Dried octopus is a powerful weapon for adding umami seafood flavours. Simmer with peanuts, pork and hairy cucumber for a substantial and heart-warming soup.

Time: 4/5
Time spent simmering is an ingredient in itself, no way around that.

Effort: 4/5
Not gonna lie, pre-blanching the bones always feels like work. But it does improve the results.

Octopus’s Garden

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• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Step by step pictures

Soup is a love language. That’s especially true for soups that take a lot of time and effort to make, and it seems to hold true across cultures. From tonkotsu broth to Vietnamese pho, it takes the better part of a day to distill a big pot of ingredients into what feels like a warm hug in a bowl.

I’ve made some cozy cold-weather Western recipes like pumpkin and seafood soup, tomato soup with grilled cheese, and leek and potato soup. But home is where the heart is, and Chinese soups are what reminds me the most about mom’s cooking.

In particular, the 5-ingredient soup recipes have grown into something of a series from 5-ingredient bok choy soup, to 5-ingredient Napa cabbage soup, to the rather more ad-hoc roast duck and winter melon soup. But those are all rapid-boil soups in Chinese cooking parlance, (滾湯; gwan tong, literally vigorous boil-soup) in contrast to the long-boiled soups that a Chinese home cooking veteran uses to show love and care (老火湯; low for tong, or old-fire-soup). Those are on a whole other level because of the couple of hours it takes to meld flavours together.

Flavours like dried octopus, which brings strong, punchy umami flavours to the table. Like anchovies, but meatier. And like the other dried seafood that is used in Cantonese cooking like dried scallops or dried shrimp, it’s shelf stable as long as it’s kept dry and in the dark. Don’t worry about getting extra because you can keep the extra in your pantry, ready to add all-natural MSG-like flavours.

Fortunately, my trusty vacuum cooker turns the lengthy simmer into a completely hands-free process. It’s been getting a lot done during the cold season, banging out meal prep masterpieces like Beef Cheek and Guinness stew, and Bak Kut Teh.

Even so, the time it takes to extract maximal flavour from the pork bones and the dried octopus means that this recipe is firmly in the weekend/special occasion end of the spectrum. To make it extra special, I served the soup with a home made version of char siu, or Cantonese barbecued pork.

You don’t need a lot of dried octopus, but definitely don’t skimp out on the pork bones and the peanuts. Both of them add a layer of richness and complexity to flesh out the flavour of the soup, giving depth to the savouriness. The peanuts in particular really give the soup some substance, so if you’re new to Chinese soups that’s definitely something worth experiencing.

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 0

Dramatis Personae

Served 4.

• 40 dried octopus 
• 50g peanuts
• 400g pork bones
• 600g hairy cucumber 
• Salt to taste

Executive summary

1. Rehydrate dried octopus in water in the fridge overnight. Similarly, wash and soak peanuts overnight in the fridge.
2. Begin cooking by pre-blanching the pork bones. Submerge bones in cold water and turn on the heat.
3. Once the pot is at a rolling boil, take the bones out and rinse off the gunk. Give the pot a wash as well.
4. Return pork bones to the cleaned pot. Add hairy cucumber, peanuts, and dried octopus. Also add the octopus water, but not the peanut water.
5. Bring the pot to a boil again, then keep at a simmer for 3-4 hours.
6. Salt to taste right before serving.

Play by Play

Last things first. I used scissors to cut the octupus into smaller pieces, gave them a rinse, then soaked them in some fresh water in the fridge overnight. This rehydrates the octopus, and pulls savoury flavour out of it. The peanuts also get an overnight soak, in order to leach out some of the bitter flavours that can come in the skin.

Here I am the next day. I begin the cooking process by pre-blanching the pork bones. This keeps the broth nice and clear. Just bring the water and the bones to a simmer, then rinse out all the gunk.

In the meantime, I peeled and cut the hairy cucumber. I did a little experiment where half of the hairy cucumber goes in towards the end of the cooking process to keep it tender, but to be honest I like them better when boiled to smithereens – they add to the texture of the soup.

Once the pre-blanching is done and I cleaned the pot, everything goes in and brought to a boil. It’s important to add the octopus water but not the peanut water – the former is flavour, but the latter tends to be bitter and unpleasant.

3 or 4 hours of hands-off cooking in the vacuum cooker with a brief re-boil in the middle is all that’s needed. Now is the time to salt, right before serving. You end up needing less salt overall, and it avoids the problem of the salt concentrating more than you expect due to water evaporation.

Nothing left to do but to serve! Dinner feels more formal and complete when there’s soup to go with it.

The char siu was also a surprisingly close imitation of the real deal – stick around for the recipe next week!

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