Poke Bowls

If your first choice on busy weeknights is to pick up your favorite poke bowl, good news! You can skip running out—these bowls are surprisingly easy to make at home. With marinated ahi tuna, a variety of colorful veggies and soft steamed rice, these healthy bowls are only limited to your imagination. Follow my top tips for making poke bowls, and for acing the star of the show: ahi tuna.

What People Are Saying:
"easy and yummy! perfect amount of marinade, and the recipe was easy to quarter for a single serving. This might be a new summer go-to recipe for me!" -sarahjs

How To Make Poke Bowls

INGREDIENTS

• Soy Sauce: Soy sauce is more or less a must have for any raw fish. The salty, umami packed flavor of the soy sauce lends itself beautifully to the fresh flavor of the tuna. I’m opting for low-sodium soy sauce here, because I don’t want the marinade to be too salty.
• Rice Vinegar: I think everyone should keep rice vinegar in their pantry. It serves a similar purpose to other vinegars, yet is sweeter and not quite as strong. Because of this, it works great with seafood dishes, and is a really simple way to take a recipe from good to great.
• Sesame Oil: This is going to add some of that nutty flavor we associate with sesame seeds, while also providing a silkiness to the fish that really heightens the already nice texture of cold, raw tuna.
• Ginger: Fresh ginger adds some sweetness and a slight bite to the dish, which is a welcome addition to some of the salty, smoky flavors present.
• Green Onions: Thinly sliced green onions add a pop of color and a nice mellow bite, both in texture and flavor, to the bowl. They are milder than bulb onions and also have a fresher, greener flavor.
• Toasted Sesame Seeds: While you can use regular, untoasted, sesame seeds in this bowl, the light smokiness and enhanced nuttiness of the sesame seeds when toasted is a very welcome addition to the palette that rounds out the flavors present.
• Ahi Tuna: If possible, opt for sushi grade ahi. Not all grocery stores carry sushi-grade (also called sashimi-grade) seafood, but if they do, go for it! This means it's meant to be eaten raw, so you know the quality is good.
• Rice: You can go for white or brown rice here, so choose your favorite. Rice helps to tie the dish together and fill out the meal.

STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS

To start off, prepare the marinade. In a large bowl, combine soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, red pepper flakes, green onions, and toasted sesame seeds. Add the fresh tuna into the marinade and toss to coat, making sure each piece of tuna is coasted completely. Then place the bowl in the fridge and let marinate for at least 15 minutes or up to 1 hour. The longer you allow the tuna to marinate, the stronger the flavor will be.

Once ready to serve, fill your serving bowls with rice, then top with the marinated tuna and toppings of your choice. Then garnish with green onion and sesame seeds and enjoy!

The full list of ingredients and instructions can be found in the recipe below.

What Is A Poke Bowl?

These colorful, customizable bowls seem to have been everywhere recently, but poke bowls can truly be found all over Hawaii, where they originated. “Poke” refers to cut raw, marinated fish; in these bowls, poke is layered on top of rice with cut veggies and often a combination of sauces. They’re completely versatile, and surprisingly easy to make at home!

Recipe Tips

• Go fresh, not frozen. In most other cases, buying frozen fish is totally cool. In this case though, freezing can compromise the texture and appearance of the tuna, so better to go fresh if possible.
• Eliminate the white streaks. Choose tuna steaks with as little connective tissue (those long, white streaks) as possible, and use a paring knife to remove as much of it as you can before chopping your tuna into bite-size pieces.

Poke Bowl Variations

This is my favorite combo of ingredients, but feel free to swap in your favorites or whatever you’ve got in the fridge. For the base, you could serve it over sushi-style rice or salad. Low carb? Swap the rice for cauliflower rice or zoodles. Not a fan of cucumbers or edamame? Even fruit chunks like mango or pineapple would be great in this! Add some crunchy fried onions or shallots and a drizzle of spicy mayo at the end for the true restaurant experience. The key is to aim for color and variety, but the world really is your oyster with these bowls.

Storage

Poke, like all fish dishes, raw and cooked, is best eaten fresh. In fact, the fresher the better! However, if you do have leftovers they will last for up to 2 days in your fridge, just be sure to store them in an airtight container and place them in the coldest area of the fridge. If you really want to extend the storage time, you could opt to cook the leftover fish before storing it. Cooked tuna will last in the fridge for up to 4 days.