Description

Maguro. (Tuna.) – Hiragana: まぐろ, Katakana: マグロ , Kanji: 鮪 – “Bluefin Tuna.” aka: “Honmaguro.”, “True Tuna.”) – Season: All Seasons.

• About this fish: Today Tuna is often called the “King of the Fish” but that title of royalty wasn’t always so; in fact tuna only gained its title recently in the last hundred or so years! – In the Edo period (1603-1868); Tuna itself was considered ‘Low grade & Cheap.’ (not typically eaten as it would spoil quite quickly, its oil was often used as lamp-oil & fertilizer.) However, that largely changed with the arrival of convenient & reliable home refrigeration & “Ultra-low temperature freezing” (Which was invented in the 1940’s and quickly spread widely across restaurants world wide!) Today, Tuna is highly prized by fishermen & chefs alike for its large size & amount of meat; it’s said that One 400 pound Bluefin Tuna can dish out up to 10,000 servings of nigiri sushi! So, Auctioneers at Fish Markets compete & bid for the best & biggest fish; which sell in the general price range of $80-$600 (often more, because it’s an auction; sometimes these fish can go for cartoonish amounts, into the thousands!) it’s often said that a day without tuna is a day that a restaurant simply cannot open! – Despite all of the high-praise for these fish; in modern-slang; to refer to someone as a “maguro” is a bit of a sexist insult: like calling someone “lazy”, “boring” or “unenthusiastic in bed.“ Supposedly likening their partners to the rows of dead tunas sold at fish auctions! However, tuna are hard working fish, they never stop swimming from the moment they are born! so, I’d suppose the opposite could be true too!

As a Nigiri, Maguro typically comes in three different cuts:

Akami. – “赤身” (Red Lean Meat.) Tasty, firm, lean, red meat. if you’re ordering Tuna in Japan, this is what you’ll usually get (unless you specify that you want one of the other types!) Akami is the firm back muscle meat of a tuna, well toned, because of their lives spent swimming nonstop!
Chu-toro. – “中トロ” – (Middle Meat.) A blend of the other two’s firmness, located towards the middle of the fish, towards the tail, it is the least plentiful and most likely to be served in a maki roll or fried.
Otoro. – “大トロ” – (Fatty Belly.) – The pinkest, fattiest part of the tuna & thus the most expensive, it melts in your mouth!=

[Sticker art by @Samkalensky, Part of my Nigiri Sushi/Foodlore collections.]