Irina Kamshilina

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How to make a frozen sea cocktail, and what is this great dish? How much and how long do you need to cook seafood and do they need to be thawed beforehand? We will consider all these questions below. Join now!

As a rule, a seafood mix is ​​usually called a sea cocktail or platter. It mainly contains shrimp, mussels, squid and octopus. There are a lot of recipes using seafood. Seafood in the mixture can be used to make great appetizers, cook first courses and dizzyingly delicious hot dishes, served with a side dish or on its own. It doesn’t matter what you prefer, because in any case, the result in the form of an easily digestible and healthy dish is guaranteed to you!

What to Look for When Buying a Seafood Mix

It is very easy to buy such a freshly frozen semi-finished product in our time, because it is sold in any supermarket. If you carefully look at the packaging, you will see on it not only the names of the manufacturer and supplier of the product, its composition and expiration date, but also instructions for use. The photo shows seafood - a cocktail of octopus, squid and crab sticks.

In stores, there are raw-frozen and boiled-frozen seafood cocktails. Please note: it is more profitable to buy already cooked seafood, as raw-frozen ones will lose about half of the mass during cooking.

Seafood is sold in transparent and translucent packages. Do not be too lazy to consider whether seafood is separately from each other in the mixture. If the octopuses, squids and mussels stick together, then the package has already been defrosted or stored incorrectly. Learn how and for a variety of dishes.

Consider also the appearance of the seafood mix, noting their texture and color when buying a fresh product - smell if there is a sour smell. Mussels should not have any blackening, while octopuses must be dark in color. Quality shrimp have the correct comma shape, and squid should ideally be firm.

How to prepare a frozen sea cocktail: recipes

Each ingredient in the seafood mix is ​​sold ready-to-eat, boiled and cleaned. It is customary to use a sea cocktail as part of a dish or as its basis. From its ingredients, chefs around the world bake, boil, fry, make great appetizers, salads, excellent first courses and even soups. But such a delicious dish can be tasted not only in a restaurant, but also learn how to cook at home.

Before cooking, the frozen product must be thawed, and then washed seafood. It is best to defrost it in the refrigerator, leaving the mixture for two to three hours. If time is running out, defrost the semi-finished product at room temperature. If you have thawed seafood, and cooking is postponed the next day, pickle them, but do not re-freeze them.

Seafood will become full-fledged meat substitutes in such dishes as, for example, pilaf. And your guests will definitely appreciate the amazingly harmonious taste of food, as well as your non-standard approach to the cooking process.

Cooking pilaf with seafood is easy. Take a step by step recipe from the world famous nutritionist, Pierre Ducane, and apply a new way of cooking that you might not have known before.

Boil the rice until tender, then proceed to the preparation of the sea set. Fry grated carrots, finely chopped onions and bell peppers in a pan with oil. Don't forget garlic, salt and black pepper. Add spices according to your taste. After the vegetables are cooked, add the thawed sea mixture to them (remember that it must be washed beforehand), fry and simmer this pilaf dressing for about 10 minutes. To complete the cooking process, mix rice with seafood.

It is allowed to add tomato paste or tomatoes to pilaf, such ingredients can emphasize the spicy aroma of seafood. If you like a spicy taste, then add some ground red pepper. Such a dish is tasty and healthy, contains few calories and is included in the menu of some diets and the diet of PP.

Discuss

The composition of the sea cocktail includes squid, octopus, shrimp and other seafood. You should not buy fresh seafood and try to make a sea cocktail out of them yourself - in this case there is a risk of infection. The safest option is to buy instant frozen seafood.

Frozen sea cocktail can be prepared in several ways. Some recipes call for defrosting the sea shake beforehand, while others don't. In each individual case, you should carefully read the recommendations, as an improperly prepared sea cocktail can turn out to be tasteless. Seafood should be thawed in the refrigerator on the bottom shelf, while draining the melted water from time to time.

