WHOLE TUNA breakdown for SUSHI

I'm Anthony Pascal. I am the chef and owner of Psycho Sushi in San Diego, California. Today, we're gonna break down a Pacific big eye tuna. So these tuna have some pretty strong scales right through here that'll make it a little difficult for us to make our cuts later. So I'm just gonna come in with my knife and take these scales off first and get them out of the way. Right now, I'm just gonna open up his belly. At Psycho Sushi, we are committed to using as much wild-caught local seafood as we can. This tuna is from the American longline vessel, Heather G, that I bought from Catalina Offshore Products here in San Diego. Fresh out of the water, never frozen, never processed, never been on an airplane. The next step would be to make an incision here to separate the collar. And now I'm gonna come in and make a long incision down the side of the fish to separate my shoulder loin from my belly loin. Gonna make sure my cut goes all the way down to the spine. Next, I'm gonna come along the dorsal edge, make an incision all the way to the head. And again, I'm gonna put my knife as far as it'll go until I find the spine. I'm just gonna connect the two cuts to remove the loin. Up here towards the head, some bigger bones. We just do a quick little chop. Our next step is to take the belly loin off. So I'll just kinda turn the fish so I can get in here. And again, I'm just going to bring my knife through gently until I can find the spine. Next, I'm gonna come from the tail, cut through the spine. Nice and easy, I don't wanna force anything to get my knife through. And then I can lift off my belly loin, which will contain the comma, the belly, and the loin. After the two loins come off, there will inevitably be some meat left on the bone. And that is not a bad thing. I'm gonna take a spoon and I am going to gently scrape this meat off of here. This stuff is still perfectly fresh, just as good as the loins that we pulled off. And I'm gonna reserve this for doing spicy tuna or any sort of tartar that we use on the sushi bar. Our next step is to remove the spine and the skeleton from the under half of the fish. To do that, I'm gonna put my knife right here underneath the anal fin and just break through the skin all the way down to the tail. So I wanna make sure that I'm doing this soft and gently. And I don't wanna put too much pressure on my knife because that will cause the meat to tear apart. My next step would be to do the same process on the other side. My first step will be just to put the knife and just break the skin to get all the way through. And then I'm gonna come back, holding the knife very gently and not applying much pressure and do as many cuts as it takes to get my knife all the way into the skeleton. The reason for this is if I try to do the knife too hard and force everything, it's gonna cause the meat to break apart. Our next step would be to come underneath the tail so I can really finish separating the spine and the skeleton from the rest of the fish. Again, I'm gonna take my spoon to come back and scrape the residual meat from the skeleton. We can use it for a lot of things. Spicy tuna rolls, hand rolls are very, very popular. That's what this is for. And it really helps us to practice zero waste, total utilization of the fish. The next step is very simple. I'm just gonna take my knife and run the length of the fish and separate the next shoulder loin from belly loin. Now that we've broken down the tuna into four loins, we're gonna separate a little bit further and remove the comma and belly from the belly loin. I'm gonna break through the membrane all the way down to the skin here to separate my belly. I'll put my knife in and kind of break through some bones here to remove the loin. I'm gonna do one last cut to come around under. This is one of my favorite parts of the tuna. The meat in here is beautiful. Again, it's just in the wrong shape to make sushi out of. So I'm gonna take this whole piece, I'm gonna throw it right on the grill, open flame. I'm gonna serve this with some rice and some pickled vegetables and some sheets of seaweed. And everyone can really kind of customize this, make their own little hand rolls or tacos. This is a great, great piece of this fish. In order to get this belly ready for the sushi case, I'm just gonna come in here and remove this top membrane. Again, I'm gonna hold my knife very loosely in my hand and I'm gonna make gentle cuts, as many as it takes. I don't wanna force my knife because it will rip the meat apart. When I get to the end, I'm just gonna turn my knife down and come through and break through the skin. And this is big eye belly for nigiri and sashimi. For all of the cuts that we make, it's very important to A, have a very sharp knife and B, and I've stressed this a couple of times so far, to really not force your cuts and to make soft, gentle cuts. If it takes more than one, that's fine, but we really wanna let the knife do the work here and not rip the meat apart. The best way to accomplish that is to really hold this very loosely in your hand. You know, the more I'm kind of gripping this and holding on for dear life, the propensity I'll have to push through the meat and rip it apart. Our next step is to break the belly loin down into blocks. So we'll have to measure the size of the blocks and that is dictated by the plate that the fish goes on inside the sushi case. And I want the fish to be the perfect size of the length of the plate. So I can just kind of eyeball my loin