Grilled Octopus Jessie Schenker

how you doing my name is Jessie shank you are here in my kitchen at were set in Manhattan and today I'm going to show you guys how to purchase an octopus had a tenderizing octopus and how to do a great grilled octopus dish so the first thing you want to do is really get a good relationship with your seafood monger and that goes with any any food whether it's your produce or your meat so we have here is a 5 pound octopus which is actually from South America they're great from Portugal they're great from Spain and but this is just the one we got today so when you go to a seafood monger you really want to make sure that you get some it's extremely fresh now some places you can go and they actually have really good quality frozen octopus they get them and they actually tenderize them for you and then they flash freeze them so for any home cook that would be definitely the recommendation that that what I would use now that the deal with the octopus is when you get it you have the head and you got the eyes right here and then there's the ink sack right here a lot of times you can also ask your seafood monger to remove the head to remove the ink sack some people refer to eat the head some people don't it eats just as well as the tentacles the tentacles just have a little thinner so they can get a little less chewy so we'll do with the octopus is we'll separate the head and then we'll separate the ink sack so what you're left with is the eight tentacles and the rest of the body so another thing with this is if you can't get a tenderize octopus what you should be able to the best way to do it is literally might get a little messy but you just want to take it and smack it against your cutting board just like so just be careful not to spill anything over yourself just keep your surroundings clear again what getting any fresh seafood you want to make sure that it's odorless it should really just smell like the ocean but yeah you don't want it shouldn't smell like anything Strong's does just discard it and find a new seafood mugger so that's pretty much the the best the best way to get the the best octopus and tenderize it to cook the octopus once is tenderize we want to get a pot of water the trick is to you don't want to boil the octopus because if you boil it it will get rubbery so there's many methods in cooking octopus some people like to braise it in the oven for a long time some people like to confit it in olive oil I think that the best and the simplest way and also the most efficient and delicious is just simply simmer it in a court bouillon or flavored liquid so we have here is just some water which we brought up to 200 degrees so 212 degrees is boiling so you can imagine that 12 degrees less than 200 is it's like really really steaming like almost the bubbles are starting to form at the bottom but it's not quite boiling so we're going to do is going to take some lemons and we're going to cut them and we're going to juice them into the water and we're going to add the lemons garlic which we'll cut in half put that in the water lots of fresh thyme and rosemary and with this recipe again the more aromatics the better any special flavors you want to add to it will work as well if you like if you like lots of garlic if you like less garlic if you don't like garlic at all it'll all just you know you can really personalize it for the home we've got some oranges in here as well some lime and then again some Spanish onion so we'll just cut the onion in half in no particular way now again since we are cooking it for like an hour and a half to two hours you don't want to cut the onion too small or it will turn to mush and kind of get pasty onto the octopus so you can kind of rough chop it a little large so like a nice large dice would work just fine so now once we get all the mirepoix and the aromatics into the water we're going to return it back to the stove and make sure it stays at 200 now the best way to do this is you can use a temperature gun which is more moderate and very scientific or you can just use like a candy thermometer or any kind of at-home thermometer that you were used for a turkey or whatnot just stick it in the side and the trick is if you have a gas burner you can leave it just like on it like low to medium you don't want to go too high again because if it boils it'll just it'll it'll it'll rough up the octopus and anytime you're cooking something so beautiful you really want to just cook it gently you never really want to just abused anything so we'll put the octopus into the water once it's 200 right once you get the lemons in all your aromatics you just want to finish it off with a bottle of a nice dry white wine and again this could change if you like a sweeter wine or a red wine even that's totally possible as well anything we can get some natural natural flavors would be really good and then just before if we put it in the stove a good good amount of kosher salt without salt nothing tastes nearly as good so we return it to the stove we'll bring it to 200 degrees and we'll cook it for an hour and a half to two hours till it's nice and fork tender ok so it's been about an hour and 15 minutes an hour and 20 minutes and we want to start to assemble the marinade now so we can time it we're at the end of the cooking we can get the hot octopus into the cold marinade so we have here a bowl of about 2 liters of extra-virgin olive oil now if you're going to do a small octopus we require less olive oil we want to make sure is enough olive oil just to submerge the octopus so we do is we have fresh-squeezed orange juice that we add to the olive oil some fresh squeezed lime juice some lemon juice and then the zest of the orange the lemon and the lime now that's just you want to make sure to get like a nice microplane now you can get one like this just make sure you don't take a white or the pit off of the orange because that tends to be bitter now you also want to add some garlic like three or four cloves sliced some some rosemary that's lightly chopped and then it's completely optional a crushed red chili I prefer a lot of it I like the the heat that gets to the back of the palate with the octopus now once all this is combined slightly mix it up with a spoon you want to seize it and of course kosher salt now I like to put a lot of salt as you can see because it's very it's very there's nothing worse than a bland octopus and the difference between a little bit of salt to the right amount of salt will make the dish from good to great so you'll mix all this up and then we will add the octopus just like so now the octopus has a very short window of where it's like a sponge so when it's hot you want to cool it in the liquid so we'll go from 200 degrees and it will slowly start to cool to 190 180 170 and absorbing all that flavor of the oil and the garlic and the orange and this way you will have a really really succulent and flavorful octopus throughout so we'll put this in the fridge for overnight just to cool it down and then after 24 hours we will take it out of the marinade and we'll grill it so a great accompany or salad to the octopus is a nice fennel salad so we get a nice bulb of fennel nice and clean and it's hard