Saturday, February 11, 2017

"Sashimi at home" superfrozen tuna and salmon 超冷凍鮪と鮭の刺身

At the nearby Whole Foods grocery store, we saw a frozen case with packages of tuna and salmon sashimi. I immediately recognized the products which are from "Sushi At home". This company appears to be a fish whole seller. Although they advertise their tuna, salmon, imitation crab, butterfly shrimp, and wasabi products on their website, those products can not be purchased directly from them.  They have to be purchased from a retail outlet. Whole Foods in our area carried tuna, salmon, imitation crab  and wasabi. We bought the tuna and salmon to try them out. The picture below shows the tuna and salmon sashimi I served.



The difference between the frozen yellowfin sashimi block we get from our Japanese grocery store and this item are two fold; first, this is not carbon monoxide treated and second it is super-frozen* at -76F. To get the color right, the tuna needs to be thawed as per the instructions.

*"Fish for sushi" called the same or similar process "Proton frozen".


The Atlantic salmon was also super frozen.


The pictures below show both the tuna and salmon blocks thawed. The color of the tuna was more natural dark red instead of the bright red of carbon monoxide treated fish.


It was a very cold day (the high did not go above freezing) and we decided to have  warm sake.


As before we placed the sake container in hot water bath to keep it warm.


The tuna had a firm consistency and was better than the one we get from our Japanese grocery store. The salmon was very disappointing. It had a very soft mushy consistency and did not taste that good. The salmon sashimi from Catalina was much better. I decided to make carpaccio from the leftover salmon the next day rather than serving it as sashimi.  From the remaining tuna, I made tuna and natto.


Instead of "hikiwari" natto ひきわり納豆, I used whole bean natto. As before, using my natto mixing contraption, I mixed the natto very well and seasoned with the seasoning packets that came with the natto (this came frozen). The small cubes of tuna were marinated with soy sauce briefly before mixing.


We liked this dish. Somehow, the natto flavor was better and tuna in this preparation was quite palatable.

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