Takoyaki (Osaka-Style Octopus Balls)
Cuisine: Japanese
Region: 大阪府
Servings: 4人分（約80個）
Takoyaki (Osaka-Style Octopus Balls) is a home-style staple dish. Ingredients and step-by-step instructions are below, with notes for home cooking.
Ingredients
- [Batter] 300 g cake flour
- [Batter] 1 L dashi (cooled)
- [Batter] 3 eggs
- [Batter] 1 tsp light soy sauce
- [Batter] 1/2 tsp salt
- 200 g boiled octopus
- 60 g tenkasu (tempura crumbs)
- 1/2 cup green onions (thinly sliced)
- 3 tbsp red pickled ginger (minced)
- Vegetable oil, as needed
- Takoyaki sauce (or okonomiyaki sauce), as needed
- Mayonnaise, to taste
- Aonori (green laver flakes), as needed
- Katsuobushi (fine bonito powder), as needed
Steps
- [Batter] Beat the eggs in a bowl, add the dashi, light soy sauce and salt, and mix. Sift in the flour and whisk until there are no lumps. The batter should be very thin. Transfer it to a jug with a spout so it pours easily.
- Cut the octopus into 1.5 cm cubes. Pieces that are too large are hard to enclose in batter.
- Heat the takoyaki pan thoroughly over medium heat and brush the wells and the whole plate generously with oil. Let it get hot enough that the oil gives off a faint wisp of smoke.
- Pour in the batter in one go, until it overflows the rims of the wells. Immediately drop one piece of octopus into each well and scatter the tenkasu, green onions and pickled ginger over everything.
- After 2–3 minutes, when the batter at the rims begins to set, run a bamboo skewer around each well to cut the batter apart, then turn each ball 90 degrees at a time, tucking the overflowing batter inside.
- Once every ball has gone all the way round, keep rolling them for another 3–4 minutes. They are done when the surface is crisp and golden and they feel light when lifted.
- Transfer to a boat-shaped tray, brush with sauce, add mayonnaise if you like, and sprinkle with aonori and katsuobushi. The inside is extremely hot, so take care.
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Notes
A very thin batter is the Osaka way: it gives a crisp outside and a soft, almost molten centre.
Don't skimp on the oil. With too little, the balls stick, won't turn and lose their shape.
Instead of sauce, try dipping them in dashi, or seasoning with just salt and lemon or soy sauce — both are popular ways to eat them.
Cooked takoyaki freeze well. Microwave them from frozen, then roll them in a frying pan at the end to bring back the crisp surface.
Origin and history
Takoyaki — a thin batter of dashi and egg poured into a griddle lined with round hollows, filled with chunks of octopus and cooked into spheres — is soul food for the people of Osaka.
Its prototype is said to be chobo-yaki, popular with children at cheap sweet shops and festival stalls from the end of the Meiji era into the Taisho era. It was filled with konjac, dried shrimp, pickled daikon and the like, and cooked in a soy-flavoured batter. When radio broadcasting began in the late Taisho era, a street food called radio-yaki appeared, cashing in on the novelty.
Takoyaki is said to have begun in the early Showa era, when a stall in Osaka city started using octopus as the filling for radio-yaki. At first it was eaten plain, but after the war, when thick, rich sauces appeared, today's style took hold: sauce with aonori and bonito flakes, served on a boat-shaped tray with toothpicks.