Sea Cucumber

A wormlike creature, this grayish-brown sea slug lives on the sea bottom. It is fingerlike and gelatinous and can be as small as your pinkie or quite large, more than 6 inches long and 2 inches in diameter. Highly prized, sea cucumbers have been harvested for more than a millennium by the Chinese, who regard them as warming and beneficial to health. They are either gathered wild or raised on farms along China‛s eastern seacoast. When they are pulled from the water, they are slit, cleaned, and dried and then sold loose, by weight, with the larger specimens more expensive. Even though they have been cleaned, their insides must be thoroughly cleaned again before use. Stored in a sealed jar, they will keep at room temperature for up to 6 months. Recently, frozen cleaned sea cucumbers have appeared in markets, but like their dried counterparts, they still require additional cleaning.