Eight Dashi Octopus Takoyaki

Name: Eight Dashi Octopus Takoyaki
Total time: 100 min
Yield: 1 portions
Cuisine: Japanese
Ingredients: 80 g Octopus Cleaned raw octopus arm, thawed if frozen; weigh before simmering, not as cooked octopus; 30 g Chicken eggs Weighed beaten whole egg without shell; refrigerate the unused remainder promptly for another use; 5 g Green onion Finely sliced; all inside the balls; 2 cups Water For simmering raw octopus; discard after cooking; 0.5 cup Flour All-purpose wheat flour; 2 g Baking Powder; 1 g Sugar; 4 g Panko Breadcrumbs Plain dry Japanese breadcrumbs, used inside instead of tempura scraps; 0.5 cup Dashi Prepared cooled liquid Japanese fish stock, not dry dashi powder; 0.5 tsp Soy Sauce All mixed into the batter; 8 g Ketchup; 1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce; 0.5 tsp Oyster Sauce; 8 g Mayonnaise; 1.5 tsp Cooking oil Neutral oil, all for greasing the selected wells and surrounding surface; To taste Salt

Eight small Japanese dashi-batter balls filled with tender octopus and scallion, cooked in a takoyaki pan and finished with a homemade brown sauce and mayonnaise: one generous snack.

Ingredients

80 g

Octopus

Steps

70 min1

Simmer

Bring all the water to a boil in a small saucepan with a little salt. Add the cleaned raw octopus arm, reduce immediately to a gentle simmer, cover loosely and cook for 45-60 minutes until a knife enters the thickest part easily. Keep it submerged and avoid a hard boil. Cool in its liquid for 10 minutes, then drain and discard the cooking water. Cut all the cooked octopus into small bite-size pieces; retain the entire cooked yield, which weighs less than the raw quantity.

Meanwhile, mix all the ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, oyster sauce and sugar in a small bowl until the sugar dissolves; reserve this brown sauce. Whisk all the flour and baking powder with a little salt, then whisk in all the measured beaten egg, soy sauce and cooled liquid dashi until smooth. The batter should be thin and easy to pour. Keep the scallion, panko and cooked octopus ready.

5 min3

Heat a takoyaki pan over medium heat, about 200°C for an adjustable electric pan. Select eight round wells about 3.5-4 cm across and brush them and the adjoining flat surface with all the oil. Pour all the batter among these wells, allowing a little to overflow around them. Divide all the cooked octopus, scallion and panko evenly among the eight wells.

13 min4

Fry

Cook for about 3 minutes until the bottoms set. Use two wooden picks to separate the batter between wells and rotate each piece 90 degrees, tucking all the surrounding batter into its well. Cook for 4 minutes, then rotate another 90 degrees to close each ball. Continue turning gently for another 4-6 minutes until evenly golden, crisp outside and cooked through with hot soft centers, without raw flour paste or liquid egg. Move balls between wells if browning is uneven; keep every bit of batter in the eight balls.

2 min5

Transfer all eight to one small plate. Spoon all the reserved brown sauce over them and drizzle with all the mayonnaise. Rest for 2 minutes before eating the hot centers. Serve the entire plate as one generous snack; bonito flakes, seaweed, pickled ginger and extra sauce are not included.