Smoked and Grilled Octopus w/3 Mushroom Risotto

This week my wife and I had the pleasure of both traveling to the same city for work.  The beautiful city of San Francisco.    This is the city that I work and have a small corporate apartment in so I am really growing to love it.   Since she was traveling with her company we got a hotel room and that was super duper nice.  

While we were there she kept talking about my indoor smoker and how she wanted me to smoke some meat when we got home to good old Park Slope Brooklyn.

I decided to smoke two things this weekend....

Pastrami and Octopus

YUM

So tonight was all about the octopus.   My brisket is sitting it's pastrami brine for tomorrow so on to my eight tentacled friend Mr Octopus!

I found a beautiful looking Octopus at Union Market in Park Slope.  My plan was to make Smoked and Grilled Octopus as a main course to dinner tonight.   I started to stumble around Union Market looking for something to inspire a side dish.   I passed the mushroom section and saw these BEAUTIFUL Chanterelle Mushrooms so I decided to serve it 3 Mushroom Risotto.   I will post that recipe in my next post and just focus this post on how I made my Smoked and Grilled Octopus.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 of a clean and fresh Octopus
• Fresh Tarragon
• Fresh Rosemary
• 1/4 cup Sea Salt
• 10 Whole Black Peppercorns
• A Whole Garlic
• Olive Oil

It starts with washing off the Octopus.  I then created a cold water boil for the Octopus.   I added cold water to a pot that was enough to cover the Octopus.  I added the salt and stirred it in.   I halved the garlic and threw it in the water with the  peppercorns.   I then added the Octopus to the pot as well.     I then threw in some sprigs of Tarragon and Rosemary.   I set the burner to high to get the pot to a boil.   Once it comes to a heavy boil I turned it down to a low boil and left it on for 40 minutes.  

This is the critical step right here.  You need to boil it to make the meat tender but you do NOT want to overcook it or all your hard work will go down the drain.  

Once it was ready I took it out and just chopped off the tentacles as that was the bit of the Octopus I wanted to serve as a dish.    I had prepared my indoor smoker with mesquite chips and got it nice and smokey.   I place the Octopus in the smoker and put it in the over at 225 degrees for 15 minutes to got some smoke flavor on the Octopus.    I heated up my stove top grill to a very high heat.   I removed the Octopus from the smoker and gave it a nice olive oil coating.   I then dropped it on the grill to give it smoke nice final grillage to make the Octopus wonderful.  

I lt the Octopus grill for about 3 mins on each side just to give it nice grill marks and crispy it up a bit.    The final product was amazing.    I served it with 3 Mushroom Risotto and I will tell you all about that wonderfulness in my next post.  

Take a peak of my tasty Smoked and Grilled Octopus

HAPPY COOKING!

YUM YUM OCTOPUS