Octopus in 15 minutes (basic recipe)

Octopus in 15 minutes (basic recipe)

Category: Cold meals and snacks

Ingredients
octopus	0.7-2.5 kg
onion	0.5 pcs
Bay leaf	2 pcs
salt	0.5-1 tbsp. l.

Cooking method

• With this recipe, octopus of almost any size turns out to be soft and tender, always equally good.
• Peel the octopus, rinse, remove the beak (cut in a circle with the tip of a knife). A frozen octopus is usually already peeled, it needs to be thawed and rinsed again, to check if the beak is removed (at the base of the tentacles).
• 
• Place in a pressure cooker, add water to cover, add bay leaves, onions, 1-2 large pinches of salt (depending on the amount of water). Set maximum pressure and time 12-15 minutes. It will take an additional 10 minutes to build up the pressure, make sure the valve is closed. After the end of the program, forcibly release the pressure.
• 
• In 12 minutes the octopus will be soft with slight elasticity, after 15 minutes it will be slightly softer and easier to remove the skin (if necessary). The skin usually becomes brighter, reddish ink.
• 
• You can also eat the head and tentacles, only the rough part at the base of the head is not used, so where the eyes are located.
• The finished octopus can be eaten immediately, can be browned on a grill or frying pan (so as not to stick, it is better to peel off the skin from the sides of the tentacles), can be added to soup or pasta, and, of course, can be cooled (directly in a pressure cooker) and used later in cold snacks and salads.
• 

The dish is designed for

from 4 servings

Time for preparing:

25 minutes + final recipe

Cooking program:

pressure cooker

Note

PS: no need to add wine cork to water.

PPS: even if the octopus size is very large, the cooking time remains the same (forcefully bleed, check with a skewer). Most importantly, make sure the water level in your pressure cooker is below the acceptable level.

“This creature clung to you with many vile mouths: the hydra merges with the man, the man merges with the hydra. You are one with her, you are a prisoner of this embodied nightmare. A tiger can devour you, an octopus - it's scary to think! - sucks you out. He pulls you towards him, takes you in, and you, bound, glued together by this living slime, helpless, feel yourself slowly pouring into a terrible bag - into this monster. It is terrible to be eaten alive, but there is something even more indescribable - to be drunk alive. " This is how Victor Hugo imagined the danger to which a person captured by an octopus is exposed. Time and science have almost completely debunked these "sea monsters".

The Soviet biologist I. I. Akimushkin did a lot to shake the traditional point of view of octopuses as the most ferocious inhabitants of the deep sea. Glorious "frogmen" ("people-frogs", as the English called divers in fins) Cousteau and Dumas humorously ask: what exactly is his air hose catching - a giant octopus or a rotten board? "

And they add with a smile: “If none of them (“ sea monsters ”. Approx. G.K.) have still devoured us, then, obviously, only because they have never read the appropriate instructions, which abound in marine terminology ".
Thus, octopuses do not devour or "drink" people. However, you should not trust the octopus: when attacking, it does not bite, however, but it has a beak. He can prick them and release poisonous saliva, which is not so safe.
During the day, octopuses hide between stones, in pits, crevices, and at night they stay awake and hunt. Octopuses run pretty fast on the seabed. On the head of the octopus there are eight tentacles with suction cups in the form of a crown; in front, between the tentacles, there is a mouth opening with jaws and a sharp beak.

At the very head, the tentacles are interconnected by an elastic fleshy membrane. Between the body and the head from the ventral side, you can see a funnel and the edge of the mantle, in the lower part of which there is a fleshy septum.
Only one of the octopuses, the Argonaut, has a small shell. Over the centuries, he, like his brothers and sisters, the shell will completely disappear. A female Argonaut that secretes a shell uses it as a cradle for her eggs.
A live octopus has an inconspicuous color, which it changes depending on its condition. Aldridge writes: “Octopuses are surprisingly quick and harmoniously colored to match the color of their surroundings, and when you shoot one of them, kill or stun him, he will not immediately lose the ability to change color. I observed this myself, putting the captured octopus on a newspaper sheet for cutting.

