Fish
Tuna
The one fish that is worse for being cooked through, and the only fish in this catalogue treated like a steak.
What it does in fast-moving hot air
Tuna muscle is dense, dark and almost fat-free, and its proteins set hard. Cooked through it becomes dry and grainy in a way no amount of care recovers, which is why the one published time is only a few minutes for a steak of over a hundred grams — enough to colour the outside and leave the centre rare. The surface browns fast because there is very little surface water to drive off first. Thickness decides everything: a thin steak has no centre left to keep rare by the time the outside has colour, which makes it the wrong cut for this appliance rather than a shorter cook.
Why the cut matters
A tuna steak is cooked to a preference rather than to a finish, in the same way a beef steak is. That makes it the odd one out among the fish here: white fish and salmon both have a right answer, and tuna has a decision.
Cooking pages
- Tuna steak — One manufacturer grills four steaks of 110–170g each for four to six minutes; it does not say fresh or frozen.
This page gives no cooking answer of its own. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. Any figure mentioned above is one manufacturer’s, and the page for the cut says which machine, quantity and state it was printed for, or that the manufacturer named no state.