Fried Calamari

[jeff]

1lb of already cleaned squid
1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp dried oregano
old bay spice (optional)
lemon or lime
oil for frying.

Start out by removing the fins if they're still attached, you can do this simply by pulling them off, there's no need to use a knife, it should easily pull away. slice the body into small rings slice them about 1/4" thick. place the sliced squid as with the tentacles if your squid came with them, place them in a strainer of some sort and rinse them to make sure they're nice and clean.

Take the flour and all the spices minus the old bay and mix together in a bowl. place a few pieces of squid in the flour mixture and toss to cover, once done, shake off any excess flour, I found that sicking a finger into the ring and shaking it around made it easy. the idea is to remove as much as you can so you're left with a very light covering.

Place the now floured squid on a plate, go ahead and let the squid rest while the oil heats up.

Heat your oil to 375, once it's up to temperature place a few pieces of squid in the pot/fryer. My fryer was able to handle around 10 pieces, if using a smaller pot you might want to do 6 or so pieces at once, don't over fill it!

In the pictures used for this recipe I used a pretty thick pieces of squid so I cooked it for 2 minutes starting from the moment my last piece was dropped into the fryer. if it was smaller/thinner I would have cooked it a bit less. Best way to tell how long to cook it is to do a trial piece and eat it, if its not a rubber band then you know you're not over cooking it, if it feels raw inside put it back down.

Try to use a timer since this will allow for you to easily get the same color from each batch.

serve with a side of lemon or in my case a lime since I had no lemon. I also sprinkled it with a LIGHT dusting of old bay.