The easiest cooking option is boiling. A brewed sea cocktail can be used both on its own and in various ones. It is enough to boil the sea cocktail in salted water, without first defrosting, for 5-7 minutes, drain the broth, in no case eat it, put the seafood in a colander, dry and cool. If the product is packed hermetically with oil, then it is not necessary to cook a sea cocktail.

You can fry a sea cocktail unfrozen in butter or olive oil until all the liquid has boiled away.

You can also fry a sea cocktail, after defrosting it. Put the defrosted sea cocktail in a colander, let all the liquid drain. Finely chop, fry it in one tablespoon of vegetable oil. Put the sea cocktail into the pan and close the lid, cook for three to four minutes over medium heat.

A sea cocktail can be stewed with cream, or wine. You can also pickle a sea cocktail.

Lemon juice is considered an ideal seasoning for seafood, white wine is a drink, and rice is a side dish.

Adviсe!

When choosing seafood, pay attention to the country of origin: in Europe, seafood undergoes more thorough control than in Asian countries.

Before purchasing a bag of frozen seafood, mash it in your hands. If you feel ice crystals under your fingers, it means that the product has already been thawed and refrozen - you should not buy it.

Never cook seafood longer than the allotted time, otherwise it will become very tough and rubbery.

In order not to create ideal conditions for the reproduction of bacteria, do not leave thawed seafood at room temperature for a long time (more than 30 minutes).

To prepare pasta, we need the actual pasta, a frozen sea cocktail and sauce ingredients: tomato puree, onions, garlic, hot peppers, your favorite spices and spices.

The result will not be affected at all by what type of pasta you choose. This time I have egg noodles, insanely delicious on their own.

Now the tomato question: what is better to use when preparing the sauce - tomato paste, tomato puree, fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes. I would not say that this is the most important point. Of course, whatever you take, you will get slightly different flavors.

I like it better when I combine tomato puree and fresh tomatoes in one sauce. Notice, not tomato paste, but mashed potatoes. The difference between them is in saturation: if in tomato paste there are about 25% of tomatoes, then in tomato puree - about 15%. Of course, you can reduce the concentration of tomato paste by diluting it with boiled water, and end up with tomato puree.

As for onions and garlic, I would never remove garlic from the recipe, but onions, if you don’t like them, in principle, you can give up. And finally, spices. I love spicy pasta. It seems to me that this better emphasizes the taste of the pasta itself and the richness of the sauce. That's why I use chili peppers. If you are not such a fan of spicy, then use a mixture of peppers or regular ground black pepper.

For me, a flavor bouquet created with a minimum of spices is enough, I did not add anything else that could overshadow the taste and aroma of seafood.

Since we don’t need much time, it will cook the pasta and prepare the sauce at the same time.

We take out a frozen sea cocktail from the freezer - let it defrost a little at room temperature. We put a pan with plenty of water on the fire - for pasta. In the meantime, finely chop the onion and garlic, lightly fry it in olive oil (until the color changes and a persistent garlic aroma appears). You can do otherwise (it will be culinary correct): first, fry the crushed garlic cloves, remove it, fry the chopped onion in garlic oil.

The water in the pan boiled - throw the pasta and cook in salted water for a little less time than indicated on the package.

Now add a sea cocktail to the pan, after squeezing it well from excess moisture. I usually take the shrimp out of the seafood so that I can later add them to the sauce.

Fry everything together for about 5 minutes over medium heat.

It's time to add chopped fresh tomatoes and tomato puree, also put hot peppers and simmer for a few minutes.

Now the final chord: add cream and peeled shrimp to the sauce. Everyone in my family loves shrimp (even the cat!), so I usually don’t limit myself to shrimp from a sea cocktail, but add separately purchased frozen shrimp. After 1 minute the sauce is ready!

In the meantime, the pasta is cooked, put it in a colander and rinse with hot water. No need to add butter! There is enough fat in our sauce.

