Galician octopus
Pulpo á feira, octopus Galician style, is the dish of fairs and festivals in north-west Spain, traditionally served on wooden plates and eaten with a toothpick. There are only a few ingredients: octopus, potatoes, sweet and smoked paprika, coarse salt and good olive oil. The whole difficulty is cooking the octopus tender rather than rubbery — what helps is freezing it first, dipping it three times in boiling water before the real cooking, and watching the time.
Your own work in that: 5 min.
- Cooking the octopus 60 min
- Resting 15 min
- Potatoes 20 min
- Serving 5 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneThaw the octopus
Buy frozen octopus (about 1.2 kg) and thaw it slowly in the fridge for about a day — plan it the day before. Freezing breaks down the muscle fibres and is the simplest route to tenderness. Octopus loses nearly half its weight in cooking: about 600–700 g will be left, roughly 160 g per serving.
Ingredients: 1200 g octopus, frozen and thawed · 600 g waxy potatoes · 1 pcs bay leaf · 1 pcs onion · 4000 ml water for cooking
Boil the water
Bring the water to the boil in a large pot (about 6 litres) with the onion and bay leaf. Do not salt the water — the octopus is salty enough and the coarse salt goes on at the end. The potatoes cook in the same water later.
Ingredients: 1200 g octopus, frozen and thawed · 600 g waxy potatoes · 1 pcs bay leaf · 1 pcs onion · 4000 ml water for cooking
Dip three times
Hold the octopus by the head with tongs and dip the tentacles into the boiling water for 5 seconds, lift out, pause, and repeat twice more. The tentacles curl and the skin holds better.
Ingredients: 1200 g octopus, frozen and thawed · 600 g waxy potatoes · 1 pcs bay leaf · 1 pcs onion · 4000 ml water for cooking
Three dips — the tentacles curl neatly.Simmer
Lower the octopus into the pot and simmer gently for 35–45 minutes, depending on size. From 30 minutes, test the thickest part of a tentacle with a fork: it should slide in with almost no resistance — resting in the hot water does the rest. Overcooked octopus sheds its skin and turns mushy.
Ingredients: 1200 g octopus, frozen and thawed · 600 g waxy potatoes · 1 pcs bay leaf · 1 pcs onion · 4000 ml water for cooking
Rest in the water
Take the pot off the heat and leave the octopus in the hot water for 15 minutes — it finishes cooking without drying.
Ingredients: 1200 g octopus, frozen and thawed · 600 g waxy potatoes · 1 pcs bay leaf · 1 pcs onion · 4000 ml water for cooking
Cook the potatoes
Lift the octopus into a bowl and cover it to keep warm. Bring the octopus water back to the boil. Peel the potatoes, cut into 1.5 cm slices and cook them in that water for 12–15 minutes, until tender. The broth gives them flavour and a pinkish colour.
Ingredients: 1200 g octopus, frozen and thawed · 600 g waxy potatoes · 1 pcs bay leaf · 1 pcs onion · 4000 ml water for cooking
Cut the octopus
Cut off the tentacles and snip them into 1 cm rounds with scissors. The head can be sliced into strips or saved for another dish.
Ingredients: 1200 g octopus, frozen and thawed · 600 g waxy potatoes · 1 pcs bay leaf · 1 pcs onion · 4000 ml water for cooking
Scissors work better than a knife here.Assemble and serve
Lay the potatoes on a plate, the octopus on top, dust with both paprikas and coarse salt and pour over plenty of olive oil. Serve lukewarm with bread and young wine.
Ingredients: 1½ tsp sweet paprika · ½ tsp smoked paprika · 1 tsp coarse sea salt · 60 ml extra virgin olive oil
Paprika and oil last, just before serving.
Before you start
Frozen beats fresh
This is the rare case where frozen beats fresh: freezing works like mechanical tenderising. If you have fresh octopus, freeze it for at least two days before cooking — a home freezer works more slowly than an industrial one.
The cork question
In Galicia some cooks drop a wine cork into the pot. There is no evidence it changes anything — tenderness comes from freezing and careful timing, not from cork.
Storage
Cooked octopus keeps 2 days in the fridge in a closed container, moistened with olive oil. It can also be frozen once cooked and sliced, for 2 months.
