- The skin on this is the best part,
especially this area right here.
As that renders and crisps up
it tastes like the best chicken skin you've ever had.
(energetic drum music)
(water gurgling)
Here we have a giant Pacific red octopus,
this is coming from Tillamook Bay.
These octopus are in a super high population
on the Oregon coast and they love to eat crab.
Basically the deal with this octopus
is that it's extremely difficult to cook it properly.
Basically, the way that we handle this octopus
is we freeze it whole and then we thaw it
and then we vacuum seal these
with a big handful of coarse sea salt,
we then freeze the octopus again.
Part of the freezing process causes it to tenderize
the inside of the octopus as well as the skin.
Typically these octopus weigh
anywhere between 20 and 100 pounds.
The largest ones we've seen are about 85 pounds.
They can be 10 to 12 feet long.
Apparently they can be pretty dangerous to encounter.
A guy that we know that lives in Tasmania
said that a sort of a right of passage
was that you would take a really large rock
and jump off the side of the boat
until you sunk all the way to the bottom
of the edge of this reef that they have
and wait for the octopus to grab on to you
and then you let go of the rock and come back up, hopefully.
And that's how you know that you're finally a man. (laughs)
We're gonna blanche this several times repeatedly
in the boiling water and take it out until the octopus
is the exact consistency that we're looking for.
This is done in the pretty ancient Japanese technique
of dunking the octopus in boiling water.
Starts to shrink immediately.
And kinda what we're looking for here
is for the tentacle to curl.
It's a really good forearm workout as well,
so that's the bonus of that.
You know it's like a lot of these things,
there's really not any information about it available,
really just a lot of practice
and trial and error and paying attention
to different details.
We're just trying to highlight the maximum flavor potential
of these ingredients and present them really simply.
We're not really trying to doctor them up
or add anything to it that's gonna take away
from the natural flavor of it.
Theses large octopus are amazing
because they have a really thick, gelatinous layer of skin
around the head and the tentacles.
So that's another reason why we cook it like this,
is to keep the skin intact.
And when you cook an octopus,
whether you're searing it or grilling it or frying it,
all really good techniques for cooking this octopus,
the skin gets crispy on the outside and it caramelizes.
It's almost like a chicken or fish skin,
like extremely crispy.
Pretty incredible.
(light music)
One thing that happens a lot with octopus,
and I think it's the reason why so many people like it,
is because when it's cooked in a copious amount of water
all the octopus water will leach out into the liquid
and a lot of times the octopus
doesn't have a really any flavor at all,
a lot of people liken the flavor to chicken
or you know, just something very easy to eat.
But to me, that's kind of a shame
because you know, you want things to have the flavor
that they already naturally contain
or that they're supposed to
or coax the most flavor out of.
So this cooking method,
we're cooking in such a small amount of water
with a lot of concentrated salt
that there's literally no dilution of flavor
that happens at all with this octopus.
Where as, if we were cooking it in a really large pot
of water or we were braising it with other ingredients,
all that happens when you do that cooking method
is that all the flavor leaves the octopus into the water.
A lot of people who try this octopus for the first time
are kind of blown away about the amount of flavor
that it has.
Yeah, that's one of the main characteristics
is very, very strong octopus flavor in a good way.
All right, so we can really that it's starting to hold
it's shape really well
and then I'm gonna come in here from the side,
skewer goes in without any resistance.
So, we're done.
Now that we have this octopus cooked
and cooled we're just gonna cut it into portions
for the grill.
We leave them in as big of pieces as possible
so that the skin can crisp up.
Really gently, so we don't mess up that skin at all.
We're just gonna remove that one piece on the end,
small chunk.
We just dehydrate any of the octopus scraps
and they make awesome broth.
And then theses are ready for the grill.
(upbeat orchestral music)
- We're gonna cook those over really high heat
until it starts to caramelize
and at that point it will start to release from the grill.
And also, we grill it on these screens like this,
so that we have the ability to look up and peak
and we don't have to agitate it too much and mess with it.
It's more of a slow grill on this guy.
You don't want it to cook too fast
'cause the skin will retract and pull off.
We're trying to almost render it like a duck breast.
Just flipped it onto another tray.
This is our grilled octopus and it's ready for service.
It's just gonna be sliced before plating.
- We're gonna brush this with paste
made from shiitake mushrooms.
These mushrooms have been roasted and then dried
and then we make them into a paste with grape seed oil
and then it gets brushed onto the octopus.
I love octopus.
I have a lot of respect for theses creatures,
but also I think that they play a vital role
in regards to what we eat
because we have to rotate our fisheries
to things that have really high populations.
You know, it's one of those things,
when a fisherman pulls up a crab pot
and there's an octopus in it,
but that it has eaten all their crab.
It's nice to have people there
that would be willing to purchase the octopus
because it does take away so much
from the livelihood of the fisherman.