There are many ways to serve pasta to the table.

Seafood is loved and appreciated by the peoples inhabiting the Mediterranean strip. An integral part of the menu is shrimp, mussels, squid, octopus, crabs and other sea "game" in Italian, Spanish, French, Greek dishes.

We have them in fresh, frozen and canned forms. Buying fresh seafood in stores and on the market is sometimes risky. sea ​​fruits- products are capricious, perishable. Stale poisoning can be easily and strongly.

Therefore, it is better (if seafood is coveted, appreciated and loved by you) to give preference to a frozen sea cocktail, which includes most of the sea fruits you know (from shrimp and squid to octopus and mussels).

Sea life is a delicate product, therefore it is subjected to instant freezing (this processing method allows you to preserve the quality, taste and aroma, and is also a guarantee of product safety). In this form, he comes to us on store shelves.

However, a completely logical question arises: what to cook from a frozen sea cocktail? After all, you want to get a tasty, interesting, non-banal dish, so that the family would like it, and it would not be a shame to put it on the festive table.

More delicious recipes:

And cook and fry

Before preparing a frozen sea cocktail, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with recipe and preparation method. It depends on your knowledge and skill whether the finished dish will turn out fragrant, rich, spicy or tasteless.

Cooking recipes are different and require different preparation of the cocktail for use: preliminary defrosting or the use of frozen seafood.

How to defrost?

Defrost sea ​​fruits in the refrigerator, in a container (bowl or deep plate), on the bottom shelf. The process must be monitored, and the melt water should be carefully drained during the defrosting process. Sea fruits by themselves and in salads are good boiled.

It is not necessary to defrost a cocktail before cooking, it is enough to throw the mixture into boiling water (salted) with bay leaves, allspice and black pepper (you can use broths, vegetable or fish instead of water).

Boil mixture should be no more than 7 minutes (from the moment the mixture enters the pan). Otherwise, you risk getting something that resembles rubber in consistency - just as indigestible and tasteless. Boiled seafood is thrown into a colander.

Often a sea cocktail fry. In a frying pan (deep, with a thick bottom), heat the olive oil, spread the frozen mixture there and fry until the liquid has evaporated.

By the way, they can be fried and thawed. They can be stewed in cream and wine, or pickled. In addition to lemon juice, sea fruits go well with sauces (creamy, sour cream, even tomato, with pepper and spices).

Seafood salad and soup

Recipes for sea cocktail dishes are simple for the most part. For example, a recipe for sea cocktail soup will not take an hour:

Ingredients:

• Seafood package - 500 g.
• Half a glass of white wine (dry).
• 1 bulb.
• Leek.
• A small celery root or a quarter of a large one.
• 1 carrot.
• 1 st. tablespoon olive oil (oil will be needed for frying).
• 10 black peppercorns.
• Greens (parsley, dill).

Vegetables need to be chopped into strips and fried in olive oil. Boil the poached vegetables in boiling salted water about 20 minutes. Take out with a slotted spoon. Pour white wine into vegetable broth. We send pepper there. Bring to a boil, send our product to the broth and simmer over low heat for 10-15 minutes. At the end, pour the greens into the finished soup.

Sea cocktail salad: recipe

And here is an unusual salad that can serve as an excellent snack and please guests who are hungry for gourmet dishes.

You will need:

• 1 glass of our product.
• Salad (5 leaves).
• Red onion (1 piece).
• 2 tbsp. l. olive oil.
• Strawberries (preferably garden) - about 120 grams.
• Ground black pepper, salt.
• 1 teaspoon mustard.
• 1 clove of garlic.
• Half a tablespoon of vinegar.

Mix finely chopped onion, mustard, grated strawberries and garlic with olive oil. Fry sea cocktail. Arrange seafood on lettuce leaves and drizzle with dressing. Pepper and salt the salad. This salad is served warm.

