Easy and Lemongrassy Squid Sambal in 20 mins

This is an exciting squid sambal recipe with a super fragrant and spicy sauce starring lemongrass. I honestly think the sauce has outshined the squid. 2 bowls of rice please!

How to Score Squid

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I learned this recipe from the cookbook Bowlful.

An Easy and Versatile Sambal Sauce

Forget about the squid if you don’t like it, just remember this sauce!

With the help of a handheld blender or food processor, blitz the tomato passata, lemongrass, garlic, shallot and chilli, season with fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, tomato purée and a bit of salt. It’s an amazing sauce that goes well with seafood and meat.

How to Score Squid

Insert a sharp knife into a squid tube and cut it open. Spread out the squid with the inside face up. Start from a corner to score a diagonal cut. Change the angle and repeat the same. Finally, cut it into your preferred size. The squid will curl up nicely once the scored side contacts with heat.

Small Notes Before You Cook

1. Tomato purée is replaced with tomato passata. In the original recipe, 100 g tomato purée (½ of a tube!) is used for a serving of 4. Tomato purée is very concentrated, do I have to use so much for the sauce? So I trust my instinct and changed it to 100 g tomato passta (for 2 serving), with 1 tbsp of tomato purée added. It turned out to be perfect!
2. Adjust how many chillis to use. If you see other authentic squid sambal recipes, you’ll see a bunch of dried chillis are used which I absolutely cannot manage. I used fresh chilli instead (same as the cookbook), but decreased to one chilli.
3. Sauté onions till translucent. I like softened and sweet onion, not crunchy and raw. That’s why I like to sauté the onions first. In the original recipe, onions are added together with the squid and cooked for a short time.

Now, let’s dive into the recipe.

Ingredients

Serves 2

• 2 frozen raw squid tubes, thawed
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• ¼ lime juice
• ½ tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• ¼ tsp salt (to taste)
• ½ medium onion, thinly sliced
• chopped fresh coriander for garnish

For the Paste

• ½ banana shallot, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced
• ½ stalk of lemongrass (I used bottom part), chopped
• 1 fresh red chilli, deseeded and chopped (you can add more)
• 100 g tomato passata

How to Make Squid sambal

1. Use a handheld blender or food processor, blitz all the paste ingredients into a finer texture, no need to be very smooth or silky.
2. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a pan, sauté the onions until fragrant. Stir in the paste together with the tomato puree, lime juice, fish sauce, salt and sugar. Stir well and cook till the sauce looks getting dry.
3. Meanwhile, cut open the squid and score a criss-cross pattern on the inside face. Then cut it into appropriate pieces. See the above video. (Or, just cut into rings, much easier)
4. Then add the squids into the pan and cook for 3 minutes or so, until the squids to curl up. Garnish with coriander and serve with hot rice.

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