Homemade Preserved Tuna is so much better than the store bought one in cans.

The availability of fresh fish is only one of the advantages of living on an island. Especially if you know quite a few of the fishers pretty well, you’ll have access to absolutely freshly caught fishes.

That’s why I decided to prepare our own preserved tuna instead of buying cans in the supermarket.

Besides the fact that the tuna cans are much more expensive than the fresh fish I buy from my friends, preparing the preserved tuna myself also has the advantage that I can buy younger fish which means that it should have accumulated less harmful substances (like mercury) in its meat.

The process is fairly easy, and the result absolutely worth the effort. But let’s see for yourself:

Ingredients (for 3 small jars of preserved tuna):

• 1 fresh tuna (around 1 kg)
• Vegetable oil

Preparation:

If you can, ask your fish seller to gut the tuna and cut it into thick slices (about 1 inch thickness) for you. That way, you can save yourself the mess and the time to do it at home. Wash the tuna thoroughly before preserving it.

Line your steaming rack with baking paper or banana leaves and distribute the tuna slices on it. There should be some distance between the slices.

Steam the tuna slices for about 15 to 20 minutes. Probably less time would be ok, too, but since I’m living around the equator, I prefer to be safe than sorry.

In the meantime wash the jars that you will use for conserving the tuna. I usually also disinfect them with disinfection alcohol to make sure that everything is clean. The caps of the jars that you plan to use should have a rubber sealing because we’ll be boiling the entire glasses filled with tuna and oil in water for sterilization.

When the tuna has cooled down enough to handle it, remove the skin and bones from the slices. Work carefully to make sure that you’ve removed all bones before preserving the tuna. Otherwise, you could have nasty surprises later on your pizza, sandwich, salad or pasta sauce.

Place the tuna pieces inside the jars, and be careful not to fill them too much. The tuna should reach maximum a few millimeters below the upper ridge of the jars.

When you’ve distributed the tuna pieces, fill the jars with oil, but also leave out the topmost part where you screw the cap on.

Screw the caps onto the jars and line the bottom of a pot that is big enough to hold water to cover the jars by about 1,5 to 2 inches with a kitchen towel.

Place the jars upright inside the pot and fill it with the water. I usually place something heavy, like the pestle of my stone mortar on top of the jars to make sure that the boiling water doesn’t push them upwards or make them float.

Cover the pot and boil the jars for about 30 minutes on low heat.

When the jars are done boiling, carefully remove them from the water and place them upside down on a cutting board. Cover with a kitchen towel and let them cool down completely.

To be absolutely sure, I always store my tuna jars in the fridge before consuming them.

They should easily last for a month, but we never manage to save them for that long from being consumed.

By the way, instead of steaming the tuna, you can also cook it in water which you season with spices according to your taste. If cooking it in water, be careful to not let it boil at a too high temperature because this could cause the tuna to disintegrate into flakes. It’s best to cook the tuna for about 40 minutes at a temperature just around the boiling point.

If you don’t consume the whole jar at a time, you can take the desired amount of tuna out of a jar and store it for 1-2 days more in the fridge. Just make sure that the remaining tuna is still completely covered by the oil.

Have you already prepared preserved tuna yourself?
Or did you preserve other fish or meat?
I’m looking forward to reading about your experiences.