Takoyaki (たこ焼き) is made up of two words in Japanese, tako or octopus, and yaki which means grilled or fried. It’s sort of a party food, or a drinking food, but you can definitely make a meal of it. It consists of a crepe-like batter, fried in a skillet, with all sorts of delicious ingredients and sauces.

Takoyaki may not be an ideal recipe for me to share, mainly because of the specialized hardware (seen below) that is required to produce them, but it’s so much fun I just can’t resist. As for the ingredients you put inside, the sky is the limit, it does not even have to contain tako, but for this recipe, I just stuck with the basics.

Batter:

1.5 cups of flour

2.5 cups of strong dashi (fish broth made from dashi no moto)

2 eggs

Splash of shoyu

Takoyaki:

Diced octopus

Beni-shoga (pickled ginger, not the sushi kind)

Diced green onion

Vegetable oil

Toppings:

Aonori

Katsuoboshi (shredded fish flakes)

Kewpie (pretty much the best mayo ever)

Takoyaki sauce (could also use tonkatsu or okonomiyaki sauce)

To be honest, I never measure the ingredients when I make takoyaki, I just mix dashi with flour and eggs until I get the consistency that I want. The recipe for the batter above should get you to the consistency of a crepe batter. If not, just add more flour or dashi to balance it out. It’s important to prep all of your takoyaki ingredients before you start, because once you start pouring the batter on the iron, it’s a mad dash to keep them from burning.

Once you have your batter made, and your takoyaki ingredients diced and within arms reach, put your takoyaki pan over the heat and grease each of the spherical holes. Before we start pouring in the batter, I thought I would explain how you can get a round ball out of a ½ sphere shape. I made this little chart to help explain.

1 Pour the batter into each of the holes filling them to the top. While the batter is still liquid, toss in a piece of tako, some beni-shoga, and green onion. Let it cook for a moment and begin to harden up. As the batter begins to stiffen on the edges, take your poker and rotate around the outer edge of the inside of the hole. If your takoyaki is ready, you can pop them up on their side.

2. You now have your takoyaki half sphere on its side. Pour some more batter into each of the holes filling them up again. Don’t worry if some goes outside of the holes, as it cooks, you can push it back into the balls.

3. Your takoyaki batter has begun to stiffen up, so once again run your poker along the inside edges and rotate the ball. This is the time to add just one more little bit of batter and then rotate so the top of the takoyaki is a completely round, and the remaining cavity is on the bottom.

4. You now have a complete ball; spin them around a bit to ensure uniform cooking.

After you are finished, take the balls out of the pan and sprinkle them with Kewpie, takoyaki sauce, katsuoboshi, aonori, and any remaining negi.

March 22nd, 2008 by John (Cho-Tabetai)