One of my favorite dishes, takoyaki has emerged as of late as a very popular “street food” in Japan. Takoyaki (literally “fried octopus”) takes the form of small balls of batter that are filled with chunks of octopus meat.

First made popular by a vendor in Osaka in the 1930s, takoyaki is prepared using a special “takoyaki pan”. These heavy cast iron pans come in different varieties, but all versions share the same characteristics. Made for stove top cooking or combined with an electric heater, these pans are made thick to evenly distribute heat. This distribution helps to cook the takoyaki evenly. Your average takoyaki pan will have roughly 16 deep rounded wells to be filled with batter and the remaining ingredients.

Takoyaki Pan

Making takoyaki at home is not all the difficult in concept, but the execution will take some time to master. While you can customize your takoyaki with the types of fillings you enjoy, the most basic form will include octopus chunks and green onions. Because of the wide combination of flavors that ultimately go into your takoyaki dish there is no real need to seek out “sashimi grade” octopus. Almost any cut you can find from your local grocery store will work.

Boiled Octopus (tako)

There are a few basic recipes out there for takoyaki. Using the base batter you can substitute the octopus for a great variety of items. On top of that you can garnish your takoyaki dishes with an assortment of items. The most popular being takoyaki sauce, Japanese mayonnaise, and shaved bonito flakes (as pictured above). I’ll share with you a basic recipe for making takoyaki at home in a follow up post shortly.

Of course if you’d rather skip all the prep you can head down to Shirokiya and grab a box of freshly made takoyaki on the second level!