Octopus is a popular delicacy with a great, unique taste. This formidable predator has made its way onto our tables from the very depths of the ocean. True, only small octopuses are usually eaten, as they have very tender meat and an unusual sweetish-sour taste.
Traditionally, octopus is cooked in Asia and Europe. Typically in Asian cuisine they are boiled and then used in salads and snacks. Before cooking, the tentacles need to be washed, covered with cold water and cooked for 5-10 minutes after boiling.
After this, the octopus should cool in the water that was boiled. In Japanese cuisine, octopuses are usually made into sushi and even eaten alive. For us, Mediterranean cuisine will be more familiar, where it is customary to fry octopus in olive oil and stew with vegetables and wine.
Octopus recipe
Cooking octopus is not at all difficult, even if you are doing it for the first time. The meat turns out very tender and tasty. In addition, it is very healthy, as it is rich in B vitamins, Omega-3 fatty acids, selenium and phosphorus. We offer you an easy recipe for cooking octopus in the Mediterranean style.
- 700 g frozen octopus
- 150 ml dry red wine
- 1 large onion
- 1 tbsp. tomato paste
- Olive oil
- Bay leaf
- Allspice
- Salt pepper
How to cook octopus
- Thaw the octopus and cut it into pieces. Just trim off the tentacles and cut the center in half. Heat a large amount of olive oil in a saucepan and lightly fry the finely chopped onion.
- Then add the octopus and fry it for a couple of minutes until it begins to release its water. Pour in the wine and simmer for a few minutes until the alcohol evaporates.
- Now add water with tomato paste so that it almost completely covers the octopus. Salt, pepper and add bay leaf. Simmer covered over low heat for about an hour.
- Check the water periodically and add boiling water as needed. But there shouldn’t be a lot of liquid, it should be thick and rich, not like broth. Later the liquid is used as gravy.
- 20 minutes before the octopus is ready, add diced potatoes to the pan. However, you can use any other side dish to your taste, for example, buckwheat or spaghetti. When the octopus is cooked, the meat will be soft and tender.
If quite recently we saw exotic inhabitants of the deep sea only on television screens, today they can be found on store shelves. And some of them make very tasty dishes! How to cook octopus so that it is tasty and healthy?
How to make the right choice?
First of all, you should choose an octopus.
- Frozen or fresh? If you want to get the maximum benefit and enjoy the delicate taste, then it is advisable to choose fresh. But you will probably have to cut it up, although you can ask the seller about it (he will probably have to pay). And if you want to save effort and time, you can also buy frozen octopus; in this form, the carcasses are usually sold already completely cut up and even cook faster, and this is very convenient.
- Pay attention to the size. Small octopuses have more tender flesh, medium ones are more nutritious, but a large adult octopus weighing about two to three kilograms can be “rubbery.”
- Evaluate the appearance. But such a criterion will only be relevant if you buy fresh octopus. The surface of the carcass should be shiny, the color should be burgundy-brown and uniform. No damage is allowed.
- Study the smell. It is specific, but quite pleasant. It definitely shouldn’t taste like rotten meat.
Proper preparation for cooking
Preparation consists of several stages:
- First, the carcass must be thawed if it is frozen. But this should be done only at room temperature, that is, naturally, and not in a microwave oven.
- Next, rinse the octopus thoroughly under running cold water to remove all the mucus.
- It is not worth cleaning the carcasses before cooking; the skin is very, very difficult to remove, so it is better to get rid of it after heat treatment (then it will come off quickly). But if the octopus is adult and large, then its shell will be quite dense, so it can be scraped off with a knife at this stage.
- Now you need to cut the carcass (frozen will probably already be cut). To do this, it is more convenient to first cut off the tentacles, but this is not necessary. Next, cut off the lower part of the head, that is, the support on which the tentacles are held. In it you will find a mouth opening similar to a tooth or beak. It needs to be removed. To do this, first squeeze it out, and then cut it out with a knife. Also cut out the eyes.
- Now wash the inside of the head well to remove all the offal, as well as ink, if there is any there. Then you can turn it out and wash it again.
