So we have the whole Squidward. The head’s kind of fallen off a little bit. Just kind of do that. Good stuff. So I think it’s time that we get really real right now and break down some barriers. And I’m honestly- I’m a little embarrassed by this. I’m honestly a little shook, but it came to my attention that we recently made a TikTok that some people deemed offensive. And I try and be a good person. You know, I think that I’ve shown you that over the last couple years, but we should just roll the clip. Five characters from “SpongeBob” I would like to eat and how I would cook them. A large, curmudgeonly squid. I would remove his tentacles, massage them with salt, and stir fry Korean style with plenty of gochujang and scallions. I said embarrassingly, stupidly, and I can’t stress this enough how sorry I am that Squidward was a squid. And I don’t know how I could’ve possibly thought that squid, Squidward. It doesn’t even make any sense, but Squidward is an octopus. And so to apologize to you, all the fans of Mythical Kitchen that I’ve let down, all of the entire greater SpongeBob community out there, we are cooking an anatomically correct Squidward. Thank you, V. This is Vena White. We’re cooking an anatomically correct Squidward. This is a real life octopus that we’ve dressed in a baby shirt with a little mini clarinet. And I hope you can accept my most sincere apologies. Can someone do a Squidward impression and I’ll make it talk? More like another day, another nickel. And so if this doesn’t make it up to you and say that I am truly, sincerely, sorry, I don’t know what will. We’ve broken- God. We’ve broke- ugh, Jesus. We broke the recipe down to three easy steps. You can snag the time codes right there. Woo! We have a full written recipe down in the description. Let’s get cooking, please. I’d like to come humbled before you with my hands out asking for forgiveness because as many of you mentioned that anatomically correct Squidward would not, in fact, be playing the clarinet from here, but rather from his beak, which is underneath the legs. So if we’re just gonna kind of shove that there. And then here we have, anatomically, a correct Squidward. I hope you can accept my sincerest apology. Also, we’re cooking in Bikini Bottom! That’s cool! Now, I’ve never seen an episode of “SpongeBob Squarepants” per se or at all, but from what I understand, they live in a small town called Bikini Bottom. And there’s many creatures that live in harmony. Except SpongeBob has imprisoned a snail and turned him into a sort of slave. It’s a non-vocal snail, which doesn’t make sense because there’s a plankton that is highly intelligent. So it’s not like a, you know, larger life form, you know? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s like how Goofy kept Pluto on a leash, but they’re both dogs. That’s messed up. Anywho, what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna undress our Squidward. We’re just, oh God, we really put the arms in there, huh? Hold on. This is embarrassing. Oh, nope. That’s the wrong way. There. Ooh, God. That’s gross. Why did we do this? What an elaborate bit for- okay. Try telling you what the hell we’re cooking. We are making, as I said in the TikTok that I would do if it were squid, but with octopus. It is a very similar dish. Korean stir-fried octopus called nakji-bokkeum. It’s something that I have eaten a lot. It’s one of my favorite drinking foods. There’s a spot in LA called Ham Ji Park that makes like a a really delicious version of it. So it’s- oh, God, that’s exactly what we’re doing right now. We’re gonna get that octopus prepped and cleaned up. But first we’re gonna braise the octopus, and then we’re gonna chill it down. And then we are going to stir fry. We’re gonna stir fry a bunch of baby octopus, too. ‘Cause that’s typically how I’ve had the dish, and that’s how I really love it. And then we’re gonna do a sort of whole braised and roasted octopus on top of that. So we gotta get our aromatics into the water right here. Pretty simple going on this. You’re just trying to impart some of those flavors and aromas into your octopus braising liquid. I got a really big octopus cooking phase after I watched “My Octopus Teacher” ’cause I was like, “Mm, I don’t think I like that guy. I wanna spite him and eat all the octopus.” Just saying he was definitely doing weird stuff with that. That octopus was like… There was some weird shots in that is all I’m saying. There was a shot- like the octopus crawling all over his nipples. That was a real shot in that movie, and it kind of weirded me out. And so now I like eating octopus. Just gonna get some lemon in there and take some ginger. Just kind of cut this in half and then- Oh, God. Why did I… Just go slow. Just calm down. And now we’re gonna take some garlic. You’re gonna palm heel strike it, just sort of express all the allicin or whatever’s in there. Hai, hai, hai. There we go. And then boom. We got aromatics. Now- Moments later. I’m gonna salt up this octopus, and we’re gonna massage the salt in there. To one, tenderize it. Two, they say to dry out any impurities, but I’m skeptical of that idea. All I know is when you salt an octopus and you really massage it, it does taste better. ‘Cause I’ve done both ways. So you’re gonna start just