Octopus Empanada recipe
Last Updated on
Total: 1 h 40 min Diners: 4
The empanada is one of the classics of the Spanish recipe book. Although we have already taught you how to make from the easy tuna empanada with tomato to a Galician empanada with mussels, and we have given you all the options in the world with these 13 recipes for empanadas and empanadillas, here we want to show you how is the recipe for octopus empanada made by a Galician. The real thing.
I dreamed of this octopus empanada since my friend Efren – a native of Lugo, cook and reductions – prepared it at a dinner at his house, back in the year 1 BC (before the Covid). To tell you the truth, I was dazzled by the dough in equal parts with that portentous sofrito that contained long hours of reduction and a good amount of octopus so I had very pending to elaborate it by myself, patent it and take the authorship. Jokes aside, this recipe he told me that he elaborated it with the tricks of Gorka from A Pulpería de Melide (La Coruña) for the dough and that for the filling he allowed himself some not so Galician licenses such as chipotle or basil.
The ideal and easiest way is to prepare this empanada with leftovers of any octopus that you have cooked (a la mugardesa, a la gallega….) or buy directly the octopus legs already cooked, and here I want to make two revealing recommendations that have changed my life a lot: the octopus of A Pulpeira do Carballiño and Bacalaos Ajo Negro. They arrive packaged and already cooked, only the legs, just to give them a touch of microwave or bain-marie and be consumed. And they are very good. At home we like to have them as an easy option for any quick and quality dinner.
How to make octopus empanada
empanada-pulpo-vertical
Ingredients
For the dough
. Wheat flour, 240 g Semi-dairy milk, 100 g Oil from the sofrito, 100 g Salt, 7 g Sweet paprika, 3 g Eggs from happy hens, 1 pc (for painting)
For the filling
. Onion, 250 g Green bell pepper, 100 g Red bell pepper, 100 g Garlic cloves, 2 pcs White wine, 80 ml Fried tomato with onion, 150 g Sweet paprika, 1/2 tsp Chipotle sauce, 1 tsp Sweet and sour gherkins, 50 g (or pitted green olives) Bay leaf, 1 leaf Basil, 2 leaves Cooked octopus, 250 g Salt, c/s Extra virgin olive oil, 200 ml
Step 1
In a saucepan or pot put the olive oil with the garlic, onion, green bell pepper and red bell pepper and a little salt and sauté very patiently over low heat until confit and golden brown. It is necessary to think that it has to take oil of leftover to use it later in the mass. When the sofrito is very tender, drain and reserve the oil and let it cool down.
Step 2
Add the white wine and reduce over high heat until it is dry. Then add the fried tomato (you can use crushed tomato but it will take longer) and reduce also dry, over low heat, with a slight chup, chup.
Step 3
Add at this point the chipotle and sweet paprika, if you don’t have chipotle you can add some choricero bell pepper paste or some slightly spicy sauce.
Step 4
Add the octopus juice, the juice that comes in the bag of cooked octopus, the bay leaf and the finely chopped gherkins and reduce over very low heat, stirring constantly until it is almost a jam.
Step 5
Chop the octopus into small pieces, reserving some crosswise slices for later assembling the empanada. Add those of octopus cut into pieces and stew in the sofrito of our octopus empanada for about 5-6 minutes. Then remove the bay leaf, add fresh basil chopped by hand and season with salt. Let it cool completely before using it in the dough.
Step 6
For the empanada dough, just gather all the ingredients in a bowl (better if you have a mixer) and mix them thoroughly, kneading until everything is integrated. It is not necessary to knead in excess, the gluten does not have to develop, only until the dough is homogeneous. Let it rest for 15 minutes.
Step 7
With the help of kitchen paper (to remove the dough later) and a rolling pin, divide the dough into two halves, one larger (the base) than the other and stretch the two until they are very thin but do not break. Preheat the oven to 180ºC with heat up and down.
Step 8
On the base of the empanada place the sofrito so that it is about 1 centimeter thick. On top of it place the thin slices of octopus that we had already cut.
Step 9
Place the other dough on top and carefully close the sides so that none of the oil from the sofrito comes out. Carefully make an indentation in the center to have a “chimney” for the steam to escape from inside.
Step 10
Paint the octopus empanada with beaten egg and bake for 20 minutes. After that time raise the temperature to 210ºC and bake 10 minutes more until golden brown.
