cooking tuna...

[magnolia]

I found what seemed to be a great recipe for a Sicilian style tuna dish, which calls for browning two tuna steaks, approximately 2 cm thick, in olive oil, for approximately 1-2 minutes each side, then setting them aside and making a sauce out of celery, sultanas, garlic and olives, in which the tuna is then marinaded overnight & served room temp the next day.

I am not big on cooking fish at home, so haven't made tuna before.

I duly heated up the olive oil to sizzling, and put the tuna steaks in for a minute. The surfaces turned white, not brown. I left them in for longer - more than the requisite two minutes - but the colour didn't change, and the texture of the middle remained unpleasantly jelly-like and uncooked. I was afraid to cook them yet more, as the surface became decidedly dry, but the middle really is still raw. I don't mind raw fish when it's meant to be raw, but I suspect this isn't. Is the recipe wrong - e.g. 2cm is too thick? Or am I doing something wrong?

Edited May 22, 2005 by magnolia (log)

[rooftop1000]

In general I have had a hard time "browning" tuna ...it just turns grey and I have really only worked with roasts because what I want is brown on the outside and raw in the middle

by the time you pull that out of the marinade I am betting it wont feel raw anymore though.....

if it is still yucky tomorrow warm it gently in the marinade

tracey

[Chris Amirault]

Two possible things to try. First, scrape both sides of the tuna with a knife to squeegee off all of the moisture and then place the tuna on a paper towel or something else dry (not back on the wet plate whence it came). Second, be sure to blast the heat, put the pan on until it's blazingly hot, and only then pour in your oil. When you put those steaks in, it's going to make a hell of a mess and odor, but that's your best chance at getting the seared sides.

I agree with Tracey that the marinade may well "cook" the tuna overnight, btw.

[magnolia]

Two possible things to try. First, scrape both sides of the tuna with a knife to squeegee off all of the moisture and then place the tuna on a paper towel or something else dry (not back on the wet plate whence it came). Second, be sure to blast the heat, put the pan on until it's blazingly hot, and only then pour in your oil. When you put those steaks in, it's going to make a hell of a mess and odor, but that's your best chance at getting the seared sides.

I agree with Tracey that the marinade may well "cook" the tuna overnight, btw.

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Thanks very much for this. It makes me feel a bit better, and I am really learning more and more that recipes are indeed just guidelines. To whit: all the recipes I have for caramel call for adding water to the sugar. I have *never* once succeeded in getting a caramel this way, so I just routinely elminate the water.

And now I note your suggestion of heating the pan first, then adding the oil and getting it all sizzly...when the recipe actually says "gently warm the oil in a pan on on medium-low heat until it is very hot"

I think it will taste fine as long as I didn't overcook it in my zeal to get it brown rather than grey.

[budrichard]

Your problen stems from the quality of fresh tuna sold in most grocery stores. This is a low quality product, previously frozen and not suitable for eating uncooked. For this type of tuna, poaching is probably the best method.

For tuna that is Sashimi grade and suitable for eating raw, I season, grill until i get a nice surfece and then plunge into ice water to stop the cooking process. Marinate as your ercipe requires or don't, it won't matter as long as you chill it and use withoin 24 hours. Typically marinades that cure are used with white fleshed fish but I suppose you can cure tuna raw, i just haven;t seen it done. Raw tuna is mostly cut up, immersed in a marinade or combind with seasonings and served.

Again, what is most important is NOT the method of cooking but the QUALITY of the ingrediant. -Dick

[godito]

I agree that the quality of the tuna might have something to do with the problem. But I also agree that the most likely problem is that your pan wasn't hot enough or that your tuna steak was wet. Remember that when you put a wet steak in the pan, first, the water has to evaporate, so the tuna is somewhat steamed, not browned. When cooking in the restaurant (and at home, although I rarely cook tuna at home) I take it out from the fridge a good twenty minutes before I intend to cook it. And then I pat it dry with a towel AND squeeze water out with the back of my knife. While I do taht I heat the pan, and only when it's really hot I add the oil.

As for the marinade, it will probably "cook" the tuna steak, but we used to marinate our tuna steaks but we never had that problem. In any case, try adding some sugar (or something high on sugars) to your marinade so that whn you cook the tune, the sugar will caramelize giving it an even better color. Hope all this helps

[moosnsqrl]

as the others have said, dry the tuna; unplug the smoke detector, get a cast-iron skillet red-hot, add the oil followed a few seconds later by the tuna. It will turn whitish-grey, then brown. Yum. Anyone know a fish monger who delivers on holiday weekends?

