How to cook frozen octopuses. Cooking little octopuses: the secrets of the best chefs

Octopus meat is very refined and original in taste, but perhaps not everyone knows how to cook it. That is why I would like to offer a few that will help make octopus meat soft and incredibly tasty.

How to cook octopus?

This recipe will help you boil octopus meat. Products:

• bulb;
• carrot;
• salt, bay leaf;
• octopus - 1 carcass.

To begin with, the carcass should be washed in cold water, then placed in a large pot of water and add salt, onions, carrots, and you can also throw it in. Then boil and boil for 8 minutes. Naturally, the cooking time depends only on how big your octopus is. When it is ready, take it out of the water and let it cool. Then carefully remove the skin. Further, the finished meat can be used to prepare various salads, as well as consumed in boiled form.

If you find that the octopus meat is very tough, it means that you have not boiled it enough. In this case, you should send it for some time to boiling water. Some experienced cooks advise to beat off the octopus a little before cooking, so that the meat is sure to turn out soft.

If you still do not know, then the following recipe is for you. Plus, it only takes you 15 minutes to make this dish.

Cooking octopus the Corsican way

For this recipe, it is best to use small octopus carcasses. Compound:

• - 220 ml;
• octopuses - 460 g;
• ketchup or tomatoes;
• vegetable oil;
• salt.

Initially, the octopuses should be boiled in salt water for 4 minutes, then put in a hot pan and fried in vegetable oil. Then pour in a little wine, add salt, chopped tomatoes (or ketchup), then simmer for 9-11 minutes. Now you know exactly how to cook octopus tasty and fast. Serve with potatoes or fresh vegetable salads.

Cooking octopus with vegetables

Products:

• garlic;
• shallots - 2-3 pieces;
• octopus - 2 medium carcasses;
• celery;
• thyme;
• lettuce;
• carrot;
• olive oil;
• red wine - 270 ml;
• pepper, salt.

At the first stage, you need to remove the beak and eyes from the carcass of the octopus, then rinse with cold water. Now the carcasses should be beaten off a little. Then coarsely chop the carrots, celery, garlic, shallots and chop the thyme. Vegetables should be mixed and fried, then add pepper, salt. After that, put the carcasses of the octopus to the vegetables and add a glass of wine. Now cover and simmer for 19 minutes.

While the octopus is stewing, you need to do the side dish. To do this, carefully cut off the core and cut the core in half. Then put them on a preheated pan, while adding garlic. After that, place the finished octopus on a plate, and next to it is the fried lettuce. Top with oil and garlic.

How to cook octopus with pasta

This recipe calls for five servings. Compound:

• pasta - 0.6 kg;
• octopus - about 1 kg;
• bulb;
• tomatoes - 3-4 pieces;
• wine - 160 g;
• vegetable oil - 1 cup;
• pepper, salt.

First, rinse the octopus well, then cut it into small pieces. Now pour vegetable oil into a tall baking sheet and put the octopus there. Place everything in the oven for 14 minutes. Then add finely chopped onion. After 12 minutes, pour in the wine. When the liquid evaporates, add four cups of water. When the water boils, you need to add pasta, pepper, salt and simmer the dish for 14 minutes, stirring constantly. Then add finely chopped tomatoes and simmer a little more until tender. The total cooking process lasts no more than an hour. Now you know how to cook delicious octopus with pasta. The dish is served hot. Bon appetit!

Octopus is, of course, a delicacy. Its exotic taste cannot be compared with anything else. Small octopuses are not babies, but adults of this type of octopus like Aegina. They are no different from regular octopuses, but you can use their small size in special recipes. So, let's find out how to cook baby octopuses.

Marinated octopus skewers recipe

In order to cook small octopuses, we need:

• peeled octopuses (500 g);
• olive oil (1/4 cup);
• lemon (1 pc.);
• salt (2 teaspoons);
• black pepper (1 teaspoon);
• freshly chopped oregano (2 teaspoons);
• ground cloves (1/2 teaspoon);
• garlic (3 cloves);
• barbecue sticks.

