When I was a student away from home, I often showed off my cooking skills and introduced the delicious dishes of my hometown to friends from many provinces and cities. Among them, tuna dipped in vinegar is one of the dishes that my friends praised as the most delicious.
I was born and raised in the coastal area. Knowing that I like sea fish, when I went to school far from home, my mother often bought fish that were just caught at sea, iced and packaged in boxes to send to Ho Chi Minh City for me. Tuna is a fish caught all year round, priced reasonably, so it often appeared in my student meals.
Tuna can be processed into many familiar dishes such as tuna vermicelli, tuna fried with fish sauce, fragrant braised tuna... To change the taste, I occasionally make tuna dipped in vinegar. This dish is quite elaborate, takes more time and stages than other dishes.
Tuna used to make dishes dipped in vinegar is usually tuna, weighing from 1kg or more. To make the fish meat chewy and delicious, you should choose fish with clear eyes and bright red gills, when gently pressed on the fish body, you can feel good elasticity.
The ingredients for making tuna dipped in vinegar are quite familiar. In addition to tuna, I prepare coconut water, orange juice, vinegar, garlic, lemongrass, chili, spices to season with mustard greens, mangoes, and herbs to eat with.
After cleaning the tuna, I fillet it into thin bite-sized pieces, then wrap it in aluminum foil and place it on ice to keep it fresh. Then, put a pot on the stove, add a little peanut oil and heat it up, then sauté minced garlic and lemongrass until fragrant.
Next, add coconut water and vinegar and cook until boiling, then add orange juice, season to taste to have a harmonious sweet and sour taste. To make the dipping sauce even more delicious, I often use pure rice vinegar and especially indispensable orange juice to enhance the aroma of the dish.
Depending on each person's taste, the dipping sauce served with this dish can be prepared in a variety of ways. The simplest is sweet and sour chili fish sauce or fermented fish sauce mixed with minced pineapple.
If you want to eat the true flavor of my hometown coastal people, you can use tuna bones to simmer with boiling water until soft. Then sauté garlic, scallions, minced tomatoes until fragrant, then filter fish bone broth and cook, season, add chili and tapioca starch. Cook until the dipping sauce is slightly thick and complete.
Next, prepare an alcohol stove to keep the vinegar broth hot and arrange all ingredients and dipping sauce on the table. When eating, each piece of tuna is quickly dipped in the vinegar broth for about 30 seconds to maintain sweetness and chewiness, then rolled with mustard greens, mangoes, herbs and dipped in sauce.
The sweetness of the fish, the mild sourness of the vinegar mixed with the rich dipping sauce made my friends all gasp and praise it as delicious. Therefore, occasionally in online conversations, my friends still often recall the moment of gathering to prepare and enjoy that tuna dipped in vinegar.
