charred grilled octopus two ways

The grilling posibility continues with one of my restaurant must-haves that turned out to be extremely easy to make! One of everyone’s favorite dishes from Bar Isabal is the grilled whole octopus, who knew? It’s not that difficult to DIY at home!

winter version with mashed sweet potato, grilled oyster mushrooms and some arugula

It’s hard to find whole fresh octopus so I opted for the frozen ones that’s already been cleaned. Octopus take a long time to become tender, but the process of incredibly easy. Simply toss in stock and simmer away for an hour with any aromatics of your choice and you get fork tender octopus, ready for the sizzling grill.

I paired my octopus 2 ways – a fleshing summer salad with grapefruit and a winter dish with hearty mashed sweet potato and grilled mushrooms. And after much food photography the summer version became work lunch for the next day.

summer salad with grapefruit, carrots, garden greens and lemon garlic dressing

charred grilled octopus

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 80 mins

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Ingredients

octopus
stock (with with without aromatics – celery, carrots, onions, garlic)
seasoning (salt/pepper)
oil

Instructions

thaw octopus if frozen
boil stock to rolling
drop octopus in and turn down to simmer until fork tender (about 1hr)
let rest for 10 min
oil and heat grill pan
grill until charred all over (about 10 min)