We uncovered the Madrid calamari sandwich scam.

The squids we eat them stuffed, grilled, in stews and also plastered, cut into rings. Yes that's how it is, the beloved and missed Juli Soler He recommended pairing them with beer, because he believed it was the best combination. In Madrid, breaded squid is eaten between two slices of bread, without tomato, of course. It's the famous squid sandwich, which has often become an attraction for tourists and visitors, but not so much for locals. Madrid, as a central hub that ensures that fish arrives three hours after arriving at the ports of the Cantabrian and Mediterranean Seas, has established a seafood product, squid, as a popular, identifiable dish. Now, has anyone ever considered that a squid sandwich can never cost three euros? Not even four. Now that it's in season, squid has a high price, never falling below twenty euros or more. And the same goes for breaded squid tapas in Barcelona. If they're low-priced and the dish is plentiful, the restaurateur would make little profit on each dish. What is hidden behind a plate of squid?

What is hidden is its cousin, the leg, from the squid family, but different, both visually and in taste. Now, the leg and the squid, once plastered and cooked, have a similar appearance, which is why the leg is often passed off as squid. But they are not the same. In the market, the leg has a lower price, sold in different preparations, one of which can be processed and frozen. The leg is also sold fresh (the most common in markets is the canana), and therefore it must be frozen if you want to eat it breaded. If this were not done, if the leg is cut and fried as soon as we buy it, the texture "would be hard as a rock." The person who expresses himself this way is the marine scientist Arnau Subías, which feeds the blog on Instagram Gastrobio, and adds that "honesty is needed on the part of the restaurateur, who must say whether it is squid or leg."

To understand what leg and squid are, we must go to a supermarket freezer and look at those bags of white rings, perfectly cut and immaculately white. That is leg, "specifically giant Pacific leg, which is in no way squid," says Arnau Subías, who assures that, in this case, the consumer should also look at the quantity of ingredients it contains. Apart from giant leg, there are many others, because it is a processed product.

The size of the rings, the key

It's necessary that the label correctly states that it's Pacific giant squid, but if it isn't, the consumer has another crucial clue: the size of the rings. Mediterranean squid, no matter how large, will never have that diameter.

To continue, frozen Pacific giant squid rings can be battered and fried because they've already gone through prior processes so they can be cooked directly at home or in restaurants. If they weren't processed or frozen, they couldn't be eaten using this or any other technique because they would have a very tough texture. "If the leg is fresh, we also can't eat it grilled because the same thing happens; it's inedible because it's tough," adds Arnau Subías.

Aside from size, there's another characteristic that distinguishes the leg from the squid, which is the taste. "Squid, even if it's coated, will always be soft and tender, whereas the same isn't true of the leg," says Arnau Subías.

In our house, at fishmongers' stalls, cananas are the most common leg, often placed next to the squid. "Cananas are one of our Mediterranean legs, which are already physically different, but the price is also a very good indicator, because the canana can cost up to half the price of squid," says Subías.

In some towns on the Catalan coast, cananas are cooked in sailors' ranches or romescos"The cananas are good; the consumer should only know that he is eating leg, not squid," says scientist Arnau Subías, who highlights the mischief that often occurs with these two cephalopods and also with many other fish. The picaresque could be summed up in a cliché: passing off an ox as a fat beast. For all these reasons, scientist Arnau Subías maintains that Madrid's calamari sandwiches should be called paw sandwiches, which is the product they use to sell the sandwich for three or four euros, and the same with our breaded squid dishes. All this when the chefs use squid. When they use squid, they're welcome.