Name: Poke (Hawaiian Cubed Raw Fish with Soy and Sesame)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 2 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 400 g tuna; 3 tbsp soy sauce; 1 tbsp sesame oil; 0.5 tsp coarse salt; 3 spring onions; 0.5 sweet onion; 1 tbsp sesame seeds; 2 tbsp macadamia nuts; 2 tbsp toasted nori; 1 tsp sriracha; 400 g cooked short-grain rice; 1 avocado; 0.5 cucumber; 100 g edamame; 20 g radish sprouts; 30 g pickled ginger

Ingredients

2servings

Poke (serves 2)
tuna · yellowfin (ahi), sashimi-grade or with a known freezing history400 g
soy sauce3 tbsp
sesame oil · a finishing oil — even this much dominates1 tbsp
coarse salt · Hawaiian salt is the original ingredient0.5 tsp
spring onions · thinly sliced3
sweet onion · sliced thin and soaked in cold water 5 minutes0.5
sesame seeds · white and black together looks best1 tbsp
macadamia nuts · coarsely crushed, standing in for inamona2 tbsp
toasted nori · shredded, standing in for limu2 tbsp
sriracha · optional1 tsp
Rice
cooked short-grain rice · cooled to lukewarm; hot rice cooks the fish400 g
To serve
avocado1
cucumber · diced0.5
edamame · boiled and podded100 g
radish sprouts20 g
pickled ginger30 g

Steps

Choosing the fish is the first step. Use tuna labelled sashimi-grade, or that has been held at −20°C for at least 7 days (or −35°C for 15 hours). Parasites are dealt with by that freezing history, not by freshness, so "caught this morning" is not a safety argument here. Thaw it slowly in the fridge and never on the counter.
Cook the rice, then uncover it and turn it with a paddle until it is lukewarm. Poke set on hot rice goes white and chalky where it touches.
⏲ 20 min
Slice the onion very thin, soak it in cold water for 5 minutes and squeeze it dry. That takes out the harshness so it does not bury the fish.
⏲ 5 min
Cut the tuna into 2cm cubes with a very sharp knife, one stroke per cut. Sawing back and forth tears the flesh, which costs you the texture and leaves the surfaces ragged. Keep knife, board and fish cold — fifteen minutes in the freezer before cutting makes it much cleaner.
Mix the soy sauce, sesame oil and coarse salt. Mix it now and keep it off the fish.
Dress the tuna just before serving: add the sauce, spring onion, onion and sesame and fold gently from the bottom. Serve within 5 minutes. The salt and soy start pulling water out of the fish by osmosis, and in ten minutes a firm bite has turned watery with liquid pooling on the plate. It is exactly why shops in Hawaii mix it after you order.
Spread the lukewarm rice in a bowl and spoon the poke over it. Arrange the avocado, cucumber, edamame, sprouts and pickled ginger around it and finish with the nori and macadamia. Keep the avocado and any mayo beside the poke rather than stirred through — mixed in, the fat buries the fish.

Tips & Variations

Variations

Salmon poke: fattier and softer than tuna, so ease off the soy a little. Salmon carries more parasite risk than tuna, which makes the freezing history matter more, not less.
Tako poke: made with blanched octopus and very common in Hawaii. The one poke that is not raw, and chewy enough that a little more sesame oil suits it.
Spicy poke: 3 tbsp mayonnaise mixed with 1 tbsp sriracha, spooned on top, not stirred through — folded in, the mayo erases the grain of the fish and you have a spicy salad.
Tofu poke: press firm tofu, cut it the same size and marinate it 30 minutes in the same dressing. Unlike fish, tofu needs the time — the only case in this dish where the clock runs the other way.
The traditional version is Hawaiian salt, limu (seaweed) and inamona (roasted kukui nut), and nothing else. Soy sauce, sesame oil and onion arrived with Japanese and Chinese immigration; the "shoyu poke" that is now standard is not the original.

Tips

It is the opposite of ceviche. Ceviche is a method for cooking fish: acid denatures the protein, so it is timed and steeped. Poke is a method for keeping fish raw, so it avoids time altogether. They look like relatives and their mechanisms point in opposite directions.
Dress it at the last moment. If you keep one thing from this recipe, keep that. Once salt and soy start drawing water out by osmosis there is no way back (salt and seasoning).
Safety comes from the freezing history. A sashimi-grade label, or −20°C for 7 days, is the standard; "landed this morning" tells you nothing about parasites. Thaw in the fridge only (freezing and thawing).
The knife decides the texture. One stroke per cut leaves a clean face; sawing shreds the fibres and the cubes weep. Fifteen minutes in the freezer before cutting is standard practice, not cheating (knife skills).
Lukewarm rice. Hot rice cooks the fish from below; fridge-cold rice is hard and clumps. It is not seasoned like sushi rice — poke rice is plain, and the seasoning lives on the fish (cooking rice).
Sesame oil is not a cooking fat here. One tablespoon dominates the bowl. You cannot take it back out, so start under.
Soak the onion, always. Five minutes in cold water is enough to pull the harshness out. Raw onion straight in arrives before the fish does.
It is not a dish to have leftovers of. Poke that has been dressed loses its texture overnight however cold it is kept. Better to fry what is left with the rice and call it something else.
The rice-bowl format is recent. In Hawaii poke has been a pūpū — a snack or a side — bought by weight at the market and eaten as it is. Serving it over rice as a single bowl is a 2010s mainland format. Both are real; they are not the same age.

The basics behind this dish

Cooking basics →

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