1. If small octopuses are frozen, then to cook, you need to defrost them at room temperature.
2. Then we prepare marinade for small octopuses. Pour the olive oil into a bowl, squeeze the juice from the lemon. Add garlic in the form of mashed potatoes and spices. Put the octopuses into the resulting marinade and mix well.
3. Cover the bowl with a lid or cling film and place in the refrigerator. Marinating time for octopuses is from 12 to 24 hours.
4. After this time, we take out small octopuses and string them on barbecue sticks. The grill must be preheated. On it you need to cook small octopuses, periodically turning the sticks. This will take approximately 3 minutes for each side.

Our little octopus skewers are ready. But there is another option on how to cook small octopuses.

Pasta with small octopuses recipe

To cook small octopuses, take the following:

• octopuses (1 kg);
• tomato sauce (2 cups);
• spaghetti (1 pack);
• fresh mint leaves (12 pcs.);
• red wine vinegar (3 tablespoons);
• garlic (4 cloves);
• red chili pepper flakes (a pinch);
• olive oil;
• salt and pepper.

How to cook baby octopuses?

1. To make this baby octopus recipe, boil the spaghetti in salted water for about 8 minutes. Then drain them and put them back in the pot. Cover with a lid and set aside.
2. We place the small octopuses in another pan and add red wine vinegar there. Pour in enough water to cover the octopuses. We put the pan with the octopuses on a strong fire and cook them until they change color. As soon as this happens, remove them from the heat and drain the water.
3. Garlic, to cook octopus, cut into long thin strips. Take a large deep frying pan and fry the garlic in it in hot olive oil. Put the chili flakes in there and pour it with tomato sauce. We heat it for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Next, add small octopuses, spaghetti, mint leaves and mix everything. Cook over high heat for 1 minute and season with salt and pepper at the end.

Octopuses have long ceased to be exclusively a restaurant dish. You can easily buy them in any supermarket and cook at home. But for those who first decided to try this delicacy, the process of its preparation remains a mystery. How to cook an octopus so that it tastes excellent and at the same time retains its nutritional value?

Buying an octopus: what to look for?

The taste of the cooked dish is highly dependent on the quality of the octopus. In order not to make mistakes when choosing, consider the following nuances:

• You can feel the whole taste of the octopus by cooking only a fresh product. But you will have to tinker a lot to butcher a fresh carcass. It is much easier to buy a frozen product, it cooks faster and tastes good too.
• The nutritional value is carried by medium-sized octopuses. Small individuals have a delicate pulp, and too large ones are very hard in taste.
• Whether fresh or frozen, squid should have a pleasant aroma and a maroon-brown color.

How to prepare an octopus for cooking

Before starting cooking, you need to process the product well:

• If the octopus is freshly frozen, you need to defrost it.
• Then rinse the carcass thoroughly under running water to remove the mucus.
• It is very difficult to remove the skin in its raw form, so this procedure is best done after cooking.
• If the octopus is fresh, you will have to butcher it: remove the eyes and cut off the lower fragment of the head to which the tentacles are attached, and also remove the mouth.
• Remove offal, ink from the inside of the head and rinse it well.

How to cook an octopus

If you decide to cook an octopus for the first time, it is better to boil it. But it should be remembered that the heat treatment should be short-term, otherwise, instead of tender meat, you will get a tough and tasteless dish.

How to do it:

• Boil water in a small saucepan.
• Dip the butchered octopus carcass into boiling water.
• Spot 5-6 minutes, and then get the octopus out of the water.
• Carefully remove the skin and the octopus is ready to eat.

