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grilled octopus

ElJefe avatar
Recipe by
Greg Appel
@ElJefe
Sunderland, MD

If you have not tried grilled octopus, PLEASE TREAT YOURSELF. It may not be a easy as a trip to the grocery store, but with little effort Octopus can easily be found and basic grilling skills are king here. I losely followed a online recipe, just thought it needed more. I have found frozen octopus is already cleaned. Yes I used to wine cork, but mainly because the wine I chose, came with a natural cork. Admittedly it turned out very tender but wether that was due to the cork?......... Try too set aside a small amount of meat for a salad

yield 4 -5 as a meal 8-10 as an apptitizer
prep time 1 Hr
cook time 15 Min
method Grill

Ingredients For grilled octopus

  • 2-3 lb
    octopus - frozen
  • 6 clove
    garlic
  • Small hand
    black peppercorns, whole
  • 1/2 bottle
    pinot grigio
  • 1
    natural wine cork if using
  • water to cover
  • 2
    lemons - divided
  • 1 c
    good quality extra virgin olive oil, divided
  • italian bread, your favorite
  • olive oil seasoning

How To Make grilled octopus

  • 1
    Remove octopus from package, and place in a large bowl of cold water. You can either change the water in the bowl periodically or allow fresh cold water to lightly run from the faucet into the bowl. Until mostly thawed, about an hour.
  • 2
    Put first six ingredients in a large pot, suitable to the size of octopus being used. Add one of the lemons, halved. Bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer for one hour.
  • 3
    Remove from liquid a allow to cool to room temp. before grilling or putt in fridge for use the next day.
  • 4
    Fire up the grill, set up for med-hi direct heat cooking. Lightly rub octopus all over with olive oil
  • 5
    Personal note: while preparing the octopus for the grill, I remember thinking I should have run wooden skewers in the tenticals prior to the boil, thinking this would help with more even heating on the grill. I believe next time though, I will cut the tenticals from the body and grill individually. Being curled they won't easily fall thru the grate. And Ithink that the meat that is the head would be better removed from the body and butterflied, allowing both sides of the meat to be kissed by the flames. It was the stips of meat I cut from the head that those people who said "they would never" ended up trying. Mainly because it did not have those disgusting suction cup things.
  • 6
    When your grill is ready lightly cook octopus. If refrigerated, sit out at least a half hour prior to grill. It is already fully cooked, all we are doing at this point is warming and charring the edges a bit, 3-4 minutes a side. adding to both the depth of flavor and texture
  • 7
    Place octopus on plater, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.Slice and serve with bread and lemon wedges.Cut smaller tenticals on the bias for larger pieces. A couple bites into the meal I thought, wouldn't some of the seasoned olive oil from Carrabba's be good right now. A quick search in the pantry and I found a jar of olive oil seasonings a friend had given me. It contain four different blends in one jar. Rosemary & Garlic Roasted Garlic & Cheese Sundried Tomato & Basil Garlic & Tomato I put toghether four small plates of blended oils and passed out chop sticks, and it was at this point that the meal seemed to come together, suddenly interesting and fun. The joke of the night was Italian Sushi.
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