A fishing friend just gifted us with 4 or 5 pounds of yellowfin. This is a tuna-type fish, but is a bit on the strong side. I don’t mind this, but prefer some type of seasoning that will tone down the fishiness to some extent. Any ideas?
try doing a search at this site. It is my favorite site this week, after SDMB, of course.
5 pounds of fresh Yellowfin tuna? Yummy!! I never thought yellowfin was very fishy, but then I like really fishy fish.
I usually just spray it with olive oil, sprinkle some Cavenders on each side, and then grill it medium rare to medium. It gets very dry if you over cook it.
This is my favorite recipe site. They have about 100 tuna recipes so maybe you can find something there.
http://soar.berkeley.edu/recipes/
Enjoy dinner!
Try marinating it in a combination of olive oil, lime juice, and cilantro. The juice should take some of the fishiness away, and the cilantro should compliment the tuna flavor. Don’t over-marinade, though, because the lime juice will start to make the fish mushy. I’d say, oh, 45 minutes max, then toss it on the grill.
P.S. You can also throw a few chiles in that marinade if you like your fish with a little zing.
I marinate my salmon in lemon juice (with a tiny bit of zest), garlic, olive oil, thyme, and lots o’ worchestershire (my, that’s harder to spell then it is to say) sauce. Just lix it together in whatever you think is right proportions and you’ll be fine. Broil it until it’s done. It works for me on salmon, it should work on yellowfin if you want it.
Thanks, guys. Those are great ideas and sites. I think tonight it’s going to be fresh fish tacos or one of those marinades.
Actually, what we have may be Pacific yellowtail, rather than yellowfin tuna. Whatever. It’s pretty good.
Ooooooooooh MOMMA! FISH TACOS!!!
Love 'em. I’m having them tomorrow night.
What I do is I squeeze a little lime juice over the fish, then rub with a cut garlic clove and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Throw them on the grill until cooked through.
I serve the fish with flour tortillas, a salad of romaine and tomato dressed with more lime juice, and maybe a spicy tomato or tomatillo salsa. Beans and rice on the side.
An alternate marinade (for the grill) is a Japanese one that suits most tastes…a couple tablespoons of mirin, the same of tamari, the same of rice vinegar, a little chopped garlic and fresh ginger. This is good with plain white rice and a steamed green vegetable.
Yellowfin? If it’s really fresh, cut into thin slices, add wasabi and soy sauce. Eat.
A less “fishy” but fine taste would be to cut into inch thick pieces and grill for 1 minute each side. Leave the fish to cool, then crumble and serve with cold green beans, slices of waxy potato, anchovies, boiled egg, tomato and lettuce. Don’t call it salad nicoise around any French people though.
picmr
Not sure of your fish, but if you want to cut the “fishiness”, you can always marinate in some good white wine w/ a few sprigs of herbs.
(I tend toward lime juice, a hint of garlic and some herb sprigs tossed on a wood fire…whereupon the fish sticks to the grill, I curse Julia Child and the assembled chefs of the food network and every “foodie” site on the web and go back to poaching…whoosh sorry, lapsed there.)
Honestly, poaching can calm nerves and serve forth a fabulous meal. Were I to be gifted with fresh yellow-anything sea-type fish, I’d probably wimp out and go the poaching route. (Toss a few cut lemons in the poaching liquid: wing it.) Grilling causes insanity and bad food: look at Bobby Flay.
Fresh fish that swims again in a subtle, cunning broth; tender and fine…such is bliss.
Invoking M.F.K. Fisher,
Veb
I’m left speechless… someone who is familiar with M.F.K. Fisher’s work is a goddess. (Currently working on a paper tying her work & Brillat-Savarin’s Physiology of Taste together for Culinary Language)
Anyways, back to the OP…
I’d take that fish and do a Poisson en Papillote (sp? not sure, my French ain’t the best)
Take a sheet of parchment paper, big enough to make a pouch that will be 2-3" larger than the filet. Place filet on paper, top with thinly sliced lemon, fresh herbs such as thyme and Italian parsley, and salt & pepper. Fold around the edges several times to seal, but leave one corner open so you can pour in about 2-3 T white wine and 2-3 T olive oil. Fold the corner in on the pouch, place on a cookie sheet, and bake in a 350° oven for around 7-9 minutes (pouch will have puffed up like it’s going to explode by then). Cut pouch open right before serving.
