Cooked octopus the other night (pics)

I usually get a small pile of tubes and tentacles from Whole Foods if I am ever in there. Theyre extremely easy to cook and make a good appetizer at home. No tentacles the other day but they did have whole octopus. Decided to give it a try because they were relatively cheap and I was sure I would be the only one eating it.

I looked at a few recipes and most end up grilling the octopus after they cook/braise them in a liquid mixture for awhile (1 to 2 hours). Plenty of sites had multiple ways to cook the octopus so I just kind of combined a few different things and winged it.

First you have to cut the octopus into pieces. You remove the hood(head) and cut the tentacles off. The area between that you can just throw away and the tentacle side has a beak that needs to be removed. I decided to not keep the hood for some reason. I regret it now but at the time I just didnt feel like dealing with it and the stuff inside that needs to be dug out.

As I am doing this I have a pot going of just water almost to a boil and a pot with some water and a mixture of white wine, white wine vinegar, lemon, parsley, oregano, onion, shallots, jalapeno, and garlic. I took the octopus tentacles and dipped them in the plain water 3 times. The tentacles curl up. I then put it aside and get the other pot to around 190-200 degrees. It needs to be just under boiling when you cook it in it. Once I got the temperature steady at 190 or so, I put the octopus in and made sure it was submerged for the cook.

I left it for about 2 hours and removed it. This is when most grill it but plenty of recipes said you could finish it in a cast iron. Even one said the george foreman. I cut up the tentacles and had the cast iron heating up with some oil, shallots, and garlic. I should have added parsley but I forgot. Once heated, added the tentacles and cooked for about 3 minutes on each side.

They are good to go after this. I ate them as is but they can easily go on a salad or something else. Was my first time cooking this but it did come out pretty tasty and will definitely try it again and tweak the recipe.

I think the grill is the way to go next time.

Here are the pics.


This first pic is the only one that I didnt take. I forgot to take one before I cut the one I bought. This is exactly what it looked like though



This is after I dipped it into the first pot of almost boiling water

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This is the pot that I used to braise the octopus, although it was done on the stove top.



In goes the octopus
It immediately curls up like this

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After an hour cooking

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After 2 hours




Took it out and cut it up

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The remaining can be strained and used as a stock

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Cast iron goodness

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On the plate








and the filtered version........