Holy mother of Pearl. This was the single most disgusting thing I’ve ever done in the kitchen. This unholy matrimony of flavors is off-the-charts gross. I set out to take on the peanut-butter squid tentacles challenge from Shokugeki no Soma. I wanted to see if I could improve on them, make them better.
So I decided to do a taste comparison. Regular peanut butter vs. Peanut Sauce.
Tragic Error #1- Assuming I could improve on a food so disgusting, even our titular hero rejects it.
I started out with the ingredients.
Squid and peanut butter. If you, for some reason, want to try this at home with the peanut sauce recipe, you’ll also need a lime, soy sauce, mirin, a bit of sherry, and some minced ginger.
Start by separating the tentacles from the body. Try not to cry as the squid stares at you with its heartless, frozen eyes.
Heat up a grill pan with a bit of oil. Medium high heat works fine. Slap your tentacles on when it’s hot enough.
Squid tentacles move and curl up and stuff when they’re cooked. Try not to cry about that either.
For just the peanut butter: when cooked, add a spoonful of creamy peanut butter on top of the tentacles. Toss as best as you can to combine together. Plate it up on a colorful plate, to try to make it attractive.
If you want to compare tastes, make peanut sauce. Mix peanut butter, soy sauce, ginger, mirin, a splash of sherry, and a squeeze of lime together. About 1 tsp. each per ingredient, except for the lime and sherry.
Prepare tentacles as before in a grill pan, and pout over the sauce at the end.
I will say this for the peanut sauce: it’s smoother, doesn’t burn like the peanut butter, and has a saucier effect. Overall, it was much nicer to cook with. Plate this up as well. Contemplate your doom as you realize you need to actually sample these two preparations, side by side, to determine which is better. Cringe both internally and externally.
The one with peanut sauce tasted better. I’d eat it if I had to. It wasn’t TOO bad. It mostly tasted like peanut sauce, which I happen to like. But man. The one with just peanut butter? I honestly felt violated eating that. It was bland, sticky, and the flavors of the creamy peanut versus the fishy, rubbery squid were really unpleasant. While the peanut sauce one was alright, ultimately, I wouldn’t really recommend either. I don’t recommend you try this at home, unless you want to horrify your friends. I honestly left this experiment feeling a little sick from eating the peanut butter one first.
Well, that’s it, I hope your morbid curiosity was satisfied! If you want to read some actually good recipes, check out more of my blog posts here, or find them on Crunchyroll! I’m off to the dentist. I hope he doesn’t mind peanut-butter squid breath….