- If the octopus is large, then it is advisable to beat it before cooking.
How to cook?
If you decide to cook octopus for the first time, then the easiest way for you will be boiling. But how long should you cook it to make it tasty? Processing should be short, otherwise the meat will become stringy and tough, like rubber (this is a very common problem).
Your task is simply to destroy all pathogenic organisms. Small octopuses only need to be cooked for about five to seven minutes, larger ones - about 20. But a large octopus can be cooked for about an hour.
You can check readiness with a toothpick. Pierce the largest part of the carcass, that is, the head. If the toothpick goes in easily and quickly, then the octopus is ready. If not, then cook it some more. And after cooking, you can remove the skin.
How to cook?
How to properly cook octopus if you want to make a more interesting dish? Below are some interesting options.
Option #1
You can bake octopus with potatoes. Here's what you'll need:
- 1 kg of octopus (or a whole carcass);
- 1 kg of potatoes;
- parsley;
- five cloves of garlic;
- three tablespoons of lemon juice;
- olive oil;
- salt to taste.
Preparation:
- Potatoes need to be peeled, cut into slices and boiled.
- Boil the octopus and cut it (small octopuses do not need to be chopped).
- Grease the bottom of a baking dish with olive oil.
- Place the potatoes mixed with the octopus in the mold, sprinkle everything with lemon juice and olive oil, and sprinkle with chopped garlic and chopped parsley. Don't forget to salt the dish.
Option No. 2
Try stewing octopus at home using sour cream and milk. Prepare:
- 500 grams of octopus;
- 2 glasses of milk;
- half a glass of sour cream;
- five tablespoons of flour;
- three tablespoons of white wine;
- a tablespoon of lemon juice;
- three cloves of garlic;
- two tablespoons of olive oil;
- salt and pepper to taste.
How to cook?
- Octopuses need to be boiled for about 10 minutes, adding lemon juice and wine to the water.
- Now clean the carcasses and cut into portions if they are large.
- Heat olive oil in a frying pan and fry the garlic.
- Add the milk and when it is hot, dissolve the flour in it.
- Cook the sauce until it boils, then add sour cream.
- Now lay out the octopuses.
- Place pepper and salt in the pan, simmer for five minutes and remove from heat.
Option No. 3
You can prepare a delicious salad. Here's what you'll need for this:
- 500 grams of octopus;
- 4 potatoes;
- head of red onion;
- 10 cherry tomatoes;
- lettuce leaves;
- 60 grams of pitted olives;
- 5 tablespoons of olive oil;
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice;
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar;
- a teaspoon of liquid honey.
Preparation:
- Boil the octopus, peel and cut.
- The potatoes need to be boiled in their skins, peeled and cut into cubes.
- Cut the cherry into halves.
- Cut the onion into half rings.
- Just tear up the lettuce leaves.
- To prepare the sauce, mix vinegar, oil, lemon juice and honey.
- Mix the ingredients, add salt and season with sauce.
- Salad ready!
- The octopus should only be immersed in boiling water. Moreover, real experts advise doing this gradually: first immerse the tentacles, and when they slightly change shade and begin to curl, you can lower the entire carcass.
- During cooking, do not add salt under any circumstances, it will make the pulp hard. For taste, you can use some fragrant seasoning.
- If you don’t want to pound the octopus, you can freeze it; this technique will also soften the meat.
- It is advisable to reduce the heat to a minimum; the carcasses should literally simmer in barely boiling water, and not cook in a seething broth (then the taste will deteriorate).
- To make the pulp more tender, you can add a cork from a wine bottle (not plastic, of course) during cooking.
- Octopus goes well with various sauces, especially creamy and soy sauces.
- You can serve the dishes with any side dishes, for example, vegetables, spaghetti, rice.
- To remove the skin faster, after heat treatment you can pour cold water over the octopus.
Choose the best recipe and be sure to surprise your family and guests with an unusual and tasty dish!
Feb 5, 2016 Olga
Today, dishes prepared from octopus are still considered a delicacy. Few people dare to cook them at home.
