I love Poke bowls, but I’ve come to find that not all Poke joints are equal. Because of the constant disappointment when I get it at stores with the watered out man handled tuna and poor ingredients, its always a safe bet to just make this at home. Tastes great, great for the pocket, and you can rest assure you’ve taken the right measures to ensure you and your fam are eating the best ingredients.
What you’ll need:
- Wakame and Hijiki seaweed that’s been soaking and washed a few times since there will be traces of sand (a little goes a long way..you’ll see this after it expands!) If you’re in the Seattle area, Asian markets like H-Mart and Uwajimaya always seem to have these in stock. If you want to skip this, reach for your toasted seaweed sheets and crumble them in when you serve instead of mixing it in with your poke.
- High quality fresh tuna, deep frozen wild tuna, or sashimi grade refrigerated tuna. Ahi or yellow tail are both fine. I find that stores like Grocery Outlet often times have major steals on deep frozen wild tuna for great deals! They’re usually frozen in individual ‘steaks’ that have very little sinew (chewy white parts). If you’re in Seattle, Uwaijmaya in Chinatown has amazing otoro, toro, and chutoro *drools* These are the fatty belly parts of the tuna — I’d reserve this for sashimi though. Looking for fresh sashimi grade tuna can be tricky since you don’t want to end up with a chunk of tuna with lots of chewy sinew– so take the time to find a piece of tuna with as little to no white sinew striations. Just a fun fact to note, but sushi/sashimi grade in America really just means its been flash or deep frozen for a certain amount of hours at a certain temperature to kill off parasites.
- Hawaiian/Alaea sea salt or a semi coarse sea salt. Since the seasoning is just salt and sesame oil, we really want to make sure we use a good quality salt here 🙂
- Good quality pure toasted sesame oil. Toasted because we want it nuttier than our fam yo 🙂
- Optional: Chopped sweet/green onions
- Sesame seeds/red pepper flakes for garnish
- Optional sides: hard smoked salmon tossed with some Kewpie mayo, crab salad (imitation crab tossed with mayo, pinch of salt), seaweed salad, any type of salmon roe, spring mix salad, avocados, cucumbers
- Dice your tuna into nice bite size pieces. You want a sharp knife that’ll go right through the fish to preserve the integrity of the fresh fish. Please don’t saw at your tuna.
- Wash, drain, and squeeze your soaked wakame and hijiki to remove any extra water to add to your tuna.
- Toss with sesame oil, Hawaiian sea salt, sesame seeds, and cayenne pepper. If you opted for diced sweet/green onions, add that now.
This is literally it! You can place some spring mix or rice as your bedding, top with your poke and whatever other sides you have available. Fresh tuna is something you don’t want to overpower with too many ingredients. The fish does speak for itself so good quality ingredients are all you need to worry about in creating this delicious treat. If you’d like a shoyu version, reduce your salt and replace with shoyu/soy sauce. If you’d like a spicy Kewpie version, create a mixture of kewpie and sriracha to toss your poke in first, taste, and then add your sesame oil and salt. With the mayo version, I highly suggest adding in tobiko roe.
Costco has an amazing deal on a huge tub of the same seaweed salad we all get at our sushi spots– it makes an amazing addition to poke night 🙂 Happy eating y’all. Hope you get in your protein gains V 🙂
