Ribeye of the Sea

Look at that beautiful steak!  Huh? Looks a little pale to you? The marbling looks a little strange too? Maybe you're thinking of a beef steak! This my friend is a gorgeous tuna steak.  Starkist refers to it's canned tuna as "chicken of the sea." That may be true. But this beautiful fresh fillet ranks up there with ribeye!

A fresh fillet of yellowfin is generally the preferred steak in my home! At least amongst the adults. This is what I make when I want to make my man happy!  You know for his birthday or Valentine's Day.

I went to the store looking for some fish for our Valentine's Day dinner. We had a music lesson and a basketball practice to get to and I needed something quick and light.  These beauties caught my eye. The fish people say never go to the store with a specific fish in mind--you want whatever fish is the freshest and prettiest.  Here in Missouri that's a nice frozen salmon fillet half the time.  These fillets were basically singing a siren song from the fish case! No drippiness, no fading color, no dryness, no separating. They fit the bill perfectly!

First you need some tuna steaks!  This was three steaks. So they ran just a little over $4 a piece. Now if you figure that they offered me a lovely tuna fillet at Capital Grille the other night for $38 you can see why I still consider it a good deal! 

I'm going to make a little marinade. The tuna doesn't have to have it but it insures moistness.

You need some olive oil. Extra Virgin is the way to go!

You'll want to use a tablespoon per fillet.  Put it in the highly specialized fish marinading device of your choice. I'm choosing a gallon size zipper seal bag.  A pie plate would work too but you'll have to flip it a little. 

Now for some seasoning. I like this one. It has all sorts of interesting spicy things in it. A little chili pepper, dried orange peel, sesame seeds, dried ginger and a few little flecks of seaweed!

A half teaspoon per tablespoon of oil!  Now if you happen to run out of Japanese chili pepper seasoning there are plenty of substitutes. Make your own mixture from black pepper, chili powder, fresh orange peel, lemon peel, garlic powder, etc. You can even use lemon pepper or Old Bay seasoning. If you have fresh herbs you could chop some of those up too. Thyme, tarragon, parsley are all delicious on tuna.  Just keep it to about a half teaspoon per fillet and you really don't want to be adding a lot of salt at this point. 

There's my marinade! I'm going to stick the fillets in there for an hour or so. My fillets were 1 1/2 inches thick so I really could of marinated them as long as I wanted since there was no salt in my marinade. If you've got the 3/4 inch fillets or used a seasoning mix with lots of salt like lemon pepper or Old Bay I would keep it to under an hour. Olive oil really soaks into the thinner fillets and people can complain that they get greasy!

There they are. Ready to go into the pan. Now is the point where you'd add a little salt if you hadn't added any earlier.

I heated up a nice big nonstick pan for a few minutes. I put a teaspoon of oil in the bottom since these pans don't like to be heated without something in them. I also could tell how hot the pan was from it.  When the oil gets "shimmery" add the tuna!

After 2 1/2 minutes I could see that the fish was starting to cook into the fillet so I flipped them.

It's enough to make my heart go pitter-patter!  Two and a half minutes more and the anticipation was too much for me! 

Fish does a lot of "carryover" cooking. Meaning the "doneness" level goes up dramatically the longer you let it rest after taking it off the heat. My steak was probably medium rare when I took it out of the pan. But I had to pour milk, gather the kids, let them use the restroom, pray, and serve all of them before I got to eat my steak!  The solution is to go ahead and cut it open right away.  You'll notice that in a lot of restaurants they serve your medium rare tuna all cut up. They're trying to prevent carryover!

I was so hungry I forgot to take pictures!  Now at 2 1/2 minutes a side this fish was more of a medium than medium rare but it was still delicious!  Tender, meaty, moist it truly should be called the ribeye of the sea.

This steak is purely a umami experience. If you want to balance out the flavors with some salty, sweet, sour, bitterness try a dipping sauce. May I recommend my Asian A-1?

Pan Broiled Tuna steaks

8 oz tuna fillet
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp chili pepper (optional)
1 tsp vegetable oil
salt and pepper

Mix oil and seasoning powder together and marinate fillet in it for about an hour.  Take out of marinade and season with salt and pepper. Heat 1 tsp vegetable oil in a nonstick pan over high heat until it shimmers.  Turn heat down to medium high and put fillet in pan.  Cook 2 - 2 1/2 minutes per side. Slice immediately if you like your meat medium rare! Let rest for a few minutes if you like your meat medium.