Home smoked tuna. Get over yourself man!

Sorry about the headline. But there is a bit of a back story. About seven months ago, following on from some home smoking success, I decided to try smoking some tuna. I got my brine ingredients together and also got my hands on some delicious tuna steaks. The photo above is testament to this. “So, what’s the problem?”, I hear you muse.

The ingredients

• 4 nice tuna steaks
• 1 tablespoon of Muscavado sugar
• 2 teaspoons of rock salt
• 1 teaspoon of peppercorns
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon of Lea and Perrins sauce
• 500 ml of water

I went about preparing a brine.

Perfect brine with tuna brining, as it does.

Everything except the tuna went into the brine. In fact, when it was made, the tuna went in too. The camera never lies. The brine was pretty perfect. I left the tuna in there for six hours. After which, I placed the tuna, on a rack, in the oven with fan but no heat for 45 minutes. This dried it nicely and left it with a perfect pedicle (dry yet slightly sticky coating). I prepared the smoker, adding a nice layer of wood dust to hot smoke the tuna.

Not a lot of dust needed to smoke this lovely tuna.

I added in the tuna and was ready to smoke it.

Lovely brined tuna ready to smoke. Everything is going so well…

I hot smoked the tuna for 15 minutes.

Wonderful smoked tuna. The aromas were fantastic.

Then I served it with some saffron rice and fresh green beans. It was delicious.

So, you ask; “What was the problem?”  For reasons best known to myself, I had decided that the cooked tuna didn’t look up to scratch. “It’s falling apart a bit.” I muttered to myself. “I should really have cooked it a little less. Though, it was beautiful.” I filed the photos away and looked at them every few weeks, repeatedly deciding that the final shot was not good enough to post. Eventually, last evening, I asked the wife for her opinion.

She told me that the picture was pretty well perfect. In fact, she told me; “Get over yourself. It’s lovely.” I hope you agree.