Seafood Blend: Part...3?
May 26, 2024 1:52 PM
Way back in the early days of this blog, my sister and I made a seafood skillet dish. It was...okay. Guess that's why I was never compelled to make it again.
Until today! I was thinking that I wanted to use up a tiny amount of frozen peas, and I had read this old blog entry and saw that the dish had peas, but apparently I thought there were too many peas in it. Well, it's been over five years. Maybe I can make it better this time.
I had told myself that Trader Joe's seafood blend was terrible, so I bought a different seafood mix that I found at the Korean store. Honestly, when I saw it, I was skeptical. I wasn't sure if the mix of squid, octopus, shrimp, and mussels would go well here. But I got it anyway. I also told myself to double the amount of seafood, and since this was a 1 lb bag, I figured I would use up the whole thing. I did not end up cooking the seafood first though. (I probably should have though)
This may have been worse than when I first made it. 🫠At least the first time, I managed to make it look pretty. I knew this was going to be bad when I went to stir all the rice and seafood around and saw that the heat was not getting distributed evenly and that some of the food was overcooked and other parts were not getting cooked at all.
I turned up the heat a little and kept cooking it longer so I could hopefully get the seafood more cooked, but I think I just ended up overcooking the rice and it got all gummy. I also took some bites of seafood and it was...not great. I think I had way too much in the pan.
Okay, so, if I decide to make this again, I now have a new set of notes to follow:
- Buy a frozen seafood mix that has shrimp, calamari, and scallops. I don't think it matters if it's Trader Joes or some other brand, but I don't want any octopus.
- Use 1 lb of seafood, and 1 cup of rice. Two cups of rice was way way way too much for my pan.
- Only cook the rice for 10 minutes before adding the seafood. All of the water had basically evaporated by the time I added the seafood, which probably contributed to it not cooking well. (Or, cook the seafood separately like I said to do five years ago :P)