Rice and lemon juice are ideally combined with sea cocktail dishes. Therefore, plan your menu in advance to serve everything like in the finest restaurants in the world.

Seafood dishes are taken to drink dry white wine. The calorie content of the sea cocktail is low, it is rich in proteins, it contains fats, but almost no carbohydrates, which makes it a desirable dish in the eyes of diet lovers. Still, it is not worth abusing seafood - the reason for this is disappointing environmental forecasts regarding the state of the world's oceans.

Once unattainable to ordinary people and being the lot of only self-sufficient people, seafood is now a frequent guest on our table. Frozen sea cocktail can be seen in any store, and not necessarily only in a supermarket.

But buying is not enough. Does everyone know how to properly and tasty cook this healthy and tasty beauty? After all, this must be done according to all the rules, and not as it should be. Only then will the benefit and enjoyment of the cooked food come out. Let's look at a few recipes and learn more about the seafood platter.

What you need to know about sea cocktails (frozen)

• The composition of the semi-finished product: starting with crustaceans (shrimps), bivalves (mussels) and ending with cephalopods (squids, octopuses), echinoderms.
• Benefit: contains iodine and fats, in amino acids, microelements, fat-soluble vitamins, of which there are a lot of assorted, ecologically clean, low calorie content (depending on what it is served with - less calorie mixtures with mollusks and crustaceans, cooked with vegetables and pasta).
• Minus: sea ​​cocktail - a perishable product, if stored incorrectly, it can become unsafe for food (poisoning); often you can’t cook, because unsafe mercury can accumulate in fresh products, etc. (therefore, it is better to take it frozen); Seafood is generally contraindicated for some people due to intolerance, allergies to some components.
• Where to buy and how to choose: only in specialized stores; a fresh set smells normal, not ammonia; on the whole original packaging, the manufacturer, supplier, composition, expiration date must be marked.
• How best to cook: brewing a cocktail that does not provide for defrosting is preferable; but fried seafood under the lid will be very tasty and no less healthy.

What is the best way to prepare a sea cocktail? On what? It can be a pot, and a frying pan, and a slow cooker, and a microwave. But, no matter what this healthy dish is prepared in, a number of rules must be observed (more on them below). So delicious recipes.

Sea cocktail with tiger shrimps and vegetables

The combination is just fabulous! Gourmets do not even need to introduce this dish. Lightly fried seafood with some kind of sauce in the company of bright vegetables in every respect - it's hard to come up with something even more pleasant. Let's cook!

Ingredients:

• Sea cocktail (frozen) - 200 g
• Tiger shrimps - 3-4 pcs.
• Carrots - 100 g
• Bulgarian pepper - 100 g
• Leek - 100 g
• Celery - 70 g
• Garlic - 4-5 cloves
• Spices
• Vegetable oil for frying

Step-by-step recipe for making a sea cocktail with tiger prawns and vegetables

Sea cocktail can not be defrosted. Firstly, it is possible, secondly, it is useful, and thirdly, time will be saved. But if they are already defrosted, they should be sprinkled with vegetable (preferably olive) oil.

Another key character is tiger prawns. They must be very carefully cleaned from the shell. Then lightly salt and marinate in spices, lightly sprinkled with vegetable oil.

Step 2. Tiger prawns in the marinade

While the seafood should be marinated, let's take care of the vegetables. Since the first process is related to garlic, let's chop it finely, but not into gruel.

Carrots and seafood? Nonsense? No. Tasty, healthy and very beautiful if we cut ordinary products in a special way. Let's say carrots. It will look great, say, in the form of thin slices cut into straws.

We will do the same with bell peppers. It would be nice if you came across copies of different colors. It's such a positive in this delicious plate! The format is the same.

Leek would be more appropriate here. After all, he is soft and gentle. Let's cut it into slices. And yes, it will look amazing.

