Panless Minion Method/Tako Marinade

[Jim Langford]

Beautiful day at here at the seaside this weekend: sunny with temps in the high 60's. Cooked some spares and a butt, with great results. I tried Method #3, the panless Minion method, for the first time. I decided to leave the water pan in, but didn't add any water to it. It was a little more difficult to stabilize the temperatures than it is using water, but once I did things worked out fine. There is still a lot of unburned lump in the bottom of the pan that I'll be able to use next time. This method is definitely the most efficient I've tried with regard to charcoal consumption.

I've seen some octopus in the market lately and think it's about time I tried my hand at Geoff Hamamoto and Kevin Kawahara's method of preparing it that appears in the Let's Cook! section. I love boiled octopus, but I've never tried it smoked. Their marinade sounds awesome, but there are no measurements given. If they or anyone else that's tried this could help me out on this I'd be grateful.

Mr S.

 

[Kevin K]

Hey Squeak,

The marinade was definitely one of those things I did to taste. MattD (another Hawaii guy) through out the ingredients to use, and since I already make a lot of teriyaki marinades, I didn't have a problem mixing and balancing by feel.

Matt posted what he though were good starting amounts in an older thread you can read here.

The key is definitely the prep to remove the slime and tenderize, and also making sure you watch the salt content in both the marinade, and what gets massaged into the tako when you prep it.

Good luck, let us know how it goes!

k

 

[Jim Langford]

Thanks, Kevin. There's a lot of good info. in that thread. We're going to a wedding this weekend, so I'll have to put off the cook till the following week, but that'll give me time to get together some of the ingredients I'll need for the marinade. I've got most of them already as I do quite a bit of Chinese cooking and some Japanese. I told my wife to look in the market today to see if there are any takos available at a decent price. I usually freeze them in order to make them more tender. I might smoke some cuttlefish while I'm at it since they're always cheap. I'm going to have to substitute a couple of the ingredients because they aren't available over here. I'll let you know how everything turns out. It's always good to hear from you Hawaiians. Your cuisine sounds delicious, influenced as it is by so many different cultures.

Aloha,

Mr S.