• It is necessary to lower the carcass gradually and only into strongly boiling water. This will make the meat softer, and will keep the useful composition of the product.
• Salt should not be added to the water, as this will make the meat taste rubbery. But the use of spices is welcome.
• If you come across a very large specimen, it is better to beat it off a little so that the meat is not tough and fibrous. Freezing will also help in this situation. After the octopus thaws, its meat will also become soft.
• To make the skin easier to remove, after boiling, you need to pour over the octopus with cold water.
• If you have overcooked the octopus and it has become too tough, you can easily correct the situation. To do this, continue to cook the meat for an hour, and it will become soft again. But in this case, the product will lose all the useful substances.

Octopus is a versatile seafood that can be used to make cutlets, bake a meat pie, cook soup, or you can bake it on the grill. There are a lot of cooking options for octopus, and each of them reveals the taste of octopus in a new way.

A few decades ago, the average citizen of our country was practically not given a chance to try exotic seafood if he lived far from the sea or ocean coast. Soft squid meat or tender scallops simply did not reach the store in the proper form. With the development of industry and the advent of freezers, it became possible to purchase any product brought to the store from a distant region or even from another country. One of these products was octopus meat, from which you can cook both a simple appetizer and a multi-component salad and even a main course.

Composition and benefits

The octopus is one of the representatives of the octopus family, living mainly in tropical and subtropical latitudes at a depth of about 100-150 meters. The large head, at the bottom of which is the creature's mouth, ends with eight flexible legs with suction cups. Tender meat, similar to squid meat, has a calorie content of about 80 kcal, 60 g of protein, 10 g of fat and 8 g of carbohydrate per 100 g of product. The chemical composition includes the following elements:

• vitamins (A, E, K, C and group B);
• minerals (sodium, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, iron and others);
• saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids (Omega-6, Omega-3).

Eating octopus, like any other seafood, is useful for thyroid diseases. High levels of sodium, iron and potassium strengthen blood vessels and normalize blood pressure. Calcium, fluorine and phosphorus can restore the health of tooth enamel, hair and nails. People with atherosclerosis are especially shown to eat such meat, since it is rich in omega-3 acid. The high content of amino acids and vitamins strengthens the immune and nervous systems, accelerates metabolic processes in the body and fights sleep disturbance and chronic fatigue. The low calorie content makes this protein suitable for obese people, helping to reduce weight and speed up metabolism.

Contraindications for eating octopus are individual allergies, gastrointestinal diseases and problems with the pancreas. You should not abuse this seafood during pregnancy and lactation, as the porous structure of the tissues of a marine inhabitant is able to accumulate and retain toxins. If you buy a poor quality product, there is a small chance of getting food poisoning, which will have little effect on an adult, but will cause severe harm to a baby.

Product selection and preparation

To cook an exotic product tasty and healthy, you need to choose it correctly and prepare it for heat treatment. Fresh octopus meat has a too short shelf life, you can try it in a good restaurant or during a tourist trip to coastal regions, and it is best to buy frozen goods at home. It can be bought in the fish department of any supermarket, the carcasses will be already butchered.

In some cases, you can separately purchase only the tentacles, which are the most delicious part of it.

When choosing frozen octopus meat, you should pay attention to several features.

• The larger the size of the carcass, the more "rubber" the finished meat will be. In addition, the younger the octopus, the sweeter and more tender it tastes. The juiciest are small octopuses, which do not exceed 10–15 cm in length.
• The fresh product has brown-purple skin and seawater aroma. Of course, frozen seafood rarely has a strong smell, but if the packaging smells of bitterness or something sour, you should postpone the purchase or visit another store.
• The package should not contain too much snow and pieces of ice. Large pieces of ice indicate the wrong technology for freezing the product or its repeated defrosting. This product is not worth buying.
• If the city has a large store specializing in the sale of seafood, then there is a small chance of finding fresh octopus in it. In this case, it is necessary to pay special attention to the appearance of the carcass. The skin should be smooth and shiny, and the eyes should not be covered with a cloudy veil. The octopus has a specific smell, but if it smells “rotten”, then the product is not suitable for human consumption.

