Ahi Tuna Fiesta

One day in Kona, half of our group went to deep sea fishing and bought back an 80-lb whole tuna, which was the smallest of one of their catches. It puzzled me why the guide wouldn’t just give them the fish for free, because after all, my friends did work hard to ring it in and he got to keep the rest two for free. At least, he sold the tuna to us for around $3USD/lb, $300USD in total, a lot cheaper than market price (the tuna poke at Hibachi was around $20USD/lb). The head of the tuna was as big as our heads!

Anyhow, so our task for the next 3-4 days was to divide and conquer 80lb of tuna. We had 9 people in the house, minus my boyfriend because he hated seafood, which left us with 10lb of tuna per person per day. Seems doable?.

Our first night of tuna feast…

We made tuna steak, sashimi, ceviche, and poke (I made the ceviche✌). The rest was made by the boys of the group, lol. Omg, the tuna was SO fresh! And with it being our first day of tuna, we inhaled those dishes.

The next day, Yan used the tuna head to make soup base for ramen. He stewed it for at least 4 hours, which made the whole house wreak of fish. Pro tip: cook tuna head outdoor or under very strong vents. The broth was very tasty and umami. We used it for some ramen at night and we fried the tuna roe.

I regret not taking pictures of the other meals as we made all the variations of tuna that we could think of – tuna burgers, tuna stuffed peppers (really yummy), curry tuna, and more sashimi. By the third day, we were all so very sick of tuna? and didn’t want to see anything remotely related to tuna or fish. And we still had about 1/4 left in the fridge?.

The tuna was super delicious, at first. Too bad the guy wouldn’t sell us only half of the tuna, 80lb was just way too much.

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