The killed octopus instantly changed color, becoming striped, in white and black stripes. "

Several representatives of octopuses live in the Far Eastern waters. An ordinary representative of cephalopods, half a meter long, weighs about a kilogram, a meter-long one - five kilograms, one and a half meter - about nine, and a two-meter one weighs about eighteen kilograms. There are also those whose weight reaches thirty to forty kilograms.

In the Soviet Union, the octopus fishery is still poorly developed. They accidentally fall into nets, trawls and seines. They are obtained by divers who hunt for scallops and trepangs. But even the most approximate calculations say: there are so many octopuses that it makes sense to organize their fishery.

And in 1965, the collectives of the fish processing plants of the Soviet Primorye for the first time carried out industrial octopus fishing in the Sea of ​​Japan. The fishing was carried out mainly by the fishing teams of the new management of the fishing industry of the Far East - "Dalmoreproduct".

What do they eat octopuses with? What side dish is good for octopus?

Don't be surprised by such questions. People from China, Korea, Japan and many other coastal countries can easily answer them.

Moreover, some of them believe that the sweetish meat of cephalopods does not even need seasoning.

Dried and pickled seafood is prepared from the tissues and limbs of these mollusks and the meat of large octopuses. Fresh octopus meat is used to prepare delicious dishes, for which its limbs are boiled in saline, cooled, skinned, and the resulting meat is fried or marinated. It takes about ten to fifteen days of sunny weather to prepare dried octopus products, and even a large octopus will be dried.

Pickled octopuses are highly prized in some countries of the East. After cutting, the octopuses are boiled in a saline solution and placed still warm in barrels, where an acetic-salt solution with spices and sugar is poured. In this case, small octopuses are laid entirely, and large ones are cut into pieces. After ripening and storage in a cool place, a product is obtained with a peculiar taste.

Octopus is rich in protein, it is a protein product; found in it and vitamins: thiamine, riboflavin and others, - as well as trace elements. The meat of large octopuses can contain, despite its "wateriness" (it has the appearance of an elastic jelly before cooking), up to nine to ten percent fat. There are many extractive substances in the muscles, which give a peculiar taste to the dish.

Dried octopus meat is a real protein concentrate. If fat, for example, in the meat of the extremities contains 2.4-3.6 percent, water 16.7-17.4, then protein 72-76.4 percent. This is what an octopus is - the former "storm of the seas" - one of the delicious dishes that decorates the dinner table.Jain and Barney Kryle - connoisseurs of seafood - say that, first of all, for the food to be tasty, you need to raise the killed octopus above your head and shake it, like Perseus, the head of Medusa, which instead of hair grew snakes, and then beat it on the floor like this, so that the tentacles flattened out and hit the stone floor with a juicy slap. Then the octopus must be thrown into boiling water. In an instant, its tentacles coiled. The octopus turns red like a crayfish and the water takes on an excellent mahogany color. After twenty minutes, the octopus is cleaned of soft skin and suction cups. After that, it is stewed in butter, squeezed into a hot lemon and finally poured with hot sauce. The octopus prepared in this way has a delicate lobster flavor and a soft scallop texture.

Charles Darwin, having tasted the octopus, found it very tasty, and the English traveler M. Morris believed that a well-cooked octopus was the best delicacy on the Japanese menu.

“When you taste the octopus cooked according to all the rules of the art of cooking, it will taste like lobster, and after that you will argue that many of the gourmet dishes in the best hotels, supposedly cooked from lobsters, are actually octopuses,” writes James Aldridge.

Taste sensations are, of course, different. For example, V.K.Arseniev, while traveling around the Far Eastern Territory, tried an octopus once cooked by the Chinese. He found that the octopus tasted like mushrooms.

