Grilled Octopus

Step by Step Recipe

Cook the octopus. When it is tender, we remove it from the fire and reserve.
Peel, wash, and thickly slice the potatoes.
Cook the potatoes in the same cooking water as the octopus. When they are tender, we remove them from the water and reserve them.
Open the legs of the octopus from top to bottom.
Pass the octopus legs on the grill with a little olive oil.
Serve the grilled octopus with the potatoes and sprinkle with a little sweet paprika, hot paprika, coarse salt, and olive oil to taste.

Grilled Octopus: Complete Recipe

Octopus is one of the main foods of Galician gastronomy, it is a hard mollusk that must be cooked in a special way so that its meat is tender.
In addition to being delicious, the octopus has numerous nutritional values such as its high level of minerals (calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, copper, manganese, the most important and main being zinc) and vitamins (A, E, C, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B12) and also, unlike other mollusks and shellfish, it has a low cholesterol level.
Octopus is a fairly versatile mollusk with which many dishes can be prepared such as octopus a feira, octopus salpicón, octopus carpaccio, octopus with garlic, etc. In this case, we are going to make a delicious recipe for grilled octopus, a dish similar to octopus a feira but instead of simply cooking the octopus, it is grilled or grilled, giving this mollusk a different flavor.

Elaboration:

To start preparing our grilled octopus we must cook the octopus. To do this, it is necessary to soften the octopus a little by freezing it for at least two days, in this way we will kill the nerve, which makes the meat much more tender.
When it has been in the freezer for the necessary time, we take it out and defrost it in the refrigerator and on a source where the juice released by the octopus when defrosting can be stored.
If, on the other hand, you decide not to freeze the octopus, you will have to hit it several times on the counter or on a hard surface.
Once we have softened the octopus, we put on the fire a saucepan large enough for the octopus to enter.
Fill the casserole with water and when it starts to boil, add the octopus.
Next, we must ‘ scare the octopus’, a technique that consists of holding the octopus by the head, and three times in a row, we put it in and take it out of the casserole, finally, we leave it loose in the casserole until it is cooked.
The cooking time of the octopus will depend on its size, in this case as we have 2 kilos of octopus we will need about 50 minutes, that is, 25 minutes per kilo.
A trick to know if the octopus is ready is to prick the thickest part with a wooden tip, if it enters smoothly, the octopus will be well cooked.
When the octopus is ready, we remove it from the pan and reserve.
Once we have the octopus cooked, we prepare the potatoes. We start by peeling washing and cutting the potatoes into thick slices.
Using the same water in which we have cooked the octopus, we cook the potatoes, this will make the potatoes have much more flavor. When the potatoes are tender, we remove them from the casserole with the help of a drain and we reserve them on a plate.
When we have the potatoes ready, we take the cooked octopus that we had reserved and separated the legs of the head with the help of good scissors.
We take the legs of the octopus and with the help of a knife, we open them from top to bottom so that when cooking them the suction cups do not close.
Once we have the legs open, we pass them through the embers, keeping them just long enough to brown on both sides.
If we do not have embers, we can use a griddle or, failing that, the oven to brown or toast the octopus legs.
When we have all the braised octopus legs, we only have to plate.
To enjoy this delicious grilled octopus we are going to use the same plating technique that is used with the famous octopus a feira or Galician style. To do this, we start by putting a bed of potato on a plate or on a round and flat wooden board, on top of the potatoes we place the octopus (the legs whole or cut into slices) and finally we sprinkle the octopus with sweet paprika, spicy paprika, coarse salt, and olive oil.
We would have our grilled octopus ready to serve and enjoy with our guests.