Grilled Octopus with White Bean Puree

Super easy and impressive restaurant worthy seafood appetizer to impress your guests!

It’s holiday season finally YAY! For this past Christmas dinner my hubby requested to have his favorite dish of grilled octopus. Looks complicated right? But don’t fret it’s actually very easy to make and can be done in under 30 minutes. A win win in my books if you want to serve a beautiful restaurant worthy dish without all the fuss in making it. The smokiness of the char from the grill coupled with the rich and creamy white bean puree is so delicious. To kick it up a notch, I drizzled mine with an aromatic paprika oil and grilled shishito peppers as a garnish.

Okay let me show you how it’s done! First step, and this is a BIG time saver, is to get yourself a nice preboiled piece of octopus. This cuts out a lot of time and effort because with raw octopus you gotta pound that sucker then boil for hours to get that tender texture and avoid serving your guests a rubbery shoe of a meal! I found my preboiled octopus at our local Korean grocery store (Hmart) nicely packaged and ready to serve.

Whenever we enjoy grilled octopus in restaurants they always served it on a bed of pureed potatoes or parsnip or beans to act as a nice thick creamy sauce to compliment the protein in the dish. As another quick tip for this recipe, I went with a white bean puree that’s again also super quick to make and really delicious. All you need is a can of white beans drained, briefly warm the beans in a pot and add in fresh garlic with a drizzle of good olive oil. Then puree with a hand held blender and voila….bean puree done! I love the rich garlicky flavor of this puree, so good!

I happened to have shishito peppers in the fridge so I included that as a nice garnish to the dish. Feel free to add any other grilled veggie like eggplant or red peppers or serving it just on it’s own is great as well. Last but not least, drizzle the dish with paprika infused oil to bring out more of the earthy notes of the octopus and garnish with fresh chives to round out the dish.

Try this recipe and let me know in the comments below!

Grilled Octopus with White Bean Puree

Prep time: 10 min     
Cook time: 15 h   
Total time: 25 min   
Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 lb of preboiled octopus
4 shishito peppers
2 cloves garlic chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp chopped chives

Bean Puree

1 can white beans
2 garlic cloves
2 tsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil

Paprika Oil

3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp smoked paprika

Instructions

Cut the octopus into individual tentacle pieces and place into a large bowl along with the shishito peppers. Add the garlic, oregano, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper and marinade for 10 min at room temperature.
Meanwhile make the white bean puree by rinsing the canned white beans and placing them into a small pot on medium heat. Add in 2 cloves of garlic crushed, olive oil, salt, and pepper and cook for 5 min until heated through.
Using a hand held blender, puree the beans into a fine paste and set aside.
Heat the grill to high heat and cook the octopus tentacles and shishito peppers until slightly charred and caramelized for about 10 min. Turn occasionally to achieve an even cook.
Make the paprika oil by mixing olive oil, sweet paprika, and smoked paprika.
To assemble the dish, spoon the white bean puree on a plate and place the grilled octopus and shishito peppers on top. Garnish with a drizzle of the paprika oil and chopped chives. Serve hot and enjoy!

Note: If the preboiled octopus is tough, boil it in water for 20-30 min until fork tender. Cool to room temperature and then marinade.