These little ugly looking “worm” may look disgusting but sea cucumber is consider one of the expensive delicacy and it has great healing benefits. Sea cucumber are actually marine life that found on the floor bed of the sea feeding on the debris like a scavenger.

If you look at a life one, you may have second thought about eating it. But luckily I have long eaten it when small and have no idea what it was back then. I always like to braise my sea cucumber with oyster sauce together with other seafood ingredients and you will end up with a wonderful pot of extremely tasty seafood dish.

Some of the must have ingredients are dried oyster, dried cuttlefish, pork ribs for a more filling dish, dried scallop and a big chunk of ginger to kill the fishy smell. Optionally you can throw in mushroom and fried chicken feet but since I don’t like them, I skip it. Soak all the dried ingredients in water before use.

This is how the sea cucumber look like after it has been cleaned. I usually put the sea cucumber in at the last stage of the cooking in order to retain the texture of it. Otherwise, if you braise it too long, it will dissolve into the gravy and you will wonder where is your expensive stuff gone missing.

I started off by stir frying all the ingredient except the sea cucumber with some oil and a lot of garlic. This will enhance the flavor and give it a nice brown color. After that, put in a lot of water and braise for 2 hours or until you achieve your desire softness for the pork ribs. Top up the water if the level is getting low.

Before the end of the cooking, throw in the sea cucumber and season it with a good amount of oyster sauce, salt, pepper and a little bit of soya sauce. Then continue cooking until you achieve the softness of the sea cucumber you wanted. If you wanted more gravy, add more water and seasoning.

Nice! I seriously can finish a few bowl of rice just with this single dish.