[budrichard]

We get our tuna fresh from Browne Trading. We don't have to 'dry' it. i suspect that what you are purchashing is previously frozen tuna that has been actually frozen in water to add weight to the product. Avoid this stuff or only use it for poaching. -Dick

[jamiemaw]

Your problen stems from the quality of fresh tuna sold in most grocery stores. This is a low quality product, previously frozen and not suitable for eating uncooked. For this type of tuna, poaching is probably the best method.

For tuna that is Sashimi grade and suitable for eating raw . . . 

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i suspect that what you are purchashing is previously frozen tuna

Isn't virtually all so-called 'sashimi-grade' tuna (be it big eye, blue fin, ahi or albacore) frozen at sea (FAS)? That was my impression when visiting the auctions at Tsukiji--the enormous fish market that supplies Japanese and many North American sushi-oriented restaurants. It's the management of what comes next--a slow thaw on ice--that ultimately guides quality.

Edited June 9, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[fifi]

Jamie is correct. Unless you catch it yourself or know someone who did, tuna will have been flash frozen at sea. It has to be. Tuna is somewhat unique in that if it has been exercising itself by swimming fast or struggling with a hook, the flesh temperature rises even though it is a "cold blooded" animal. If not quickly cooled it will deteriorate, fast.

My question is, what is the best way to thaw it?

In my big game fishing days, if we caught tuna and wanted to keep it, we cleaned it immediately and put it on ice including stuffing some in the cavity. (Then, of course, we had to change fishing spots before the sharks closed in. One day we boated a 600 pounder. That was quite an operation. We actually had to cut it up. The sharks were amazing.)

[LindaK]

In my big game fishing days, if we caught tuna and wanted to keep it, we cleaned it immediately and put it on ice including stuffing some in the cavity. (Then, of course, we had to change fishing spots before the sharks closed in. One day we boated a 600 pounder. That was quite an operation. We actually had to cut it up. The sharks were amazing.)

Fifi, I am impressed by a lot more than your cooking skills here...a 600 lb tuna?? Sounds like 'jaws' to me.

[WHT]

In my big game fishing days, if we caught tuna and wanted to keep it, we cleaned it immediately and put it on ice including stuffing some in the cavity. (Then, of course, we had to change fishing spots before the sharks closed in. One day we boated a 600 pounder. That was quite an operation. We actually had to cut it up. The sharks were amazing.)

Fifi, I am impressed by a lot more than your cooking skills here...a 600 lb tuna?? Sounds like 'jaws' to me.

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Strange as it may sound that is still a small tuna.

[fiftydollars]

If your stove/pan are not producing enough heat, try Alton Brown’s method of searing tuna using a charcoal chimney. It works very well.

Basically, Brown lights a chimney full of charcoal and puts a grill grate on it. The chimney produces an impressive amount of heat. It browns the tuna very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that a few pieces of tuna that I didn’t quite completely dry with paper towels still seared about as fast and well as the ones I very carefully dried.

It is an awesome method for searing just about anything. Compared to my measly stove the chimney starter is like cooking over a jet engine.

[JohnnyH]

In my big game fishing days, if we caught tuna and wanted to keep it, we cleaned it immediately and put it on ice including stuffing some in the cavity. (Then, of course, we had to change fishing spots before the sharks closed in. One day we boated a 600 pounder. That was quite an operation. We actually had to cut it up. The sharks were amazing.)

Fifi, I am impressed by a lot more than your cooking skills here...a 600 lb tuna?? Sounds like 'jaws' to me.

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Strange as it may sound that is still a small tuna.

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And one worth a hell of a lot of money.

[budrichard]

Jamie is correct. Unless you catch it yourself or know someone who did, tuna will have been flash frozen at sea. It has to be. Tuna is somewhat unique in that if it has been exercising itself by swimming fast or struggling with a hook, the flesh temperature rises even though it is a "cold blooded" animal. If not quickly cooled it will deteriorate, fast.

My question is, what is the best way to thaw it?