massaging it in there. And then the salt’s gonna act as an abrasive. And what you would typically do is you kind of take the tentacles and you’d kind of just massage it out there. So massage the suckers. Get those nice and tender. There’s a theory that Bikini Bottom is actually just nuclear fallout from Bikini Atoll, which is a big nuclear testing site. And so there’s a theory that all these animals down there just like messed up, full of nuclear radiation and have insane mutations. And that’s why you get an octopus, Squidward, able to play the clarinet. Nuclear testing. I don’t know. I’ve really, I’ve never seen it. I just missed it. It was a cultural moment, but I knew a lot of the Christian parents in my area didn’t let their kids watch it because they thought “SpongeBob” exhibited a non-normative lifestyle that was against God. That’s real. All right, so we’re gonna take the octopus, you know, and kind of jiggle this out. What I like to do is after I cook it and braise it, then you’re gonna go ahead and remove the eyes, remove the beak, and remove some of that connective skin going right there. So you’re gonna make sure the tentacles are spread. Then you’re gonna drop it in, pull it out. And the tentacles should kind of unfurl. Unfurl, tentacles! Unfurl! There you go. Now you see the tentacles kind of curling up? You want them to separate. Just Squidward taking a bath. Someone tell me one of Squidward’s catch phrases ’cause I don’t know them. My aching tentacles! That’s funny! I don’t get it. All right, so we got- The show’s just not for me, and that’s fine. I like Patrick. He seems pure of heart and spirit. SpongeBob was trying to be sexually active with the squirrel. If you thought that that one large octopus was gonna be all the octopuses that we had, or octopodes, if you will, you’d be wrong. ‘Cause we got about 60 baby octopodes here, just to show you how truly sorry- I can’t stress this enough. So incredibly, genuinely sorry for my faux pas earlier. So we’re gonna take these, and we’re gonna dump them into some boiling water right now. We’re gonna poach these. The plan is- you gotta separate them out with your hands a little bit. The plan is to take the large Squidward and then sort of tell a story with food because that’s what food is really about. It’s about telling a story. And so it’s gonna be all of Squidward’s dead babies on the bottom with Squidward sort of lording above it. So let me show you what I mean. We’re gonna start making a little stir fry sauce right here. We’re gonna get a fair amount of oil in there, and then we’re gonna start sweating out our aromatics. So we’re gonna take some garlic. Get that into the oil. We’re gonna take a fair amount of ginger. These are all good flavors that really love each other. And then we are going to take the bottom of some scallions. We’re gonna save the top to add in fresh ’cause I like when you get that little fresh greenness. And what I don’t like is that in 2002, there was an episode where SpongeBob and Patrick adopted a scallop and SpongeBob insists that he was the mother and then evangelical Christian groups thought that that was SpongeBob advocating gay marriage, which it kind of was, as they should. And then that’s when none of my friends were allowed to watch “SpongeBob.” And then 2005, it came to an even bigger head. So I did a little Googling while we’re doing stuff. So we’re gonna wait for this to sweat out a little bit. I always like to add a little pinch of salt- That’s sugar- to my aromatics while they sweat. I’m gonna start getting some liquids in there. We got soy sauce. We got a little bit of sesame oil. And then we’re gonna take a whole lot of gochujang, which is a fermented rice and chili paste that is really delicious. It’s gonna do a bulk of the flavor carrying in this. Oh, it’s gonna be spicy. Nice. And what do we got? I’m gonna go water. I need to thin this out just a little bit. ‘Cause anytime you get aromatics, it starts scorching or your sauce is reduced too much, just add more water to it ’cause if the sauces reduce too much, all that means the water content is lower than you want it to be. So when you’re cooking your own Squidward and baby Squidwards at home, that’s what you can do. We’re just gonna stir this around. Gochujang needs a little bit of heat to sort of thin out. And then I’m gonna add a pinch of gochugaru, which is Korean chili flake. I’m gonna add some more at the end just to season. There we go. Someone hit me with some “SpongeBob” facts, and I can tell you if I knew them or not. The creator of “SpongeBob” was a marine biologist. Knew that one. Definitely, absolutely knew that one. SpongeBob’s original name was SpongeBoy. SpongeBoy? That’s good. School Squidward, the real- Okay, here’s a fact that I do know. Hold on. Did I ever get tongs? I did get tongs. We should probably use those. So the reason Squidward is an octopus and not a squid is literally just because they thought that Octoward did not sound catchy enough, and I would disagree with that. So we’re just gonna kind of- Yeah, glaze Squidward up a little bit. Beautiful. Beautiful. Here, I wanna get a little bit more sauce on there. Yeah, we’re gonna kind of spread that out, and then I’m gonna pop this under broilers to get it nice and crispy. Thin that out