Oh. my. good. lord.
This MEAL, you guys, is magic.
It’s magically impressive, magically speedy, magically delightful, but most of all magically easy. You would not believe how easy this jaw-dropping seared tuna tower really is.
Honestly, by FAR the hardest part of this recipe is chopping the tuna into little pieces. No joke.
I thought I’d give this a try after seeing a sort of similar recipe with some shrimpies, but knowing I can’t force poor Preston to try shrimp I thought I’d sub with his favorite (and my favorite) version of seafood – seared tuna.
Good call, Leslie. Good call.
I seriously have nothing else to say about this awesomeness. I’ve used store-bought sauces and also made my own. They’re both stupid simple sauces to make at home and super cheap, but of course buying store-bought just makes life easier sometimes. Your call.
- 1/4 C sriracha
- 1/4 C toasted sesame oil
- 1/2 C ponzu sauce
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 half-pound sashimi grade ahi tuna steak
- 1 t avocado oil (or another high-heat oil)
- 1 avocado
- 1 1/2 C cooked rice (you’ll pack it down so you have 1 C when it’s packed, that’s about 1 1/2 C unpacked)
- scallions for garnish
- 2 T mayo
- 1 T sriracha
- 1/2 C soy sauce
- 1/2 C mirin
- 1/4 C sugar
- Stir sauce ingredients together. Divide it in half, and set half of it aside. You’ll use half of it as the marinade. Just roughly chop the garlic, add it to the sauce, and add the steak to the sauce. Marinate for about 2 hours, flipping halfway to make sure it’s evenly coated.
- Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil, and then add the tuna steak. Sear for 60 seconds per side, and quickly remove from the heat.
- Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and simmer until it reduces into about one third of its original volume. Set aside and allow to cool.
- Stir both ingredients together.
- Let the tuna steak rest just a couple minutes, and then chop into small pieces. Toss with the other half of the sauce.
- Spray a one-cup measuring cup (a dry measure) with cooking spray. Pack half of the tuna into the bottom of the cup, so that it goes about a third of the way up the cup. Then cube your avocado and pack half the avocado in the measuring cup on top of the tuna. Then pack in the rice. You can let the rice stick above the top of the measuring cup, just make sure that it’s fairly flat so that it can sit nicely on your plate.
- Turn the measuring cup over on a plate and gently remove it for your little tower!
- Put the mayo and eel sauce each in their own little ziploc bag and cut a tiny corner off so you can make a pretty drizzle (I actually just used a spoon for the eel sauce in the pictures, which works fine for thinner sauces. But I prefer the way it looks with the ziploc bag.) Drizzle both sauces over the tower and the plate.
- Garnish with chopped scallions. Sesame seeds (white and/or black) would look nice too.
- ** You can often find spicy mayo and eel sauce at the sushi counter of your local grocery store; you don’t have to make them at home.
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