I’ve been wanting to try my hand at cooking octopus for a while, but it hasn’t been easy to find octopus. I ultimately settled for frozen baby octopus. After thawing it out,
I marinated it in lemon/garlic/olive oil/oregano/S&P. After draining it off the marinade I dried it off and then put it on a very hot BBQ grill, brushing at the end with reserved
marinade. I’ll have a different recipe for the next batch of octo…
Bruce
Did you do anything to soften it first? In Greece, they slap the adult octopi against to rocks to break down the fibers and tenderize it before cooking.
See woman in b.g. at 26 seconds
And then there is the ‘washing machine’ tumble method.
korean markets tend to have big ol octopuses. Japanese Markets will have the large tentacles as well.
I called 99 Ranch and they said they had it. But when I got there, the sales staff had no clue.
Bruce
We grill baby octopus at our tailgates. Buy it the night before, marinate in red wine and olive oil that grill over an open fire. No photos available. At Periyali, a Greek restaurant in Manhattan, they marinate in huge jars of olive oil, like 2 or 3 gallon jars. They told me they marinate for a week. Best grilled octopus I have had.
Best method for larger occi is to sous vide for 3 hrs at 70C prior to char grilling.
Chinese places usually don’t do octopus.
I also just attempted to cook an octopus for the first time. I was going to cook it sous vide at 171 for five hours, but I happened upon an old Harold Mcgee recipe from the New York Times. I would post a link but unfortunately this MacBook Air is too foreign for me to do that. The recipe was incredibly simple. I bought a four pound octopus from Eataly and blanched it for about 30 seconds. I removed it from the water, cut off and discarded the head and separated the eight legs. I placed the legs (and the round middle section below the head) in a covered pot and cooked it at 200 (convection) fahrenheit for 5 hours. When I took the pot out of the oven, the octopus was covered in liquid. It was incredibly flavorful and required no seasoning. It was so good, I did it again three nights later. The liquid from the octopus turns gelatinous in the fridge and I used it to make a pot of octopus rice a few days later. I can’t believe that I waited so long to cook one, but will do my best to rectify this in the coming months.
Here’s the link: