Sea cucumber ✦ ◆

Holothurie séchée (concombre de mer)

What it is

Chinese banquet cooking counts four sea treasures — abalone, shark fin, fish maw and this — and of the four it is the only one that tastes of almost nothing. It is bought for texture and for what it absorbs: no muscle, no bone, no blood, an echinoderm closer kin to a sea urchin than to any fish.

In the kitchen

Soak it three to five days in the fridge in changes of cold water, with a brief boil each day, and never let oil near it — a trace of grease turns the body wall to slime. Braise it in a stock that already tastes finished, because it takes everything from the liquid.

Goes with

Dried shiitake (donko) Oyster sauce Ginger Spring onion Shaoxing wine Abalone Conpoy Pork

Same species

Konowata Kuchiko (dried sea cucumber ovaries)

Something wrong here, or missing? Tell us