An easy way to impress your friends!
If you need a quick starter that’s super easy to prepare and still impress any guest, we have a quick one for you: Tuna Tartare. It might sound super complicated and expensive, but we have a few tips how to keep it affordable and how to prepare it in less than 20 minutes.
Before we start, one note about tuna: If you want you can get fresh tuna, and I am sure it will boost up the taste by a bit. But honestly, I have always prepared it with frozen tuna, and it is just so much cheaper and way easier to get (nearly every supermarket has frozen tuna). And, what’s more many supermarkets actually defrost their seafood and then sell it to you as “fresh”, which means you can get the frozen one anyways. And don’t worry, its completely safe to eat frozen tuna raw, even after defrosting it. Just make sure to defrost the tuna in advance, a few hours before you start preparing the recipe. And now let’s jump right into it:
Ingredients:
250g raw fresh or frozen tuna
1 ripe avocado
Juice of 1/2 lime
1-2 cm ginger
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 teaspoon of honey
2-3 small red chilis
1 handful coriander
Salt and pepper
Ciabatta (for serving and as a side) – Can be replaced by Baguette if need be
Preparation time: 15-20 minutes
1. Cut your tuna filets into small cubes (roughly 0.5 mm) and put them in a bowl. Do the same with the avocado but cut it into even smaller cubes. What I like doing is cutting the avocado into half (keeping the peel on) and then cutting the avocado inside the peel. Then you can simply take a spoon to scoop the tiny cubes out of the peel and add them to the tuna (Yes, it sounds weird but I think it makes it so much easier).
2. Add the juice of ½ lime to the tuna-avocado mixture. Then add 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of honey and some salt and pepper. Obviously, you can experiment with the quantities a bit, so that it meets your taste, but sticking to the quantities above should give you a nice balance.
3. Cut up 2-3 small red chilis and add them as well. Obviously, this depends on whether you like it spicy or not and on how spicy your chilis are. Try them first, because sometimes you might get really spicy ones and then I wouldn’t add 2-3. I also like adding the seeds as well as it adds more spice, but if you want to be a bit more cautious, remove the seeds before you add the chili.
4. Then cut up a handful of coriander to add to you tartar as well. Take roughly 1-2 centimeters of fresh ginger and grate it finely. One tip at this point: If I were you, I wouldn’t bother with peeling the ginger first. The grater will do most of the work for you and you will be only left with the inside bits anyways. Then add your grated ginger to the tartar as well.
5. Now mix your tartar thoroughly until everything is combined well. I like mixing it with a spoon so that I can basically squish the cubes of avocado into even finer pieces. Then put your tartar into the fridge until you serve it (I would suggest for roughly 30 min, but you can also immediately eat it if you are more impatient).
6. If you can resist for a few more minutes you can use the time while the tartar is in the fridge to toast your ciabatta. Cut your ciabatta into 2 cm thick slices and put it in the oven for 5-10 min (depends on your oven). Take it out as soon as the ciabatta starts to turn crispy on the outside.
7. We finally arrived at the best part: Serve you tuna tartar with a bit of coriander and the ciabatta and enjoy!
I hope that you can enjoy this recipe! It is one of my favourites as it makes for a great and light starter that will for sure impress your guests. And one of the best things is that it is super easy to prepare and will for sure not take more than 20 minutes.
Good luck with cooking and send us some photos of how it turns out for you! Bon Appetit.
written by Simon
