Combine water, egg and dashi stock together in a bowl and mix well until frothy.
Sift the plain flour into a large bowl and add the liquid mixture over the flour.
Whisk them together well until all the dry flour is completely mixed in.
Heat the takoyaki pan and oil the holes with the oil brush. *2
Pour the batter into the pan holes so they are approximately 80% full and then add the octopus, green onion, tempura crisps and pickled ginger .Then add more of the batter until it's just overflowing.
Cook for approximately 1 & 1/2 minutes, then trim off the excess batter and flip them over by inserting the Takoyaki pick from 4 o'clock direction, turn your wrist 90°.
Keep flipping them around until the takoyaki are a golden-brown color. *3
When all balls outside are crispy golden brown, turn the heat off.
Serve them on a plate and coat with the Takoyaki sauce and Japanese mayonnaise then sprinkle with aonori and bonito flakes to serve.
Video
Notes
*1 If you use commercial premixed flour for Takoyaki, you only need to replace dashi stock with water.*2 If you don't have the oil brush, use scrunched kitchen paper towel. *3 Continuously flipping them around makes the outside golden and crispy. *Nutritional value is per one octopus ball.* If you don't have Takoyaki sauce, you can use my Yakisoba sauce recipe and add 1 tbsp of honey. * If you are unable to find bonito flakes and seaweed flakes, you can eat without. *I used special flour made for making Takoyaki. It is a little bit like pre mixed flour which contains dashi stock powder. That's why in the photos and the recipe video, I used water instead of dashi stock. It is usually difficult to find this kind of special flour. If you used plain flour, use dashi stock to mix.