here and make my first cut and break this down to half. Next, we will break down our shoulder loin into blocks, the same way that we did the belly. I'm going to start at the head and make an incision and measure from there, okay? And I'm just gonna go enough to start out and then I'm gonna come back and follow my incisions all the way through the skin. And I will be left with two beautiful blocks for sushi and two end pieces that I can cook, grill, scrape for spicy tuna, cut into pokey cubes, or do whatever I want. My next step is to break down my tuna blocks into saku. For that, I will need to remove the bloodline and for that, I'm gonna switch knives to something a little bit longer and a little bit straighter. I'm going to make an incision at the edge of the bloodline and do very short, deliberate strokes with just a little bit of a curl at the end, at which point I will remove the bloodline. I'm not gonna throw this away. This piece is a little bit gamey to put in the sushi case and eat raw. So instead, we're gonna marinate it and grill it and it turns into a very hearty and yummy piece of fish, similar to steak. My last step on the bloodline is just to remove any bones and sinew that might be left on the fish. A sharp knife here will make this job a lot easier. Still, I don't wanna force my cuts because I don't want the fish to break apart. The next step is to cut down the remaining block into saku. Saku are the small rectangular cuts of fish that you see in sushi cases. I measure the width of my saku based on the width of my plate. I will make a horizontal cut along the top of my tuna block, very slowly and gently to remove the top saku. From there, I will measure what will become the height of my saku, put my knife and bring down straight all the way to the skin. I can turn the block, come in from the bottom and get a perfectly shaped tuna saku. Each time, I will come up just a little bit from the bottom in order to account for the shape of the sinew on the block of tuna. We separate the strong sinew from the saku so our sashimi and nigiri cuts will not be too chewy. We can use a spoon to scrape the remaining meat off the skin that will again go into spicy tuna or tartar. We can repeat the same process of removing the bloodline and breaking down the blocks into saku, starting with this block from the belly. Now that we've broken our fish down from a whole fish, we are going to make nigiri cuts and sashimi cuts. So I can do both cuts from one tuna saku or really one saku from any fish. I'll just use different sides and what I'll try to do is identify the head and the tail and my sashimi cuts will come from the head side, my nigiri cuts will come from the tail side. On this particular tuna saku, one side is a little bit wider than the other so I can identify that this is my head side and this is my tail side. The reason we do that is because normally the sinew will be a little bit stronger as we get to the tail but we want our sashimi pieces to be as nice and uniform as possible. The last thing I'm gonna concentrate on is the grain of the sinew so I can identify my very fine sinew lines going from this corner to that corner and I wanna make sure that I am always cutting against the grain and never with the grain. We'll start with our sashimi cuts from the head side of the saku. For these cuts, I'm going to use a block method. I will just start with the butt of my knife from the tip of the tuna and I will just gently and slowly pull the knife back towards me and I will move it with my knife and lay it down. For the nigiri cuts, I will start on the other end of the tuna and I will use the same end of my knife. I will identify the proper angle, I will start at the butt and again, gently pull the knife towards me. When I get to almost the bottom of the fish, I'm gonna turn my knife vertical and finish the cut and I'll repeat this each time. By angling my knife down at the end, I create a nice solid piece here on the edge of the tuna to make it look a little thicker and a little more solid. Again, the most important thing is to not hold the knife too hard in your hand to have a very loose grip which will ensure a nice, smooth, even cut. Inevitably, we'll be left with a little odds and ends from the tuna. This is called kuzu. Again, this is just as good as the rest of the tuna that we use, it's just in the wrong shape for nigiri or sashimi. So I can chop this for spicy tuna, I can make poke, I can make a salad, I can do whatever I want with my kuzu except for throw it away because we are practicing zero waste, total utilization of this tuna. From here, we're gonna plate a simple tuna sashimi and tuna nigiri. We are gonna start with some julienne daikon, a shiso leaf. I'm gonna present the tuna and then I'm going to garnish it with orange sumiso that we have in-house here at Saiko Sushi and finish it with a little green herbs. For this tuna nigiri, I'm using only enough water to coat the outside of my hands and I'm ridding myself of the excess water before I start forming the nigiri. I am going to use my sushi rice and shape it into a very loose ball. And if I am too strong when I form this ball, it's gonna be chewy and too dense. Properly formed nigiri will have a bit of an arc shape to it and this is to create a visual of fish still being alive and swimming in the ocean. This is how we like to break down and use tuna here at Saiko Sushi. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. Otherwise, come check us out here in North Park in Coronado in San Diego.