urchins in 3 ways: raw, cooked, or grilled.
2 How to choose sea urchin – fresh sea urchin, many eggs
Sea urchins – sea urchins start spawning from March to July of the lunar calendar and they often live on rocky cliffs.
Catching sea urchins also needs dexterity and light hands by using iron hooks to pull the sea urchins out, then pick them up and put them in the basket.
Because if you have a strong impact, the sea urchin will defend itself by shooting spikes, and they will cling even more tightly to the cliff, making it impossible for you to easily remove it.
Although catching sea urchins requires ingenuity and can be a bit difficult, on the contrary, choosing sea urchin – sea urchin so that it is fresh and has a lot of meat (eggs) is also very simple as:
- Choose live sea urchins, you can see they breathe easily by looking at the spines that move in the presence or absence of water.
- The larger the size of the sea urchin, the more meat (eggs) is inside.
Currently, you can see there are 2 types of sea urchins – sea urchins: prickly urchins and skull urchins.
For urchins, which are usually black, the outer spines are very hard and long. While the skullcap is yellow-orange or white and has shorter, softer spines.
Although the urchin meat has a more fishy smell than the skullcap, according to gourmets, the quality of the porcupine meat is better than that of the skullcap.
3 What is the price of sea urchins and where to buy sea urchins?
You can buy sea urchins at seafood stores, some markets (depending on time), or some e-commerce sites.
As Dien May Xanh updated in November 2021, the price of each sea urchin ranges from 15,000 – 25,000 VND/head, while the prepackaged urchin meat costs about 400,000 VND/kg.
4 How to prepare sea urchins – sea urchins properly
Preliminary processing of sea urchin – sea urchin is not too difficult, you can apply some steps that Dien May Xanh instructs as follows:
Step 1: Cut the spines around the outer shell of the sea urchin.
Step 2: Use the tip of scissors to cut in a circle at the bottom of the sea urchin.
Step 3: Pour out all the water inside the sea urchin, to expose the flesh. Then, use tweezers to pull out the blood veins and food left inside, leaving only the yellow or orange flesh (eggs).
Step 4: Wash and rinse under running water before enjoying or processing.
5 What do sea urchins make delicious?
To feel the inherent fatty flavor, you can eat urchin-style sashimi with mustard. In addition, you can cook sea urchin porridge, sea urchin soup, or grilled urchin with onion fat, which is also very attractive.
Refer to more recipes from sea urchin:
Hope the above-shared knowledge has helped you to understand more about sea urchins, what is sea urchin along with how to make delicious sea urchins! Wish you more delicious parts of this seafood.