Firstly, because of fear, and, secondly, because they don’t know how to do it correctly. In this article we would like to tell you how to properly select, clean and cut octopus, as well as several simple and tasty recipes for octopus dishes.
How to cook young octopus
Octopus dishes came to us from Asian countries. Only then did the fashion for them penetrate into European countries and our country. Usually, young octopuses that are not very large in size are used for cooking, they have quite tender flesh and have a very unique sweet and sour taste.
They can be eaten raw, boiled or fried. Dishes made from them are served as appetizers, soups, salads and even the main dish. Don't know how to improve your relationship with your mother-in-law? Prepare an octopus bolet especially for her, and then her favor is simply guaranteed.
How to cook octopus? Just wash the octopus thoroughly, boil it in water, which must first be salted, for 10 minutes and cool in the same broth.
In general, experts from all over the planet strongly advise everyone to eat seafood in their diet, one of which are the heroes of our article.
The usefulness of seafood lies in the fact that it contains a huge amount of protein and also has a small amount of calories.
In addition, if you cook them correctly, the result will be an excellent dish with an unusual but interesting taste, which is light and sophisticated.
How to grill octopus so it's soft and juicy
Do you like barbecue? Then you can cook it, but instead of meat or chicken, take octopus, or rather octopuses. It will be especially appetizing if you cook it over a fire.
To do this you will need:
- one piece of lemon,
- one kilogram of small octopuses,
- one tablespoon of vegetable oil,
- a couple of cloves of garlic,
- one bunch of dill and spices to taste.
How to cook octopus on the grill:
First you need to prepare the marinade. Chop the garlic and herbs, mixing it with the zest and juice obtained from half a lemon. Next, add oil and spices.
Mix the resulting mixture thoroughly and pour it over the prepared octopuses. We leave them to marinate for 30 minutes, and then we put the octopuses on skewers, which we place on the barbecue or grill.
Cook until ready. The dish should turn out very tasty and aromatic.
Stewed octopus with vegetables recipe
How to cook octopus. Also, an excellent recipe for how to cook octopus is the one that came to us from Italy. We're talking about octopus with potatoes. Many who have tried it are of the opinion that this is a rather unusual and tasty seafood dish. How is this dish different from others? Because it has a rather delicate and memorable taste.
So, what ingredients do you need to cook octopus with potatoes? Write down:
- Half a kilo of potatoes;
- Onion in the amount of one piece;
- Olives without pits (50 grams);
- 60 ml olive oil;
- Two pieces of bay leaf;
- One bunch of parsley;
- One kilogram of octopus;
- A tablespoon of vinegar; Spices to taste;
- One piece of celery.
How to cook octopus with vegetables so that it is soft and juicy:
Now let's begin the process of cooking octopus. Their carcasses should be washed very well and beaten a little so that they become soft.
Chop the celery and place it in a container with the bay leaf and chopped onion. Fill it all with water and bring to a boil.
Once the water boils, you can add the octopus to it. Turn the heat to medium and cook them for 45 minutes, not forgetting to add vinegar and a pinch of salt.
Once the octopuses are cooked, cool them and remove the skin. Next, chop the meat into pieces. Let's move on to cooking the potatoes. It is necessary to remove the peel and cut into slices.
Fry the onion, cut into half rings, in a frying pan where the oil has been preheated. As soon as the onion turns golden, add the potatoes, which need to be fried for 5 - 7 minutes. Moreover, the fire must be strong. Stir the potatoes if necessary.
After this time, add olives and octopus meat to the prepared mass and fry it for 10 minutes over low heat, covering with a lid.
As soon as you notice that the potatoes have become soft, add spices and chopped parsley. Mix the dish thoroughly and leave it covered in the pan with the heat off. The dish is ready!
How to choose the right octopuses in the store
Small and medium sized octopuses are usually sold whole and are easier to select. No matter how strange it may sound, an octopus is chosen by its eyes. They are, so to speak, a mirror of his quality. A good and edible mollusk should have transparent eyes.
The color of the octopus should be natural.
