Recipe - Spaghetti with Octopus

Ingredients for 4 people:
1 octopus (ca. 1000 g)
6 shallots
3 cloves garlic
200 ml white wine
2 sprigs thyme
3 stalks parsley
1 lime
6 olives
1 tbsp capers
1 jalapeno pepper
400 g canned tomatoes
500 g spaghetti
sea salt

Preparation:

spaghetti with octopus

Cut the head out of the octopus, removing its mouth. Only the arms should remain.

cut head out

Halve 4 of the shallots and the garlic cloves and sauté in a pot with olive oil. Add the octopus and brown, flavouring generously with sea salt.

saute garlic and shallots

Add pepper corns, thyme sprigs, parsley, and jalapeno pepper. Halve the lime and squeeze out the juice. Add juice and squeezed out lime to the pot.

cook octopus

Deglaze with white wine and season the stock with salt. The stock must be very salty, so that the octopus can absorb some of the salt. Cover and simmer octopus for ca. 2 hours until it is tender. To test, hold on to one arm. If the remaining arms hang down loosely the octopus is done. For us the cooking time was a good 2 hours.

cooked octopus arms

Take the octopus out of the cooking liquid and let cool on a plate. Cut arms from the body of the octopus. Strip off skin and suction cups until only the muscle bands remain.

clean octopus

cut octopus arms

Cut arms into small pieces and fry in olive oil until slightly crisp. Drain off oil on paper towel.

roasted octopus arms

Finely dice the remaining two shallots and sauté in the same pan until translucent. Add tomatoes. Pit and dice olives. Add olives and capers to sauce and simmer until the desired consistency is reached.

Cook spaghetti al dente in a generous amount of salted water.

Shortly before spaghetti are done, warm octopus in sauce and add some chopped parsley. Finally season to taste with salt, pepper, and chilli pepper.

Drain spaghetti and add to sauce. Mix well and serve spaghetti and octopus on plates. Serve with freshly ground parmesan.

spaghetti with octopus is ready

Tip: The long cooking time makes the octopus nice and tender. It is very important to add enough herbs, aromatic ingredients, and salt to the cooking liquid so that these can be absorbed by the octopus meat. Since the octopus emits its bitter substances during the cooking process, the cooking liquid needs to be discarded.

Recipes: calamari • octopus • spaghetti