with a little bit of water real quick. How’s this octopus doing? Bad, bad. Water doesn’t get hot. Water doesn’t- Burn doesn’t work. That’s okay. So we’re gonna pop Squidward in the broiler real quick. Just get it nice and charred in there. Hyah! And then gimme a second to boil off these octopodes. And technically, it’s not octopi. But in Greek it’s topodie or topodia. And only say stuff like that. It’s octopuses. We also have these delightful Korean rice cakes. We got the cross cut ones. They’re a delight. You can the big loggy ones that are in tteokbokki, but when you’re stir-frying things, I like these little guys. They soak up sauce really nice. I love these rice cakes. They’re not good if you’re hosting a cooking show. I think I’m just gonna start hucking them in. There it is. That’s good stuff. Yup. Holy SpongeBob, that’s a lot of octopus. Boys are eating good today. All right. Now, pop this back on the burner. Give it a couple nice tosses. We’re gonna let that liquid really reduce. We’re gonna add our sesame, add our scallions, and finish her up. More moments later. All right, all our little baby Squidwards have gotten nice and reduced. We’re gonna add a little bit of extra gochugaru, Korean chili flake. We’re gonna add some sesame seeds in there. Give it one last toss. Think I’m gonna say, you know, I’m gonna add half of these, and then I’m gonna garnish with half. We’re gonna take that. Give it- Hyah! Snail. Hyah! I still don’t agree with the intellectual hierarchy of creatures they’ve created in “SpongeBob” universe. And you know what? I don’t have to because I’ve apologized enough, and I’ve cooked Squidward. So we’re gonna take this, and we’re gonna plate it up. There we go. I love that for us. All right. All right. All right. Couple extra sesame seeds on there. You know what? Well, we still have to plate. So we have the whole Squidward. The head’s kind of fallen off a little bit. Just kind of do that. Good stuff. And then we’re gonna pla- Wait, where’s the clarinet? Here we go. I’m gonna take the clarinet. I’m gonna throw it in there. There’s a couple scallions around. I’m gonna have to make another apology video, huh? There you have it. We did this. Sorry. Well, we got anatomically correct Squidward. I did eat off his face. Like what is it? Cronos eating his sons. Is that what it is? Saturn. Saturn eating his- I think Cronos is the- Anyways, hey, do you like podcasts? Do you like the little argument that Nicole and I just had? Well, you can listen to a whole argument about if meatloaf is just a long meatball over on Spotify. The podcast is called “A Hot Dog is a Sandwich.” I’m begging you. I’m literally begging you. Please, for the love of God, listen to our podcast. All right, let’s dig in. I’m gonna take, I think, a whole tentacle. It’s a really nicely cooked octopus, but I’m really curious about these little guys down here. Gonna be fun. And when you got baby octopus like this, they’re just kinda like- it’s like a Gusher. You kinda just like . This is intensely delicious. Give me a second. A few minutes later. I don’t like when people overcook octopus ’cause then the point of it is that it is chewy. You don’t need to make everything the most tender thing in the world. Mindy! Come on! What’s up? You wanna eat Squidward? I guess so. Yeah. What’s up Squidward? Hello. He’s dead. He can’t respond. But he’s playing the clarinet. No, it’s like how you- would the Greeks would bury themselves with their favorite trinkets. That’s what we did with Squidward. Aw! Okay. Yeah. Awkward. Now, all right, you wanna try? Here, I’ll get you a baby. How are you gonna spork- Oh, you know what? I don’t know if the whole baby’s gonna fit in my mouth. I think we kind of gotta do it. Wait, do you wanna head first? Tentacle first? Or tentacle? I’d go tentacle first. Okay. Oh, no! Mindy, you go to your level of comfortability. Wait, I’m gonna get you a rice cake. Okay. Mm! So this is a mess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is really good! It’s really good, right? It’s sweet. It’s spicy. I can feel all the sauce on my face now. Mindy, there’s no sauce. What are you talking about? Oh, no! There’s no sauce. The closeup only means there’s sauce. This is really good. Wow! You wanna take this home? We got a lot. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’ll take all of Squidward’s friends there. It’s his babies, not his friends. You can’t be friends with your kids. You’re not really the cool parent. They don’t respect you like that. Oh, no. All right, Mindy, thank you so much for eating. Thank you so much for stopping by the Mythical Kitchen. We got new episodes for you every week. We got new episodes of our podcast, which I’m begging you to listen to every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. It’s up on Instagram and TikTok @MythicalKitchen, pictures of your mythical dishes just like Mike did. He made chicken fried goat brains. That is a throwback to when we made the Nashville hot calves brain sandwich for Rhett and a really delicious dish. Eat more octopus. Eat more goat brains. Mindy, you got no sauce. I’m pretty sure there’s sauce. See you all next time. The Mythical Kitchen’s favorite way to obliterate garlic immortalized in t-shirt form. Get the Palm Heel Strike tee now Mythical.com.