How to clean and cut Live Sea Urchin 如何清潔和切活海膽

At Richmond Steveston Fisherman Wharf, we love to buy fresh prawn and live sea urchin there. We can buy live sea urchin at price $10 for 3. The price did not raise over the last few years. My first Sea Urchin blog post was in year 2011. Second one is year 2013. Last one posted in year 2014 (Scramble eggs with sea urchin). Usually it is hard to have all three perfect one. Some of the uni are dark yellow colour with some dark spots (Pic B). Some perfect ones are orange just like the title picture of this blog. This time I got 2 out of 3 that are perfect orange colour. Not bad. Here I would like to post again the procedure of cleaning an sea urchin.

How to clean live sea urchin (pic 1)?

• Prepare a bowl of sea salt water. Around 1L of water + 1/2 tbsp sea salt. (Pic 2)
• Please wear thick rubber gloves, you will also need a pair of scissors and a spoon. (Pic 3)

1. Take a large knife or thick scissors and cut a hole around the X (the mouth). (Pic 4)

2.  Carefully separate the pieces of shell. Take the X (mouth) out and shake out all the guts, dirty stuffs and water. (Pic 5)
3.  If you cannot scoop the uni out from the hole. You can try to break the shell but pulling them in half from the hole toward outside (Pic 6). Scoop the extract the pieces of yellow or orange Uni by spoon (pic 7).

4.  Pick all guts and bits of partially digested seaweed off the Uni. (Pic A)

5.  Take each piece of Uni and individually wash each one very gently in the salt water***.(Pic B)

7.  Dry them by placing the Uni on paper towel (Pic 8)

8. Serve

The photo on the right is an example of bad grade of uni meat.

*** must wash with Sea Salt water. Place it on paper towel and you can keep it fresh in fridge for one or two days fresh! If you rinse it under normal tap water, the Uni will melt and become watery.