Uni-Sex
Diving for family jewels

By Alastair Bland

I like my gonads raw. Then again, they’re also good fried in olive oil with a little salt and pepper. Well, not mine, of course. Sea urchin gonads.

If you’ve ever been to a sushi bar, you’ve almost certainly run across them. They’re usually listed on the menu as uni, and some happily misinformed diners will call them “eggs” or “roe” before slurping them down with a smearing of soy sauce and wasabi. But listen: These finger-sized yellow slabs come from both female and male sea urchins, and they are not eggs. They are reproductive organs.

Icky details aside, many people just can’t stomach the flavor. They find the sweet-salty taste—like Gouda cheese, Chardonnay and smoked seaweed—coupled with uni’s notoriously “slimy” texture far too much to swallow, much less stomach.

I didn’t always love uni, either. I first tasted it in 1998, when I was just 19, and I hated it. But a friend of mine, an avid abalone diver, frequently collected and ate urchins from the icy waters of Northern California’s Sonoma Coast. I joined him on occasion for dinner and, through a concerted effort over the course of two years, the taste grew on me.

In 2000 I even bought a wetsuit and snorkeling gear to dive for sea urchins myself. Once I got beyond the claustrophobic paranoia of swimming with only four feet of visibility in great white shark habitat, it was easy. Urchins cover the rocky seafloor in some places along the California coast, often in as little as 10 feet of water. Holding my breath, I could swim down and grab two or three per dive before cramming them into a yellow mesh bag, which I kept clipped to a buoy on the surface. Since those early days I have probably brought home 1,000 urchins. Bless their souls, for I’ve killed and eaten them all.

Getting at the gonads of an urchin is quite an easy operation, with none of the slime or stink associated with cleaning fish. You simply stick a knife into the hole on the underside of the animal, twist, and split it open like a coconut. The goodies, which are practically identical for both sexes, are found clinging to the interior of the shell, five to an urchin. They’re easily removed with a spoon or swipe of a finger. 

My best guess is that I have ingested about 150 pounds of uni in the past seven years, most of it cold, clammy and scantily seasoned. But in Europe, where many diners appreciate the virtues of cooked urchin gonads, chefs have long subjected uni to olive oil, savory herbs, balsamic vinegar, red wine, and temperatures of 300 degrees or more. They melt the gonads in a hot pan with butter and garlic to make pasta sauce; they simmer it with Parmesan cheese into risotto; they fold it into egg whites and bake it into soufflés. They whip up savory mousse, paella, omelets and bruschetta. I’ve tried almost all these dishes and, I must say, the French and Italians are on to something.

So, to cook or not to cook? Raw, uni delivers the unadulterated flavors of the sea straight to the tongue, whereas cooking opens up entirely new dimensions of texture and flavor.

Either way, they’re gonads—all the wasabi in the world won’t change that. And if that’s too much data for some epicureans to handle, that’s fine by me. Let them eat California rolls.