The Ingredient Chefs Fear (How to Cook It Right)

Octopus is one of the most intimidating things to cook. Slimy, chewy, impossible to get right, or so people say. But it's easier than you think. We're cooking octopus three different ways. No sous-vide, no tricks, just simple methods you can actually use. One of them might be the best thing I've actually cooked all year. But before we start, let's talk about what octopus needs to become tender. So the most important thing about octopus is it's one of the only ingredients that we get in fresh and then deliberately freeze. We always put it in the freezer, frozen solid. There's a lot of myths around octopus, but a lot of people say that you need to bash it against a rock. And in fairness, if you go to Greece, where they often fish it, you can see people doing that. That does work, but the best way to tenderize it is to freeze it. Water that's in the cells expands and then breaks the cell wall of the octopus. I'm just gonna let running water go over the octopus until it defrosts. So what I actually do is I just snip the heads off above the eyes. But typically I separate the tentacles out now and just cut off each individual tentacle. Take this off, the octopus. I always find it just gives you a really clean finish as soon as they come out of the steamer. One even layer, not all piled up on top of each other. So we're just gonna take them to the steamer. 85 degrees, two hours. And that's it. Okay, so our two hours is up. We'll check our okie. You can use a knife to check it or to poke it, but basically all I'm looking for is basically just giving it a really nice squeeze and just to make sure it's really, really tender. So I'll just cut off the end of one of the tentacles. And if the knife just glides through, you know it's cooked. You're looking for the kind of texture of like a really, almost like calamari, but maybe with a little bit more give to it. The heads, yeah, should be able to sort of squeeze. Squeeze for, I'm gonna show you how we would serve this at a restaurant. This is what we call a plancha. You can use something like a cast iron grill, but basically a good hit of salt, a good bit of pepper. Roasting it on the plancha, it's a very sort of almost traditional sort of Spanish way of cooking it. It's such a simple thing once you have the understanding. I feel like people, potentially they overcomplicate it too much or, you know, there's all these little wives tales about like putting a cork in your pan when you cook your octopus. I don't think any of that makes any difference. I'm coloring it all around, not just the sides. So I've got some on the bottom as well. And that roasted octopus flavor, there's almost nothing like it. So I'm just taking off the tail, which is, you don't want it to get too crispy. I'm not gonna do anything with this other than brush it with lots and lots of garlic butter, lemon juice, herbs, that's it. Just to finish, what I'm doing now is I'm just flipping it over onto the tentacle side, which I always think people neglect. And I'm just getting a little bit of a crisp. For me, the best thing about octopus is when it goes really nice and crispy. And those tentacles often get forgotten about. So this is just our little garlic pulp reduction. So a little touch of parsley on there, just a squeeze of lemon. And that's pretty much it. I mean, roasted octopus covered in garlic, lemon juice, and parsley. There is almost nothing better. I realize not many of you have a high-powered steamer at home, so I'm gonna show you a technique that you could do at your house easily. It's a unique animal, it's a cephalopod. It kind of needs special treatment and it needs treating in a completely different way. Run my fingers across all of these suckers. Sometimes they've got these sacs or grit that exist in this small little pod inside their sucker. So it's really important that you get rid of that. So also just getting inside this head now, the best way to prep the heads is just to make sure they're thoroughly rinsed. And then you almost like, you basically just turn them inside out. Once the octopus is fully defrosted, just place them into a little separate tray. There's more octopus now in British waters than there's ever been. Three years ago, I didn't even know that you could get British octopus. And now they're literally everywhere. They're pulling them out all the time and they're cheaper than they've ever been. The only fish I would say has gone down in price in the UK in the last five to 10 years. They grow back their tentacles. So you can see some sort of predator is eating half of that tentacle and it's just started to sprout a new one. We get people coming to the restaurants now who say that they eat everything, they just don't eat octopus. I understand that they're a sentient and intelligent animal, but pigs are pretty clever too. So I don't understand why you'd draw the line at octopus so much more accessible than it used to be. I saw it in Morrison's the other day. It's in like, you know, a lot of the supermarkets. You can get it from any real good fishmonger as well. Like I say, it's being potted all the time at the moment. Okay, next technique. And I'm actually gonna give you a little bonus technique alongside. Just whack your oki in. I've got really nice boiling water. Just gonna cook two at the same time. I've got some vinegar in there. I've got some salt. The vinegar just sort of helps break down the outer skin and the salt just seasons it whilst it cooks. Just submerge the octopus like that. Once this water comes back to the boil, I'm gonna turn it right down to like two on the induction, but a very low heat. And then I'm gonna set a 45 minute timer. And it is almost like clockwork, but it does seem to work