Tako Yaki -BBQ Octopus balls
Tako Yaki has nothing to do with the Mexican Taco that most of the world knows. That is unless you include the mess that it makes of your shirt front when you try to eat it on the run.
Tako Yaki is BBQ octopus balls. Now some would claim that octopus balls aren’t big enough to BBQ but these ones are.
They are made of a mix of Boiled Octopus chunks, batter, shaved dried bonito, Nori lava, and usually some pickled ginger, dried shrimps and sauce.
The basic batter and octopus chunks are poured into semi spherical moulds over gas and as the underside is cooked they are gradually rolled and tucked and rolled and tucked until they form a full sphere and are cooked all over.
The art is in this rolling and tucking. The experienced cooks use little metal skewer type things that look like they would be better used as sail-makers needles. They usually work a whole mass of these balls at once, by starting off with a gooey mess of batter and gradually defining them into individual piles and eventually into a set of octopus balls.
They come out light and slightly crisp on the outside, and they taste great. The flavour is often swamped by a mountain of sauce and condiments but the chewy chunks of octopus still shine through.
Modern franchise Tako Yaki style shops are starting to show up in food halls and places like this. So that they don’t have to rely on finding expert ball rollers, they have developed machines that look (from a distance) like conventional moulds, but really have a mechanism in their base which does all of the rolling automatically. I personally think this is cheating, but they still taste OK.
Tako Yaki is perfectly complemented by a beer some live entertainment, or maybe just some Cherry blossom watching as the season progresses. Thank you Mr Octopus.
Tags: Fast Food, Japanese, Seafood Dishes : Asian, Street FoodRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Fast Food, Japanese, Seafood Dishes : Asian, Street Food
3 opinions for Tako Yaki -BBQ Octopus balls
Gabrielle
Sep 28, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Frankly, those sound awesome. Any idea of any place in the states (East coast, preferably) that serve these?
Tom
Nov 4, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Sorry but no body around here seems to know of anywhere to get them in the States. But maybe a reader might?
Tom
keiko
Feb 12, 2008 at 8:57 am
these balls are the best ever Ü… i love the rich taste of the sauce, esp if its shrimp sauce yummmmy… i tasted authentic one’s when an old japanese chef sold some in our school fair… i haven’t found any thing authentic after that, the rest are commercialized :(
recommendation: go to an authentic japanese resto..
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