And here we will stop. It's time to turn on the slow cooker (or put the pan on the fire) on the frying mode. Pour a little oil into the bowl, fry the garlic for a minute or two. Slightly letting it in, we will send shrimp here to fry.

Before this, it is desirable to bread the shrimp, but not in the usual breading. It will all look good if they are dipped in sesame seeds or other chopped nuts. But in this case, it is necessary to fry in a large amount of oil. And literally in a few minutes they can be removed.

In the same oil, slicing the stem celery across not thick, send it and the rest of the vegetables to the bowl. Those. in the oil that remains after the shrimp. After letting them in for a few minutes, take them out and put them on a napkin (let the excess oil drain). After washing the bowl, pour literally a few drops of oil into it (or without it) and send vegetables here.

It doesn't take long to cook the vegetables. It is only desirable to let them in just a little - they will crunch so pleasantly, delighting with their taste and filling the seafood with aroma. Oh, and don't forget to chop the greens. Sprinkle it on the finished dish.

If the seafood is slightly cold, they can be held over the steam or microwave. Serve only hot. How? You can do it separately, and all in one plate.

The recipe for a delicious pilaf with seafood without carrots

Ingredients:

• 1 pack of cocktail
• 150 g rice
• 50 g sunflower oil
• 1 onion
• 100 g bell pepper

Cooking an unusually delicious pilaf with a sea cocktail

Boil rice in salted water; fry finely chopped onion in oil, almost immediately send a straw of bell pepper with finely chopped garlic to it; stew vegetables until half cooked and, add seafood to them, stew again for three minutes; having put the rice here, mix everything, add salt and simmer until tender.

Delicious pizza stuffed with seafood

Ingredients:

• Pizza base
• 1 package of sea cocktail
• tomato paste
• Mayonnaise
• Several olives
• Tomato

Seafood pizza - step by step cooking recipe with photo

Having smeared the base with tomato paste and mayonnaise (thinly!), Put the seafood here with tomatoes and olives (we will cut it in advance). Keep in the oven for twenty minutes. And everything is ready!

Salad with seafood and eggs - a recipe for proper nutrition

Ingredients:

• 1 pack of sea cocktail
• 50 g vegetable oil
• 200 g rice
• 2 eggs

Cooking a salad with a sea cocktail and an egg - a recipe for weight loss

We will send eggs and rice to be cooked separately; cool the cooked rice and eggs; after boiling the sea mixture for 5 minutes, fry it and finely chopped eggs in oil; put together and serve salad!

Delicious salad with sea cocktail and vegetables

Ingredients:

• 1 pack of sea cocktail
• lettuce leaves
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 100 g bell pepper
• Olive oil
• mayonnaise to taste

Quick preparation of gourmet vegetable salad with seafood

Boil lightly (five minutes) the sea mixture and dry, draining the water; mix seafood with chopped peppers; add mayonnaise mixed with butter (equal parts) and put finely chopped garlic into the mass; on lettuce leaves laid out on a dish, we will send pepper and seafood, and pour the resulting sauce on top.

The simplest seafood salad - diet food

Ingredients:

• 1 pack of sea cocktail
• lettuce leaves
• Lemon juice
• Salt to taste
• Spices to taste
• Olive oil for frying

Cooking the most delicious seafood salad for losing weight

Combine the boiled seafood mixture with torn lettuce leaves; pour olive oil mixed with a few drops of lemon juice.

Some useful tips on how to choose a frozen seafood cocktail

1. Choose a cocktail that does not have a lot of frost and ice inside.
2. Look carefully at the contents of the pack. For example, there should be no blackening on the wings of mussels. The color of the octopus should be a little dark, and the consistency of the squid should be firm.
3. Boil in salted water, but no more than 5 minutes.
4. When frying, seafood is cooked no more than 2-3 minutes.
5. You can freeze the product before cooking.
6. Seafood does not need to be cleaned and you can even do without heat treatment.