Before cooking dishes with octopus at home, it must be properly thawed and cleaned. In order not to spoil the product, it is better to follow the step-by-step instructions.

• To defrost, the carcass is laid out in a deep dish and left in the refrigerator chamber or on the kitchen table until all the ice turns into water. Do not use boiling water or a microwave to defrost, otherwise the meat will lose its elasticity and become excessively porous and loose.
• Rinse off all the mucus from thawed meat under high pressure of water. This is best done with strong circular movements of the fingers. If the animal is young and has a thin skin, then it will be very difficult to remove it and it is better to do it after boiling or frying the meat. If the octopus was large, then it is better to cut off the skin from it at this stage, otherwise it will give the meat bitterness.
• Most often, this is where the meat preparation ends, since frozen carcasses are sold already cut up. If the octopus was purchased as a whole, then it is necessary to cut off its tentacles, cut out the beak and eyes. Remove the insides from the inside of the head, turn it out and rinse well again in cold water. After that, you can start cooking.

Recipes

The easiest way to cook octopus is by boiling. To do this, place it whole or cut into small pieces in boiling salted water for 7-8 minutes. Cool the finished dish and season with any side dish or sauce. It is important to clearly limit the cooking time, otherwise the meat will become tough and unsuitable for chewing. If it was not possible to remove the meat from boiling water in time, it is worth lowering it into boiling water again and cooking for about 40-45 minutes. In this case, the seafood will become soft again, although it will slightly lose its taste.

It is much more difficult to cook a pan-fried or grilled octopus so that it remains juicy and flavorful. Without experience with such a product, this is quite difficult to do, so for the first preparation you need to choose the simplest recipe. To better experience the natural taste of seafood, do not use a large amount of spices or sauce.

Hi all! In this article, as you already understood, we will talk about the arthropod mollusk. I will tell, how to cook octopus. Perhaps, in our northern latitudes, this is a rare guest, but the counters of shops and markets give us an abundance of products, almost like a self-assembled tablecloth. If only there was money. I would like to reveal a little information about this "beast". He, for example, has three hearts, one of which "drives" ink through the body. By the way, painters and artists have a high price for ink for its persistent and rich color (sepia). The carcass contains a large amount of vitamins and minerals - selenium (important for men), phosphorus, potassium and group "B". In Japanese cuisine, it is considered an ordinary product, which is often consumed raw. Watch the video at the end about it! Octopuses and their cooking recipe are simple to disgrace, we will see this now! Let's lay out our provisions for a beautiful photo.

The main task and the first step will be a thorough washing of the octopus to get rid of mucus, dirt and remnants of the "paint". If you bought a frozen type, then you need to completely thaw it.

Pour water into the saucepan and boil for 10 minutes. You can’t digest it strongly, since it still has to languish a little further. We get it from the bowels of the pan.

And cut into small pieces.

Grate the onion. Fill it with vegetable oil. Since the recipe is Greek, it should be 100% virgin olive oil. Well, did you manage to get an octopus? And a small digression, if you want to have the most luxurious hairstyle, then this is a simple and affordable way.

Fry the onion at high temperature until golden brown. Approximately 5 minutes.

Pour red wine, add octopus, spices. Cook on a low temperature for 40 minutes until our liquid turns into a thick sauce. Can be cooked with water.

The dish is ready! It can be served mixed with rice. So to speak, pilaf from a young octopus.

Ingredients.

• 1 large octopus (about 1.5 kg)
• ? tea cup olive oil
• 2 onions
• 2 cups sweet red wine
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tsp salt
• 5 black pepper grains
• 3 grains of fragrant

If you are going to Japan or Korea to eat a live octopus, then do not ask how to cook it, since there is only one recipe - you need to chew it thoroughly. Since suckers can play a cruel joke! There are also deaths. And here is the video itself.