More about Takoyaki

Filled with umami: Takoyaki
Round and filled with a lot of tasty ingredients, topped with more deliciousness. Takoyaki is a staple of Osaka's food culture. You can see this street food all over town, freshly made in front of you. Often filled with octopus and topped with special takoyaki sauce. Beware: because of the gooey texture of takoyaki, you might burn your mouth when eating it fresh from the grill! Or, take it as part of the takoyaki experience...

-> for vegetarian options, scroll further!

The origin of Takoyaki
The first takoyaki was made is Osaka around 1935. A street vendor named Tomekichi Endo already sold choboyaki (similar to takoyaki, but with a flat shape) but wanted to experiment with other types of shapes. Eventually he came up with the ball-shaped takoyaki. 

The shaping technique
In this video, you can see how to create the round shape of the takoyaki balls (from 1:50 on):

Feel free to watch the whole video, since it is quite educational :). 

Vegetarian options
Traditional takoyaki contains quite some non-vegetarian ingredients.
However, you can easily replace with vegetarian options:

• You could replace the dashi broth for broth based on seaweed (kombu broth) or shiitake (mushrooms). The only thing you have to do is take the same amount of water and soak the kombu or shiitake in it for at least 2 hours.
  
  
• The octopus or bacon could be replaced with vegetarian bacon. Or omit this ingredient and use more scallion, benishoga and tenkasu for the filling.
  
  
• The katsuobushi flakes can be replaced with dulse (a type of seaweed, red colored). This add a fish-like /sea-like flavour.
  You can either sprinkle the dulse as is (dry), or soak them first in warm water for a softer texture. You could also omit this ingredient and add more sauce and aonori (seaweed flakes).