This is just a continuation of other ideas: For Tuna and Salmon I like to use this little ditty:
Can of cranberries
Dry Vermouth
Fresh cut Cilantro
Lemon
Throw it all together and cook in a large covered skillet for 10 to 20 minutes depending on thickness. Sometimes instead of the lemon I use a scoop of frozen orange juice concentrate.
Serve with wild rice.
Oh, and for the above parchment paper idea- brown grocery bags work just fine. I cut mine into a heart shape or an oval.
Take care-
-T
ps- truth be told, I haven’t made this for a long time- they don’t have cranberries here!
Here’s a nice cold sauce that goes well with fresh grilled or poached fish.
3 Tablespoons minced onion
1/2 cup finely chopped cucumber
2 teaspoons fresh dill weed
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayo or plain yogurt
salt and pepper to taste
Mix this up an hour before dinner and put back in the refrig. Serve it on the side w/ fish. Its good eats.
Here’s a marinade for which I have received rave reviews when used with salmon, and I bet it will be great on fresh tuna, too.
Mix together 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup honey, juice of 1-2 limes, a knob of finely grated fresh ginger, and a cup of mirin (sweetened rice-wine vinegar). Whisk until the honey is incorporated, and then, still whisking vigorously add 1/2 cup of olive oil in a slow, thin stream to achieve an emulsion. Marinate fish for 30 minutes or more in a large ziploc bag or glass baking dish.
Grill or broil, basting with reserved marinade until it forms a nice glaze on the fish, about 10 minutes per inch of fish-filet thickness. You can also boil down the reserved marinade until it gets sy
Oh, and I want to take issue with tomcat’s suggestion to use paper grocery bags to cook en papillote… these days, grocery bags are treated with inks and other chemicals that make this ill-advised - it may affect the flavor of the food and could even be harmful. Use parchment paper, or aluminum foil in a pinch.
What I MEANT to say was “You can also boil down the reserved marinade until it gets syrupy and drizzle it over the finished fish before serving.”
Grrrrrrr. Does this mean I should stop using brown paper bags to drain the grease from fried chicken? They’re SO much better at this than paper towels or anything else. Not to mention traditional.
Ike, using grocery bags to drain food should be fine as long as you aren’t in the habit of sucking grease out of the bags once you run out of fried chicken. grin
You just shouldn’t COOK food in paper from a grocery bag because the heat could release noxious substances from the bag that could permeate your food.
In fact, I believe this is exactly how McDonald’s makes their Gaines Burgers taste so much like cardboard.
Oh, and JavaMaven? I’m familiar with M.F.K. Fisher’s work…does that make me a goddess? My favorite is With Bold Knife and Fork.
Sounds similar the marinade I used on the yellowfin tuna steaks I made Sunday night: soy sauce, olive oil, brown sugar, Wild Turkey, a small splash of good balsamic vinegar, ginger, basil, a little garlic, and some thyme.
Chef T: Generally, I fry the chicken, lift it out and onto paper grocery bags, carefully drain the grease, then throw away the chicken and eat the bag.
WITH BOLD KNIFE AND FORK…that was her last book before she died, wasn’t it? It was the first Fisher I owned, and I haven’t read it for so long I don’t remember what was in it.
THE ART OF EATING is the volume I always recommend; it’s the omnibus containing her essential early works CONSIDER THE OYSTER, HOW TO COOK A WOLF, AN ALPHABET FOR GOURMETS, and THE GASTRONOMICAL ME.
Veb is a goddess, you, Cheffie (and Ike too) are gods. You’ve all gained respect points in my book.
About the paper bag cooking–I used to bake double crust pies (i.e. apple, cherry) in paper bags, until one day, I noticed a chemical smell coming from the oven–all I could think was that it was the inks used in printing that made that smell (that had never been there in unprinted bags). I’d play it safe and use parchment paper if you can’t have unprinted paper bags.