For The Best Homemade Canned Tuna, Take Notes From The French

Canned tuna is reliable, but it's hardly a glamorous lunch (unless you're a cat). It often contains less mercury than fresh tuna fillets, but fresh or smoked tuna tends to have a better reputation for appetizing texture and flavor. Still, if you're looking to add a metaphorical Michelin Star to your dish, you can easily transform tinned tuna into something fancier. The secret is to make a canned tuna confit by poaching it in olive oil.

Confit is the French terminology for preserving and involves slowly cooking food in fat for an extended period of time. Loosely, it could be considered a mixture of slow cooking and curing meat, or something like a long poach. In this case, the method involves placing the canned tuna into a saucepan full of olive oil and seasoning agents like fresh herbs or garlic. After briefly simmering the olive oil with the herbs to infuse them, you then submerge the tuna in the oil for about 45 minutes. The end result is a moist fish with a deep flavor that's clearly an upgrade to canned tuna packed in water or oil.

You have a few options as far as the best type of canned tuna to use for confit. Canned albacore has a mild flavor and slight saltiness that won't overpower the olive oil. Canned ahi tuna can feature a higher fat content and a more buttery flavor if that's what you prefer. In either case, the texture of the canned tuna will change during this process. Similar to marinating the fish in citrus to make a canned tuna ceviche, the confit method imparts flavor while infusing the fish with moisture which makes it less flaky and more tender and firm.

The olive oil and likely the garlic are the foundational elements of the confit liquid, but herbs like rosemary, thyme, peppercorn, and fennel are welcome additions depending on your preference. The dish works as an entrée with a salad on the side or as a stand-alone tuna salad. You can also stuff tuna confit between two slices of crusty Italian bread or baguette and it make it a sandwich. It's such an elevated take on canned tuna, it might make you forget you ever popped the top off the can in the first place.