every single time. Okay, so it's been 45 minutes. I've turned the heat off. And I mean, you can already tell how tender that is. Suckers are still on there. And then just whack it into a bowl. I'm just gonna cut those tentacles. These are all our tentacles. And just use a little bit of the juice as well. We could take this upstairs right now and roast it, but I'm just gonna show you a technique that you can use, which is really simple, and create something like definitely a bit more restaurant-y. This is just the old tin we were using for coconut milk. And then just place your tentacles, once they're cooked, and a little bit of the juice into the tin. Bear with me now, bear with me. Just added some salt and pepper just for seasoning. Place this, the lid from the tin, back on top. Some sort of container that can go in there and compress it. And a weight. And then this is gonna make the best octopus tureen. And then that just goes in a fridge to set for at least eight hours. Your tureen will come out something like this. Now we have tin cans, but if you just wanted to do that with a tray and a weight, it would work exactly the same. Okay, so you can easily slice this by hand, but in the restaurant we use what this, a commercial meat slicer. So you can just really simply slice one perfect octopus tureen. Octopus mosaic. Just a different way of serving it. So this technique only works really because of the natural collagen that exists in the octopus. Extra virgin olive oil, tiny bit of salt. It's already seasoned, not too much. Just a little tiny bit of cod's roe. Just buy some really good quality taramasa lata. Even a little bit of like lemon mayonnaise. And then this is just some really nice sea veg. So really simple technique, but you can elevate it in this way. To be honest, if you did that at a dinner party, people would absolutely lose their marbles. Or if you have a little pizza oven in your garden, get that on there. Oh, look at that bad boy. Tiny bit of oil on the crust. Look at that. And a little bit of chili crisp, peppers. Look at that for a little bad boy. Really simple technique. Octopus carpaccio. You can either reheat it, grill it, or put on a flatbread like here, or just serve it raw, really nice and fresh. What a treat, what a treat. That's actually so good. You all try this. How good is that? Okay, so this next technique is something I didn't even know about until I went on holiday. This is traditionally how they serve it in Portugal. For a rustic dish and a rustic way of cooking it, it's probably gonna give you, I think, probably the best result. If you're at home and you just wanna do it for flavor, I really, really highly recommend it. So just roughly chop some onions. Whack that in the tray. Just gonna crush the garlic, whack it in. Really nice, ripe tomatoes as well. These are San Marzano tomatoes. And they're super ripe as well. So they're gonna be really nice and sweet. Good glug of nice quality olive oil. Touch of wine, our house wine at Rowe. And I'm just gonna take the head off. This is defrosted, so it's thawed just like all the other octopus. It's been frozen. Cut out the beak. So the beak is like right in the center. It's essentially its mouth. It's this small little black thing that I think it's used to catch their prey and stuff like that. So obviously these are quite big. When you go to the supermarket, you'll probably get them a little bit smaller. But this recipe could be done with smaller octopus. You just need to slightly alter the cooking time. So basically the size of the octopus just dictates how long you need to cook it for. So if you end up with much smaller, just roughly reduce your cooking size by about the size difference in octopus. So if it's half the size, cook it for half the time. Okay, good amount of salt. Good hair of black pepper. And then just mix the whole thing up. I use a layer of cling film and then tinfoil. Steam the octopus as it cooks. And if you've not got a steam oven at home, that's just a really handy little tip. So covering tinfoil, make sure it's nice and well secured. And then this is gonna cook at 180 for 45 minutes. Okay, so our octopus has had 45 minutes. Take this tinfoil off. It's actually quite crazy how much liquid comes out of octopus. Not many people realize that. We only put a splash of wine in there. All of that has basically come out of it. Now I'm gonna put it back in at a high temperature and let that crisp up whilst all those juices reduce around it. Place it back into the oven. 180 is absolutely fine. I'm gonna leave it for another 15 to 20 minutes until it's super crispy, really nice and sort of glazed up with all of that cooking juice as well. Check this out. 20 minutes. Look at that. And now they've gone all crispy and juicy. Now I'll show you how you can finish this. Okay, so you've got this beautiful golden brown octopus. All you're gonna do is just take out some of the juice, the flavor from the wine, the octopus itself, caramelized onions and the bay. It's just like really beautifully caramelized all over the outside of the octopus. So I've just got the liquid. I'm just reducing it down lightly. Not too much because it'll get too intense otherwise. And then I'm just gonna glaze up the octopus with that before I serve it. Broil this up until it's literally just sort of started to come together. You don't want it to be too thick. Little bit of lemon juice, salt, pepper. Glaze it up. I just put a little bit of spiced pumpkin puree in there. Glaze up that octo with that really beautiful reduced liquid. Super simple, super clean. Then just dress it all over with a really good quality olive oil. It's just a stunning plate of food. Absolutely delicious. Fear not of our eight-legged friends. They mean you no harm.