hello this is chef john from food wishes dot-com with spicy tuna rice bowl that's
where i welcome to another installment of recipes the chef john makes when he's
short on time and inspiration but he still wants something delicious and
nutritious and comfort he needs and this simple but amazing spicy tuna rice bowl
is absolutely perfect for those occasions so with that let's stop
talking in the third person and go ahead and get started by making a batch a
really nice rice and for that I'm gonna add 1 cup of long grain rice to this
ancient and amyl glazed cast-iron pot but any similarly sized pot will work as
long as it's heavy-duty okay that's one of the keys to making really good rice
and then to that we will add a cup and a half a nice cold fresh water and by the
way there is no need to wash or rinse the rice first I paid for all that
starch and I want to eat all of it but what we will do is sell that rice down
by giving this a few swirls before we head to the stove and if you're
wondering with that little brown thing that's floating is I'm not sure but I
really hope it's just a piece of rice husk in any event I removed it on the
way to the stove and what we'll do is place this over medium-high heat and
wait for it to come up to a simmer and in the meantime what we won't do is stir
this in fact it no point during this cooking process will this rice get
stirred oh it's gonna get fluffed with a fork later but at no point do we stir
rice while it's cooking which is hard for me because I love to stir things and
then what's gonna happen just as soon as this stuff starts to boil is that we're
gonna turn our heat down to low cover this tightly and let it simmer on low
for exactly 15 minutes and then what we'll do while that's working is go
ahead and assemble the rest of our ingredients most of which you're already
gonna have near pantry and we will start with some canned or in my case jarred
tuna preferably packed in olive oil because that stuff generally tastes
better and a little extra fats always nice and before we add the rest of our
ingredients I think it's a good idea if we break this up a little bit and by the
way if you want to be a little more civilized feel free to use a couple
forks but since I'm moving a camera around I thought it would be a great
idea to have tuna and olive oil all over my fingers and then what we'll do once
we have that not so carefully crumbled is go ahead and toss in some red bell
pepper with some jalapeno pepper I'm also gonna
toss in some sliced green onions and then for our very simple dressing we're
gonna do some seasoned rice vinegar and a fairly generous amount then we'll also
do a couple tablespoons of soy sauce as well as a little touch of sesame oil
followed by as much hot sauce as you see fit and in case you're keeping score at
home I'm using sriracha and then last but not least the freshly squeezed juice
of half a lemon and that's it once everything's in we'll just take a fork
and mix it until thoroughly combined and what's very cool about this recipe is
that theoretically the 15 minutes it takes the rice to cook should be just
enough time to get this all together in fact I always try to turn it into some
kind of game like I'm in one of those spy movies and there's a bomb connected
to a timer that's gonna go off in 15 minutes and destroy the world if I don't
complete the task so just an idea to make dicing a pepper seem a little more
exciting but anyway speaking of timers once our
15 minutes is up in the timer rings what we'll do is immediately turn off the
heat at which point we're just gonna let our
rice sit there resting for 10 minutes all right so do not remove the lid and
do not peek that rice needs to sit for 10 minutes to finish cooking and yes if
you didn't finish your prep in the 15 minutes and the world blew up in our
imaginary scenario you do have 10 minutes here to finish things off and
then what we'll do after our rice has rested for 10 minutes is uncover it and
give it a quick fluffing with a fork ok what we're doing here is releasing
all that steam to stop the cooking process as well as start to separate the
grains by breaking up all the bigger clumps and then after about 30 seconds
of fluffing we can go ahead and transfer this in and then simply stir it all
together with a spoon until everything's perfectly and evenly mixed and you'll
see even though this looks a little sticky and clumpy when you start as you
stir and all that dressing gets mixed in virtually every single one of those
grains of rice is going to separate not to mention soak in a little bit of
that dressing and if everything goes according to plan
as soon as everything's been mixed in it should hopefully look something like
this and at this point all we have to do is
taste it for seasoning since you might want it spicier or a little bit saltier
which you could do with more soy or a little pinch of salt but mine was
perfect which means we can grab a bowl and serve it up and I decided to finish
mine off with a few and chilly flakes and a few more sliced
green onions and that's it my spicy tuna rice bowl is ready to enjoy and it might
be kind of hard to see but what we have here is pretty much equal parts rice and
tuna by weight which for me gives us the perfect balance between protein and
starch and while this might remind some people of a fried rice dish
this really is significantly lighter and actually very low on the fat content but
that doesn't mean it's not satisfying it is very satisfying
not to mention like most rice dishes very comforting oh and another one of
the many great things about this recipe it's perfect to enjoy warm like this but
also vantastic at room top as well as cold like a rice salad okay so the
serving temp is up to you I mean you are after all the Heidi Fleiss of your spicy
tuna rice and speaking of tricks if you use a little less dressing and or use a
shorter grain of rice and make this a little stickier you can actually press
it together and form it into balls and then maybe roll it in sesame seeds which
makes for an incredible handheld snack which is perfect for bringing to work or
even something like a picnic and I forget the Japanese name for those but I
know they do have a name and there are many casual comfort food recipes that
are fast cheap and easy to put together and many of them taste like it but not
this stuff all right this stuff is so satisfying and bright and flavorful and
vibrant it does not taste at all like something you just threw together
because you didn't know what else to make which in reality is probably
exactly what we did but anyway that's it what I'm calling a spicy tuna rice bowl
or as we called it before the Millennials were editing all the food
magazines spicy tuna rice but whether you serve it in a bowl or on a plate
or like I said roll it into balls which is also great no matter how you enjoy
this I really do hope you give it a try soon so please follow the links below
for the ingredient amounts a principle written recipe and much more info as
usual and as always enjoy
you