it's firm there's no damage there's no bruising there's no browning and we're going to do with the fennel is we're just going to we're going to cut the tips off now we're going to separate the fronds so I'll just pick the fronds right into a bowl if you choose so you can cut them small and keep them whole I actually prefer getting the bigger piece in my mouth yeah I'd like a really nice person licorice or anise I mean then we take the bulb now again this the way you cut the fennel is completely up to you I prefer just to cut it in half and then you see you have this root that comes down with it where it goes and I take that out doesn't really taste too good so you can just kind of cut your way around it and it'll kind of just pop out with your hand and then we'll just truly in the fennel I mean we'll just cut it into thin strips again you can cut it thicker you can cut it thinner you can cut it into squares some of you fancy chefs at home have the mandolin - the slicers but I think this is the best way because the octopus has a nice chewiness and and and really saltiness and then the crunch from the thick cut fennel really really cuts through and really helps it a lot and then we'll add some lemon juice careful not to get any seeds in there and then there's one secret ingredient we like to add here at the restaurant is a preserved lemon so these are actually lemons that are preserved in vinegar and they're really really special now this is totally optional but it's it's great so we just cut the ends off and if you look inside the lemon here you can see how it's it's it's almost pickled it's kind of crazy sounding because the lemon is so acidic and a pickled lemon but it's really something really really delicious so we'll take the ends off and just kind of use the yellow now what's cool about this is like we talked about in the in the marinade you wanted to keep the pith out but with this you can actually almost everything even the seeds actually so we'll cut the lemon rind into little strips and just add it to the salad and it adds a nice brightness to the to the salad we also have a little micro cilantro here adds a nice flavor as well so we put that through and then again it's optional the crushed red chili I love using them so I'll just put a pinch in there not too much just enough to get a little bite and it's a really good extra virgin olive oil and again kosher salt the one great thing about the salad is you can eat it right away and you have that fresh crispness or you can actually let it sit overnight and really marinate and become like between the preserved lemon and the lemon juice and the olive oil and the natural fennel juices from the salt coming out just becomes really really really really good and briny so we'll put this in the fridge for a little while and then we'll come back and grow some octopus okay so we have our octopus here now and marinated for 24 hours it cooled and liquid nicely and now it's very flavorful very tender and as you can see the little abductor muscles here in the the tentacles have kept their their outer skin which is good and that's because we didn't boil it too hard some people don't like those at all some people love them I think they're great I think it's almost a delicacy having a pop in your mouth and they're grilled and charred so we're going to do is we actually take the octopus we're going to put on a clean cutting board now we're going to remove the legs tentacles put them onto a nice tray so you can go all the way down now again you can see how easy the knife is going through because it's quite quite tender now everyone's probably asking themselves all that oil holding into the olive oil what's great about that is we put a cooked product into it so never married in anything raw so you can actually use it if you want to discard initially the citrus and the ruiers and garlic they're in there just strain it through a colander or a fine Tammy you can actually save the oil for a couple weeks in the refrigerator and it's great to say a week later you want to make a pie it's great to drizzle that all over the rice at the end of the cooking or if you're going to make a seafood stew or soup you can start with that oil to cook your mirepoix so we'll put all these tentacles onto a onto a stray eye looks like I'm running out of room here and we'll go to the grill all right so we're here at the grill so there's recipes with one octo five pounds was probably served anywhere between six and eight people so I got a couple of pieces here just to grow up for a couple people now you got to make sure your grill is extremely hot and extremely clean depending on what kind of grill you have at home here at the restaurant were set we just have a flat top so we put a little bit of grill plate on there to get some nice marks I'm at home a George Foreman grill or panini machine would be perfect you put it in there you close it down you get a nice crispy edge and on both sides and it works out perfect so we'll take them out olive oil marinate a little bit of it and just kind of brush it a little bit on there so it doesn't stick to the grill a little bit on the grill and then again we'll season it now I know it seems like an essex and excuse me a lot of salt but at least at least 40 percent of the salt will come off on the grill and not on its not stay on the octopus so we'll season both sides really nicely and then we'll go right to the grill so that's what you want to hear you want to hear that sizzle that's when you know you're really cooking right another thing is the octopus the head of the octopus a lot of people a little scared of that they don't know to do the tentacles are more common seeing part of the octopus the head is just as tasty you could totally totally grow that just the same it's also good because you can stuff it and then you can put anything inside of it vegetables or shrimp or whatever before you grill it and it's just it's a great addition so we'll cook the octopus for about three to four minutes per side and then when it's finished we'll go plate it up and try it out okay so now that octopus has been grilled so we're going to plate it up really nice so we'll take the grilled octopus we'll move it to the cutting board and we're going to just cut it to little bite-sized pieces for the guests so what the head will do just the same see for the tentacles isn't to plate it just put it down really nice listen don't overcrowd to play too much so we'll take a little more the marinated olive oil right on top and then a little more preserved lemon which we diced up a little bit of olive oil just on top really nicely then last but not least we'll finish with our fennel salad that's been marinated really nicely so again you can do this on a big platter you want to serve it whole or if you do not want to cut it up it's good little finger food as well give a lot of guests you want to grill it just put on a platter outside and here it is the grilled Popo with fennel salad and preserved lemon here at were set

Channel: How2Heroes

Views: 466,311

Keywords: cooking octopus, Food, jessie schenker, recette, manhattan restaurants, recipes, cooking

Id: nNPj2x45PdE

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 13 2012