In my big game fishing days, if we caught tuna and wanted to keep it, we cleaned it immediately and put it on ice including stuffing some in the cavity. (Then, of course, we had to change fishing spots before the sharks closed in. One day we boated a 600 pounder. That was quite an operation. We actually had to cut it up. The sharks were amazing.)

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Contrary to popular opinion on this forum, all tuna is NOT frozen. Browne Trading does not sell frozen tuna. You can call Jamie Wright at 800-944-7848 #4 and ask him.

I know a few top Sushi Chefs in Chicago that pride themselves on the fresh tuna that they serve.

If you look at fresh unfrozen tuna and compare to the tuna you see for sale in the big chains, you can easily see the lack of gloss in the frozen variety. Some frozen Sashimi grade tuna can be very good but the lower priced stuff is waterlogged. Again, it is the quality of the ingrediant that makes the difference in the cooking and enjoyment. Many cooking techniques are only compensating for so called modern processing methods. Try to brown a typical scallop. It can't be done because the scallops are soaked in a checmical preservative. I suspect that may happen to low priced tuna to keep it 'fresh' longer as well as add weight to the product.

The Blue Fin season is just starting and I plan on ordering some top grade Toro from Browne.-Dick

[jamiemaw]

Certainly, as budrichard points out, there are limited amounts of high quality fresh tuna available on the eastern seaboard of the US (bluefin), in the eastern Atlantic fishery (ditto), on the western seaboard of the US and Canada (albacore), Hawaii (ahi, or yellowfin), Australia and New Zealand (bluefin—significantly regulated since 1993 in an effort to recreate a sustainable fishery), Italy (bluefin, or matanza, which means kill) and Japan (kuromaguro or blue fin, big eye, yellow fin, albacore—in order of descending perceived value). There's skipjack too, but that's not really germane.

Interestingly, before 1975 or so, big bluefins were sold for pennies per pound for cat food, now they attract hundreds of dollars per kilo.

The way I understand it, in order for, say, big bluefins to be served fresh they must immediately be:

• Spiked to kill brain and nerves;

• Gutted to remove major heat source and minimize bacterial contamination; and

• Rapidly chilled to a core temperature close to 0˚ C in ice slurry--to preserve density and translucency.

• Fresh tuna can be sustained for up to ten days or so, but its first half hour after kill determines its ultimate quality.

I suppose that my point upthread was that the vast bulk of tuna sold commercially in North America and Japan is FAS (shock frozen at sea)--for bacterial reasons. And surely too, as budrichard quite rightly points out, there’s lots of inferior, mishandled, and just plain old tuna lurking in plastic supermarket trays—ripening in its juice.

Here on the west coast, as sustainability issues have taken hold in the public consciousness, and their consequences on our local fishery thought through(farmed fin fish no, sustainable wild species yes), there’s also an increased awareness about the sustainability of imported, offshore species.

Thus the increasing rise in popularity, locally, of pink salmon (which used to be relegated to the canning line) and indigenous albacore tuna versus the much more expensive and over-fished bluefin. By all accounts, it’s the Atlantic bluefin fishery that is the most severely threatened (reported 90% decline since the 70's), victim to that perfect storm (if you’ll excuse the phrase): the confluence of dense north-eastern consumer population at the zenith of its boomer-sushi graph, and, not unlike the Russian sturgeon markey, the high value catch.

The formerly ubiquitous (seared, tartare) ahi is no longer quite as victimized, perhaps for reasons of fashion (it was a pre-millennial one-note wonder) more than consumer concern.

But, not unlike one’s perception of the 1855 French wine cru ratings system, consumer tastes in raw fish are allowed to change too. Not all of us might wish to drink a premier cru every night, nor eat bluefin belly.

As for myself, I actually prefer the plush texture of albacore now (pairs nicely with a furry Rhone). But perhaps that’s because I’m of Scottish descent and born, appropriately, with fish hooks in my pockets. The price of albacore dominos at my corner bar (there are about 350 Japanese restaurants in Vancouver) are less than half the price of big eye. And that too warms my chilly Scottish heart, which is the approximate temperature of ice slurry.

Back on topic. Trusty (well-seasoned) cast iron pan (you'll never crust tuna in a non-stick), started from cold, gloss of oil (grapeseed or safflower for higher smoke points) to dried loin taken directly from fridge, white heat, cold plate.

Cheers.

Edited June 10, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)