CATDOLL : CATDOLL: How to process live sea cucumbers into dried sea cucumbers, and can the finished products be sold? ? ?

Method for making dried sea cucumber

Fresh sea cucumbers that have just been caught are called roller sea cucumbers by fishermen. Sea cucumbers that have been expanded but not yet salted or boiled for further processing are called leather sea cucumbers. Generally speaking, to process fresh sea cucumbers into dried goods, you should first take a small bite from the anus and clean out the internal organs. After boiling water, drain the water, cool thoroughly, add an appropriate amount of coarse salt and mix evenly (generally 550-750 grams of salt for 500 grams of sea cucumbers). After pickling for 8 hours, remove the water, add wood ash and mix evenly, spread it in a cool and ventilated place to dry (usually ultraviolet drying is used in processing plants), and pat the wood ash off the surface of the sea cucumber and bag it. Generally, 5-6 kilograms of fresh sea cucumbers can be made into 500 grams of dried sea cucumbers. The best quality dried sea cucumbers are those with large body, uniform size, thick meat, complete shape, neat and undamaged warts, straight opening, no mud or sand in the chamber, fresh luster, little gray powder, sufficient dryness, water content within 5%-7%, and within 35 heads per 500 grams.

To be more specific: (A closer look will give you a deeper understanding)

1. Pulled Salt Sea Cucumber: The skin sea cucumber is called pulled salt sea cucumber after being boiled in seawater or salt water. Generally, the skin sea cucumber needs to be boiled in seawater or salt water for two to three times, which adds up to more than 1 hour. Some people only boil the sea cucumber in boiling water for 5-10 minutes in order to pursue the yield rate, and then sprinkle salt on it and pickle it. Such sea cucumbers or dried sea cucumbers processed with such sea cucumbers do not grow when they swell, and they grow a little bigger when put into cold water, but shrink back when they are soaked in hot water. In fact, they are pulled salt sea cucumbers. Some of the pulled salt sea cucumbers sold on the market are soft and wet, and some are frozen.

2. Dried sea cucumbers (salted sea cucumbers, light dried sea cucumbers, pure dried sea cucumbers): In Changdao or Yantai, fishermen boil sea cucumbers with seawater or saturated brine and then dry them naturally. Sea cucumbers that are not wrapped with salt and ash again are called light dried sea cucumbers, and sea cucumbers that are wrapped with salt and ash and dried are called salted sea cucumbers. This is the traditional processing method of sea cucumbers. According to the number of times they are wrapped with salt, they are called once-salted, twice-salted, five-salted, etc. Because there is no unified salting scale, and few people actually test the salinity every time, it is very likely that the once-salted sea cucumber of fisherman A is equivalent to the three-salted sea cucumber of fisherman B. When the sea cucumbers are wrapped three times, the salt content is already amazing. Some people wrap them again after sending them out, and then send them out again, and then wrap them again. Such sea cucumbers turn into paste when they are put into water. In some large supermarkets in some cities, 300-400 grams are sold at a price of about 850 yuan. They are placed in gift boxes, which are not good to eat.

The taste and rehydration properties of domestically produced sea cucumbers (Changdao, Dalian, and Yantai) processed using traditional processing methods are better than those of pure dried sea cucumbers processed using advanced equipment. However, due to the desecration of salted sea cucumbers by illegal processors and the industry self-discipline required by market competition, the market for salted sea cucumbers has become increasingly narrow, and they have gradually withdrawn from markets such as Qingdao, Jinan, Dalian, and Yantai, being replaced by pure dried sea cucumbers.

Wood ash has the effect of preventing moisture, corrosion and stopping bleeding. Sanitary wood ash is harmless to the human body, but some illegal vendors use coal ash or coal slag to process sea cucumbers. (The wood ash from burning rice straw or wheat straw is black, and is mostly used by fishermen in Changdao and Yantai. The sea cucumbers wrapped in it are also black. If it is wrapped lightly and well, the color will not fade during processing, and the water will not turn black. Otherwise, it will not; the wood ash from burning peanut straw stalks and shells is white, and is mostly used by fishermen in Jiaonan.)

Pure dried sea cucumber, also known as salt-free sea cucumber, (1 jin for 30-32 jin of fresh sea cucumber) is directly processed into skin sea cucumber by expanding the belly of fresh sea cucumber and then boiling it in fresh water. Advanced equipment is used to process dried sea cucumber through low-temperature dehydration and drying. Some manufacturers use FD technology in the processing process. Because sea cucumbers live in seawater environment, it is impossible to be salt-free. Therefore, salt-free sea cucumbers only have low salt content. It is impossible to have no salt at all, so salt-free sea cucumbers in the strict sense do not exist. The moisture content of dried sea cucumbers is below 10-12%. Dried sea cucumbers imported from Japan mostly use this processing method. Japan's processing technology for dried sea cucumbers is in a leading position in the world. In recent years, many domestic processing plants have also learned Japanese dried sea cucumber processing technology through learning and joint venture cooperation. The price of good-looking salt-free ginseng in domestic large shopping malls is as high as RMB 3,500-4,600/500g, and in a shopping mall in Beijing, it is as high as RMB 6,000/500G.

3. FD sea cucumber: Desalted and dehydrated sea cucumber processed using FD technology (some manufacturers do not desalt during processing). Without belly expansion, the directly processed FD sea cucumber looks like puffed popcorn, and is sold at a price of RMB 8,500/500g on the shelves of large supermarkets.