A large specimen is cut up and on the shelves you can only see tentacles, which, naturally, have no eyes. Here you should focus on skin color. It should be shiny and have a beautiful brown color. You can take this product without hesitation.
But it is better not to buy an octopus that has black spots at the ends of the tentacles and those whose skin is torn. They are either not fresh or were not stored correctly.
How to clean properly - step-by-step instructions
The octopus is one huge muscle. The larger the octopus, the tougher the meat. In order for the meat of this cephalopod to be soft, juicy and tender, it must be properly cleaned and prepared.
1. Fresh octopus should have firm flesh, have a sea fishy smell, skin color should be chestnut, and the whites of the eyes should be transparent and white. It is recommended to purchase octopuses weighing up to a kilogram; they have more tender and soft meat.
2. Rinse the octopus under running water, sort through every tentacle, remove every sand and remaining dirt.
3. Cut off the head a little below the eyes, remove the tentacles, and set them aside. Cut off the eyes and, using a knife, clean out the cavity of the carcass. Squeeze the beak forcefully, cut it out and throw it away. Rinse your head thoroughly, cleaned of entrails, inside and out.
4. The skin from a fresh octopus is very difficult to remove. Therefore, cooks often leave it until they heat it. If you still want to remove the skin, boil the octopus in water for 5-10 minutes, cool it, and then remove the skin from the cold carcass.
5. Now the octopus can be cooked or frozen for storage. Experienced chefs always recommend freezing the octopus carcass before cooking; this significantly softens the tough muscle meat. Place the cleaned octopus in the freezer and leave for at least a day, but preferably 2-3 days.
6. You can cook a large number of dishes from octopus. This meat is in delightful harmony with onions, garlic, tomatoes, lemon, olive oil, rice, wine and soy sauce.
Octopus is not only great in salads, it's amazing as a main dish. For example, try cooking octopus kebab or stewing it in red wine.
Video: how to cut an octopus
How to cook in a saucepan to make salad
- The step-by-step process of an interesting and unique preparation of exotic octopus in a pan looks like this:
- To begin, thoroughly rinse all purchased and previously processed blanks, remove the contents of each head and cut off the eye areas, as well as the “beak”.
- If the seafood was sold with a small ink sac, it is also removed with the utmost care.
If the seafood is large, it is better to beat it a little before you start cooking. But do it carefully so as not to damage the meat.
- You can only put carcasses into boiling water when the water is boiling well, so as not to get tough meat.
- The product must be prepared in a minimal amount of liquid so that the octopus remains juicy and flavorful.
- It is recommended to cook only under a tightly closed lid - this way the meat will not lose its natural exotic taste.
- Cooking a large octopus takes from half an hour to an hour, and small ones – up to 10 minutes.
- It is better to cool seafood in the water in which it was boiled so that the meat does not lose its pleasant taste.
- You can cook meat without using water, when only 2 cm of liquid is poured into the pan, brought to a boil and the octopus is laid out there. During the cooking process, water is gradually added.
- It is recommended to salt seafood directly at the end of the entire process, when the seafood is almost ready for consumption.
Ready meat can be served with various side dishes or on its own. The product is ideally combined with white or red wine, which has previously been chilled.
How to properly store octopus meat
There are no contraindications for octopus meat as such. However, you should understand that when purchasing it, it is important to follow the maintenance rules. Otherwise, you won’t even notice how it can spoil and consume it.
Therefore, for proper maintenance, it is enough to store the meat in the freezer of the refrigerator at a low temperature, about -19°C. The average long-term shelf life of the product under such conditions is about 2 months.
Boiled octopus meat is a tasty and easy-to-prepare delicacy that can easily be made at home (for example, for a salad), but the main thing is to know how to cook it correctly so that the meat turns out tasty and soft. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how and how much to cook octopus in a pan at home.
The cooking time for octopus depends on its size and whether it is boiled whole or just the tentacles. Let's take a closer look at how long to cook octopus in a pan on the stove:
- How long does it take to cook fresh octopus? Fresh large-sized octopus (on average more than 3 kg) is cooked for at least 60 minutes, and medium-sized octopus for 25-30 minutes.
