Species sheet · The Edible Ocean
Sea cucumber
A leather tube ploughing the sand, the seabed's vacuum cleaner.
- Dried then slowly rehydrated, Chinese style
- Braised with ginger and oyster sauce
- Raw and finely sliced, Japanese style, as konowata
- In French
- Concombre de mer
- Scientific name
- Holothuria tubulosa
- In the water
- Sandy bottoms and seagrass beds of the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, from the surface down to about a hundred metres, often lying in full light.
- Season & buying
- Available all year, though fishing is regulated in the Mediterranean where populations are declining.
- Common length
- ~25 cm
- How to identify it
- Thick soft brown cylindrical body
Rows of conical papillae along the back
Crown of branched tentacles at the front
On the plate
Flesh at once gelatinous and crunchy, briny, prized in Asia where the dried form fetches high prices.
Avoid: Cooking it fresh without gutting and long blanching: the skin stays leathery.
Threatened, it ejects its own guts to occupy a predator, then regrows them within weeks.