This is a recipe I picked up in kindergarten, and it’s fun to make with your kids or for a birthday party with a Halloween or beach theme.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 10 mins |
| Total Time: | 30 mins |
| Servings: | 8 |
| Yield: | 8 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 (16 ounce) package hot dogs
- 2 (48 ounce) containers chicken broth
- 1 ½ cups chopped fresh chives
Instructions
- With a sharp knife, cut the hot dogs in half the short way. Slice each piece in half vertically, cutting about 3/4 of the way up towards the rounded end. Leave about 1 inch of the rounded end as the head of the octopus. Rotate the dog 90 degrees, and make another vertical cut. Cut the 4 legs in half again, to make 8 legs and a head. The hot dogs should look like tassels with rounded heads.
- Bring the chicken broth and chives to a boil in a soup pot. Place the octopus hot dogs into the boiling soup, and simmer for about 5 minutes. The legs will curl to make the octopus shape. Serve in bowls with an octopus or 2 in each bowl.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 200 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 3 g |
| Cholesterol | 37 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 9 g |
| Saturated Fat | 6 g |
| Sodium | 2337 mg |
| Sugars | 2 g |
| Fat | 16 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
My 3 and 5 year old grandchildren delighted in this soup! I knew they wouldn’t eat the scallions so I substituted spinach spaghetti noodles instead. They plopped fish crackers in to swim with the octopi before gobbling it up. Next time I will add a bit of onion powder for my palate. Thanks for a fun treat!
I am rating the excellence of the idea of cutting the hotdog and cooking it to make an octopus! All four of my children from 11 to 3 thought this was so cute and loved watching it curl in the water. Thank you!
Bland, not very versatile….Nobody touched it at the party.
Made as written except after pasta was done I threw it in a zip lock bag with some butter and green food coloring and made seaweed lol.
My kids loved this & it was surprising good. Great for my Halloween dinners!
Not the greatest, my picky little eater refused to finish his.
I actually added the hotdogs to matzo ball soup and served it for Halloween dinner. Family loved it!
This is really good put on top a bowl of mac and cheese with some fish crackers sprinkled on top.
I just use packaged chicken noodle soup and put the sliced hotdogs in. The kids are crazy about it.
These are great! A new lunch favorite! Thanks for the terrific idea.
This is great! i boil them plain and serve them in my kids’ bento boxes for lunch. they love ’em.
My kids love this! I just boiled the hot dog octopi in plain water & served on plates with ketchup. The kids loved pulling apart the legs & dipping them one at a time. So fun.
Simple and fun to do, I’d suggest the next time I do this, I use low sodium hot dogs and chicken broth. But the recipe did just what it said it would. The hot dogs curled right up and I thought that was fantastic! My local commissary didn’t have a very good quality of fresh chives. I was totally disappointed. But for a small package at just under 3 dollars. I would have needed 2 to almost 3 containers of fresh chives to follow the recipe exactly, and I would have had it not been for the commissary’s selection. However, I had to go with green onions and at 34 cents a bundle and using 2, and chopping only. the greens and saving the other part for another use. This recipe was made very inexpensively. What a great budget recipe. Hot dogs– .89cents, Chicken Broth(Dollar Store)– $2.50, Green Onions– .68…total $4.07 WOW right? Less then 51 cents a serving. I’ll make this again for sure. My kids loved how the whole hot dog trick turned into an octopus. A BIG THANKS!!!
I have done this for years with the grandkids! For a variation, I dye the ramen noodles green and pile the octopi on top of the :sea weed! turn the cooked hot dogs upside down and they are flowers! ( for the girls)