One of the tastiest foods in the sea: octopus. This mollusk with tentacles offers endless possibilities in the kitchen, but sometimes we have doubts when preparing it. You’re wondering how you should boil octopus, right? If you must treat it when you buy it fresh, if it is better to buy it frozen, if you can put it in the freezer once cooked. Fear not, in this article we answer those questions and explain in more detail how to cook octopus.
Ingredients:
- Octopus.
- Water.
You will need to:
- Large casserole.
Steps to follow to make this recipe:
- First of all, we want to explain a great trick that will help you a lot when cooking the octopus and will facilitate your work, it is therefore about freezing the fresh octopus or buying it directly frozen. In this way, the fibers of your meat will be broken and we will ensure that it is not hard after boiling it. If you buy fresh octopus, you will need to know how to clean the octopus to keep it clean.
- Freezing it two days before preparing it will be enough and, one day before boiling it, you will have to remove it so that it defrosts completely. To do this, put it in a large container to collect all the water that the octopus will release and leave it in the fridge.
- In case you no longer have time to freeze the octopus before cooking it or you do not want to do so, you will have to mash the octopus, that is, hit it to get its fibrous tissue to break.
- Before cooking the octopus, it will be important that you wash it well with cold water to remove any type of dirt or impurity and, if it is not, gut it. To remove all the viscera, you must turn it over and completely empty the head.
- Put a large pot of water on the fire without adding salt and, once it boils, we take the octopus by the head and “scare it”: we will put it in and take it out of the pan 3 times to make the octopus stay stiff and not the skin falls off during cooking.
- Once the octopus is scared, we will let it cook in the water, with the lid of the casserole on. It should be noted that the cooking time of the octopus will depend on its size, as well as other factors such as the type of water, the type of pot… so it will be necessary to pierce the octopus to see if it is still hard.
- To get an idea, a 1 kilo octopus can be cooked in about 25-30 minutes and the time will increase as the weight of the cephalopod increases, although it does not have to be proportional.
- It is good to know that you can also freeze the octopus once cooked and keep it in optimal conditions to prepare it quickly later.
- Once we have the octopus cooked, we can prepare it in the way that the recipe we are going to make requires. One of the most famous in Spanish cuisine is making Galician octopus, a delicious recipe that you will surely love.
