It’s a fancy restaurant-quality meal you can easily make at home using sashimi-grade tuna. Served with a simple homemade dipping sauce, seared tuna is an impressive restaurant-style dish that’s easy to make at home. If you enjoy fresh tuna’s bold flavor and meaty texture, you will love this easy recipe! It’s ready fast, making it ideal for a delicious weeknight dinner.
Recipe Card
For the sauce:
Reduced-sodium soy sauce: Or you can use a gluten-free alternative. Fresh lemon juice: It’s best to use freshly squeezed juice and not bottled juice. Minced garlic: I often use jarred minced garlic, but I highly recommend mincing fresh garlic cloves in this recipe. The flavor is much more pronounced. Honey: Just 1 teaspoon to balance out the other flavors. Crushed red peppers: Add subtle heat and an extra layer of flavor to the sauce.
For the tuna:
Ahi tuna steaks: They should be 1.5 inches thick and sashimi-grade since we will keep the middle rare. Kosher salt and black pepper: I use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt and freshly ground black pepper. Avocado oil: An oil with a neutral taste, very suitable for frying because of its high smoke point. If using a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet, you can skip the oil.
Whisk together the sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. Cut the fish into 1⁄4-inch-thick slices and serve it with the dipping sauce. Generally, a 1.5-inch-thick steak should be cooked for about 2 minutes per side over medium-high heat. A thinner steak (¾ to 1 inch) will need 1-1.5 minutes per side. This is the type of recipe where there’s no escaping the need to be flexible; loosely follow the recipe but stay very aware of what’s happening in your kitchen with your ingredients and equipment. Ideally, tuna steak should be cooked to rare or medium rare, but I should note that the CDC advises cooking fish to an internal temperature of 145°F. Although this dish is usually served as an appetizer in restaurants, I like to make enough to serve it as a main course alongside Asian cabbage salad, Asian cucumber salad, Asian Brussels sprouts, or cabbage stir-fry. Sometimes, I serve it on top of mixed greens, drizzled with the sauce mentioned above, or sesame oil.
