Food, Home & Lifestyle
Agemono: Tuna Karaage
Lesson time 11:25 min
Niki prepares a simple marinade for tuna in this dry-fried preparation. Learn when to fry fish and when to save it for sashimi.
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Topics include: Agemono: Tuna Karaage
Teaches Modern Japanese Cooking
Niki Nakayama of two-Michelin-starred n/naka teaches you how to honor fresh ingredients with her innovative take on Japanese home cooking techniques.
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[THEME MUSIC] NIKI NAKAYAMA: For this demo, we're going to do another type of fried dish called karaage style. And it's different from tempura in that it's a dry-based coating that we fry. And today, I wanted to show you this tuna that we started out with for our traditional sashimi tsukuri dish. Sometimes when you purchase fish you may find that you actually ended up with more than you wanted or more than you thought you were going to use. But that doesn't mean that the fish has gone to waste. So I'm going to show you how to repurpose this tuna and how to trim it so that you can use parts of it for deep frying while still maintaining the core of it for more sashimi, should you like to enjoy some more. So the thing about tuna is quite often it changes color quickly. And that's one of the things that always makes a Japanese chef nervous, but we always have a way around that. And when we look at this tuna, there's still a beautiful red part that's inside that we can continue to use. So we're just going to trim off the top layer, and we're going to marinate that and coat it with a little bit of potato starch and panko and turn it into delicious fried tuna karaage. And Carole, you can help me trim that into, like, julienne strips. So this part is still beautiful and still edible as sashimi. So Carole's going for a thickness that is about the same size as our tempura earlier, about 2 and 1/2 inches long and 1 inch wide and about half an inch thick. That we always find is a very delicious way of preparing fish for frying. We have a marinade today that is the leftover from our yakimono demonstration. And it is that 2:1:1 ratio recipe of two parts soy sauce, one part sake, one part mirin that we're going to layer on with different flavors. And what's wonderful about this marinade is because fish has already been marinated in it, that flavor also carries through and adds a different level of flavoring to the original mix. We're going to add one part dashi to it. And we're going to add a little bit of sesame oil and some grated garlic. Okay. We're going to go ahead and marinate the tuna into it. When I work with raw fish, I generally like wearing gloves when I'm breaking down the fish, because I feel that it's very important to not handle fish too much with just my hands. I think it's a great way to maintain the integrity of the fish. And then we're going to go ahead and let that marinate for about 40 minutes before we coat it with the potato starch and panko bit and fry it up. [MUSIC PLAYING] And now that our tuna has marinated, we're going to go ahead and put the potato starch into this tray. And now we're going to pour out the marinade. And then we're going to use this-- this opportunity to put some of this potato starch in there and sort of coat it lightly to absorb some of that marinating moisture. Put that here. So I chose tuna for this dish because cooked tuna is actually one of my f...
About the Instructor
The chef and owner of two-Michelin-starred restaurant n/naka in Los Angeles, Niki Nakayama is celebrated for her modern interpretation of kaiseki, a traditional Japanese cuisine. With her partner and sous chef, Carole, Niki will teach you techniques for preparing sashimi, tempura, perfect rice, and more. Learn how to make dishes that honor fresh ingredients as Niki shows you how to cook with care and gratitude.
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Niki Nakayama
Niki Nakayama of two-Michelin-starred n/naka teaches you how to honor fresh ingredients with her innovative take on Japanese home cooking techniques.
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