Learning to Make Takoyaki

I didn’t have much experience making Japanese food, so learning even one thing was scary for me. Takoyaki is Japanese street food typically served as a snack. Made with a pancake-like batter from a special type of flour, it is heated with oil in molded circular pans, typically with diced octopus, spring onions, ginger and tempura scraps.

Creating the batter itself is easy so long as you have the right flour, just mixing that along with the eggs and water. The hard part is cooking it in the pans. First there’s half-filling the ball moulds after they’ve been oiled, then sprinkling the filling of your choice in the middle. It could be the octopus like above or it could be mince, bacon, corn, or kimchi if you want something more plant-based (though you’d need to substitute the eggs). After that you pour more batter on until the moulds are overflowing (though not the pan itself). From here, it’s between you and the skewers to turn them as they heat through and crisp up.

I’ve found it can be more than a little fiddly. It can be difficult getting them to turn sometimes, especially if you haven’t oiled your pan enough. Making sure you’ve got enough oil to stop them from sticking along with only adding the batter once the pan is hot enough.

Takoyaki was created in 1935 by street vendor Tomekichi Endo, and while it is mainly a dish for seafood fans there’s more than enough to play around with to add your own twists to it!