Cooking Takoyaki In Osaka

Takoyaki is a Japanese snack. It is ball-shaped, and cooked in a special takoyaki pan. It was invented in Osaka in 1935. Tako means octopus, and yaku means to fry, to grill. It is made of batter, diced octopus, pickled ginger, green onion. And it is served with takoyaki sauce and dried bonito, katsuobushi. There are several recipes.

These are some photos taken in a restaurant in Osaka, where customers can cook their own takoyaki and then eat it.

You can see above the "real" thing - a photo taken in Tohoku.

And below, the takoyaki pan looks like this:

Just pour the batter into the molds, then add the pieces of octopus and the other ingredients:

And make it into balls with the chopsticks. Even my friend was cooking takoyaki for the first time. :-)

This is my result - hopefully round enough for a first try.

Anyway, the idea of cooking your own meal in a restaurant is so interesting. There is a wide variety of hands-in experiences in Japan.