Curious Cook

To Cook an Octopus: Forget the Cork, Add Science

I FIRST tasted octopus at its meaty yet tender best years ago in Athens, and have made sporadic efforts to replicate that experience ever since. My results have been inconsistent, often chewy and fibrous, whether the recipe I followed was Greek, Spanish, Italian or Japanese. The recipes themselves are all over the map with their advice for making octopus tender. Salting is essential to tenderness, or fatal; brief dips in boiling water tenderize, or long slow cooling, or a rubbing with grated daikon, or the addition of a wine cork to the cooking liquid. Last week I stumbled on a Greek food scientist's report that small amounts of vinegar tenderize octopus. A solid lead at last! I decided to revisit octopus and really figure it out.

Curious Cook in the New York Times: Tender octopus

In today's Curious Cook column, I write about what makes octopus tough, and ways to make it tender.

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Katsanidis, E. Impact of physical and chemical pretreatments of texture of octopus (Eledone moschata). Journal of Food Science 2004, 69: S264-67.

Kier, W.M. and M.P. Stella. The arrangement and function of octopus arm musculature and connective tissue. Journal of Morphology 2007, 268:831-43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jmor.10548

Moral, A. et al. Muscle protein solubility of some cephalopods during frozen storage. J. Science of Food and Agriculture 2002, 82: 63-68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.1088

Hurtado, J. et al. Morphological and physical changes during heating of pressurized common octopus muscle up to cooking temperature. Food Sci. Technology International 2001, 7: 329-38.