Storing dry sea cucumbers is not a difficult task, just place them in a cool, dry area. If you're not planning on using them for a while, you can pack them up and store them in the refrigerator. Depending on your preference, you can buy sea cucumbers in various conditions - dried, soaked and frozen, or soaked and stored in water. Dried sea cucumbers are one of the four seafood delicacies in Chinese cuisine, and are highly valued for their many healing properties.
In order to prepare dried sea cucumbers for consumption, they must be reconstituted and thoroughly cleaned inside and out before use. If there is any hard skin present, it should be removed. The first time my husband brought home a dried sea cucumber 6 years ago, it was a bit different from the one shown in the photos here. If the tendons and viscera are not removed, sea cucumbers cannot be completely soaked, which will affect their size and make them difficult to absorb.
Take them out and rinse them thoroughly with cold water (do not use hot water, as this will cause the sea cucumbers to shrink). Place the sea cucumber in a bowl of fresh water and store it in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 days, changing the water daily. If you want to eat sea cucumbers, there are no shortcuts - you just have to rehydrate them yourself. Sea cucumbers have no flavor or taste of their own, but they easily absorb the flavor and smell of the broth and ingredients they are cooked with.
Sea cucumbers can be found on the seabed all over the world - or what is known as trenches (I learned this from my children's bedtime storybook about cats). Cook it every day and let it soak every day for 5 to 7 days until the sea cucumber is soft and soaked before taking it out. In the process of soaking sea cucumbers, maintaining the temperature is an important part - a thermos bottle can be used to keep it warm constantly. Let the sea cucumbers soak for up to 12 hours or overnight in the pot, allowing the liquid to cool down to room temperature.
After cooling down, spread a layer of ice cubes over the water - approximately one third of all water and sea cucumbers - and leave it at room temperature for more than 12 hours. Dried sea cucumbers are usually sold pre-soaked in certain Asian supermarkets that sell gourmet ingredients. It is inevitable that containers and plates used in normal times have certain fats or impurities, which will affect the quality of sea cucumbers. To make sure you enjoy 100% natural sea cucumbers, take some time to learn how to soak them properly. Sea cucumbers soaked with this method have high elasticity, high tenacity, soft and mild flavor and the highest nutritional value.