“I don’t want to start a dispute here,” writes James Aldridge in his book about spearfishing, “... but I repeat only what any spearfisher will tell you: all the scary stories about octopuses being a danger to a swimmer and a diver, in many ways, highly exaggerated ...

Most of the octopuses that you will come across underwater (they can be up to five feet long, counting from one end of the tentacles to the other) are usually shy, obsequious creatures who are always ready to get out of your way, take refuge in any crevice to cling to the rock with such an air, as if by all their behavior they wish to convince you and themselves: “I am not here! I'm just not here! Don't pay any attention to me! "

[Dara]

Dara, thank you so much for the recipe. And although the octopus does not threaten me, I read it with curiosity. Can you cook squid like that?

there is no need to add wine cork to the water.

and from that I neigh
I usually step on it

[Dara]

DaraDon't know how to pickle an octopus? My husband is very fond of salad with pickled octopus)

Gourmet food) The presentation is very nice. Thank you)

[Dara]

Dara, Designer, you lay down so much salt ?? the octopus itself is salty, if salted it will be very salty ... maybe you have some other octopus ... sorry if that ...

[Tumanchik]

Tumanchik, there is an opinion that it is necessary to add a wine cork and copper coins to the water with an octopus so that it is softer when ready. Perhaps this works if you cook the octopus in the classic way - slowly and for a long time. The pressure cooker does not need additional helpers.

Irina F, I believe that the finished octopus should be cut and filled with your favorite marinade, left in the refrigerator for several hours. I'll think about it.

If the salad or appetizer itself is seasoned with a marinade sauce, then the octopus does not seem to need to be marinated. Based on this recipe, you can also make ceviche (lime-cilantro). I'd say the dressing takes on the marinade load and the octopus remains as texture.

kristina1, salt, like sugar, serve as flavor enhancers. And, of course, their quantity is a matter of personal taste. You can also sit on a salt-free diet and enjoy the "pure" taste of the products. To be honest, I have no idea what an octopus would taste like without any added salt - does it contain natural salt? I did not try. Experiment - take less salt, check. Please, I will only be glad if you report the results.

ang-kay, Thank you. Glad to be appreciated. I wanted to cook a whole master class with different dishes based on this base. But laziness took its toll. Here are just a salad for now.

[Dara]

Dara, Designer, I often cook an octopus, it is salty by itself ... I will not even experiment, we probably have other octopuses, they themselves are very salty, since the Mediterranean sea is very salty ... I do not go on a salt-free diet ..

[kristina1]

kristina1, no question, next time I check, I will put less salt. True, we do not often have such a miracle on the table ... and this was presented.
Perhaps you are right, and it can be done without salt at all, I did not hesitate.

[Dara]

Dara, Designer, you can salt, there is no comrade to taste and color, but I heard this for the first time .. if you salt an octopus, then you definitely won't be able to eat, my husband loves salty, salt pours horror ... but no when ... I mean when you cook ...

[Irina F]

Irina F, found for you the following recipe for pickled octopus:
Cut the finished octopus (500g) into small pieces, put in a sterilized jar.
Separately in a dry frying pan, stirring occasionally, heat 1 tbsp. l. coriander and 0.5 tsp. black peppercorns to enhance the aroma. Remove the pan from the heat, cool slightly, continuing to stir the spices so that they do not burn. Add 200 ml red wine vinegar, 2 hot red peppers, 4 whole garlic cloves, 4 bay leaves, 5 cm lemon peel, 1 tsp. dry oregano (oregano) and 1/2 tsp. salt. Return the pan to the stove, and bring the vinegar and spices to a boil over high heat. Set aside, add another 200 ml of red wine vinegar. Cool to room temperature. Pour the chilled marinade over the octopus pieces so that they are slightly covered (if necessary, add up to 100 ml of vinegar). Add vegetable (olive) oil on top with a layer of at least 1 cm. Close, marinate in the refrigerator for at least a week. Shelf life: 3 months.
From the book "Unsightly Foods".