Healthy Cooking Part I: Seared Ahi Tuna With Rice and a Cucumber Salad

I have noticed that while sometimes cooking from scratch enables you to control ingredients and create healthier dishes, it can often have the opposite effect (see BBQ Mac & Cheese). I was having a conversation yesterday with Rachael about how anybody can make four sticks of butter and cheese taste delicious. The real challenge is to make somebody eating healthy food not miss the unhealthy ingredients.

With that came the idea to do a series of posts about cooking healthy. This blog is not taking this direction permanently, nor is every post in the foreseeable future going to focus solely on healthy cooking. But hopefully by reading these posts you will try different flavor combinations using healthy ingredients and enjoy your meal just as much.

Seared Ahi Tuna with Rice and Cucumber Salad

Using my trusty Flavor Bible, I developed this dish and tried it for the first time last night. I first marinated two Sashimi-grade tuna steaks in 3 tablespoons of soy sauce and 3 tablespoons of sesame oil (I found this simple marinade online) for about 5 hours. About 4 hours into the marinating, I started on the cucumber salad by roughly dicing an English Cucumber, 2 roma tomatoes (remove the seeds and juices), and 1/4 of a red onion.

Soak the red onion in white vinegar for a couple of minutes and then rinse with water. This removes that sharp raw onion taste that is so harsh. It is a trick I saw on a show with Rick Bayless and it works wonderfully.

Combine and toss all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Dress the salad with about 4 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar (or more to taste), salt & pepper, the juice of 1/2 a lemon, and 2-3 tablespoons olive oil. Let the the ingredients absorb the juice, vinegar and olive oil for about an hour before serving. Although I did not use it in my salad last night, this dish would also be fantastic with crumbled feta.

This was my first time attempting to sear tuna. Usually when I purchase ahi tuna, I either make sushi or a spicy tuna poke (which I will write about at a later date). I thought this would be a nice change of pace.

I looked online for proper searing instructions and generally found that for seared tuna, you cook each side of the fish for about 2-3 minutes. As you might imagine, my DVR is filled with cooking shows, so I also searched it for any chef that had recently done an episode on tuna. Turns out, I had a "Boy Meets Grill" episode by Bobby Flay. He recommended cooking for about 4 minutes on one side and 5 seconds on the other.

Another thing he mentioned, was that sashimi grade tuna is best rare to medium rare, and should never be cooked more than medium. So taking this advice, I decided to combine both methods. I cooked the tuna for about 3-4 minutes over medium heat on one side and 1 minute on the other. I added 1-2 tablespoons of sesame seeds, salt, & pepper to the tuna just before placing on the grill pan. Note, to get the nice criss-cross texture on the fish slightly turn the tuna about 2 minutes into the searing. Be careful not to turn it too early! Moving fish too quickly on a grill is what causes it to stick -- you want to make sure that the crust is adequately formed before touching it.

I cooked this fish on a grill pan on my stove-top, but you could easily prepare it outside on your grill. Because the marinade contains oil (as does the tuna itself), I decided just to lightly coat the grill pan with some cooking spray.

Enjoy!