- How long does it take to cook octopus tentacles? Octopus tentacles need to be cooked for 7-10 minutes until cooked.
- How long to cook baby octopuses? Small octopuses can be cooked 5-10 minutes before they are ready.
- How long does it take to cook frozen octopus? Frozen octopuses are cooked the same amount as fresh ones (if they are not large), it is better to defrost large specimens first.
Note: depending on the purpose of cooking octopus, it is better to give preference to small specimens, as they are faster to cook and the meat is more tender (the meat of large octopuses must be beaten before cooking to make it softer).
Having found out how many minutes to cook the octopus until cooked, we will further consider the process of cooking it in order to know how to cook it so that the meat is soft and completely cooked.
How to cook octopus in a pan
Cooking fresh octopus is not a complicated process, the main thing is to do everything sequentially, from preparing it for cooking and ending with the cooking itself (it is important to cook over medium heat in a small amount of water). Let's take a step-by-step look at how to properly cook octopus in a pan:
- If the octopus has been frozen, it must be defrosted in advance (applies to medium- and large-sized specimens), and it is better to defrost it in the general section of the refrigerator or at room temperature.
- A thawed or fresh octopus must be prepared for cooking: cut off part of the head, cut out the beak and eyes, as well as the section with ink and giblets, then rinse thoroughly in cold water to remove mucus.
- Pour cold water into a saucepan of a suitable size (so that it covers the octopus carcass by 1-2 cm) and bring to a boil over high heat.
- Place the prepared octopus in boiling water, wait for the water to boil again, reduce the heat (the water should boil slightly) and cook it under the lid for 25 to 60 minutes (depending on the size of the individual).
- 5 minutes before the end of cooking, salt the water to taste.
- At the end of cooking, check the octopus for readiness, remove the pan from the heat and let the carcass cool in the water so that the meat is more tender and juicy.
Note: the readiness of octopus meat can be easily checked with a toothpick; if it is easily pierced, it means it is cooked.
How to cook frozen baby octopuses
Unlike large octopus, small (baby) octopuses are even easier to cook, and if they are frozen, they do not need to be defrosted before cooking (the cooking time does not change). Let's take a closer look at how to cook small frozen octopuses in a pan:
- Pour cold water into the pan, add salt to taste and bring to a boil over high heat.
- Carefully immerse the frozen small octopuses in boiling water, wait until the water boils again, then reduce the heat, cover the pan with a lid and cook the octopuses for 5-10 minutes (on average 7 minutes).
- Leave the pan with the finished boiled octopuses off the heat and let them cool in the water for 15-20 minutes, after which we drain the water and use them to prepare other dishes.
In conclusion to the article, it can be noted that knowing how long and how to cook octopuses, you can quickly and tasty cook them at home for use in many seafood dishes. We leave our reviews and useful tips on how to cook soft octopus in a pan in the comments to the article and share it on social networks if it was useful to you.
There is no need to defrost octopus before cooking. Throw them directly into the ice into a pan where salted water has already boiled. Let it boil over high heat, reduce the heat and cover with a lid, then cook for fifteen minutes over low heat. Remove from heat and leave covered for another fifteen minutes.
After this, the octopuses are ready to eat. There is no need to clean them, there are no insides in them.
Let's prepare risotto.
For seafood risotto, I always use shrimp head and shell broth. When I peel raw shrimp, I freeze it all just for broth. I boil the shells and heads for twenty minutes, strain, and the rich broth with an intense seafood flavor and aroma is ready.
Peel the onions and garlic and chop very finely. Heat the butter and olive oil in a thick-bottomed saucepan and simmer the vegetables until soft over low heat, avoiding browning.
Add dry rice, preferably special varieties - Arborio, Italica, and, stirring, let the rice absorb the fat. Pour in dry white wine and let the wine soak into the rice over low heat. After the wine has been absorbed, we begin to add hot shrimp broth in small portions, each new after the previous one has been absorbed. Periodically you need to stir the rice and cook it for about 25 minutes, until the rice is soft.
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