If you’re looking to add more seafood recipes to your menu, we have a great list of fish recipes with a ton of ideas.

Also, don’t mind that the photo says Lent. You can make those fish recipes anytime.

Pan-Seared Tuna Teriyaki Recipe

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Pan-Seared Tuna Teriyaki Ingredients:

You can get the full list of ingredients with measurements in the recipe card below.

• Teriyaki sauce – We make a homemade teriyaki sauce with honey, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar. We’ll walk you through making your own teriyaki sauce for a marinade, however, you could just use store-bought teriyaki sauce if you wanted.
• Tuna steaks – We use ahi tuna steaks that are about an inch and a quarter thick. If yours are thicker or thinner, you may need to adjust your cooking time.

How To Make Pan-Seared Tuna Teriyaki:

Add the honey, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar into a small bowl.

Whisk it together until the ingredients are combined.

Pour the mixture into a large ziptop plastic bag.

Take the tuna steaks out of the packaging and pat them dry with a paper towel.

Drying the tuna will help the marinade stick to it. If the tuna is wet, the moisture will wick away the marinade and you won’t have well seasoned fish.

Put the tuna steaks in the bag with the marinade.

Gently swoosh the marinade around, so it gets on both sides of the tuna steaks.

Place the tuna, in the bag, in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Halfway through, flip the bag over so that each of the sides of the tuna are sitting in the marinade for an equal amount of time.

You don’t want to marinate these for too long because that starts to break down the tuna steaks and makes them mushy. You also risk the salt in the soy sauce making your tuna overly salty.

If you don’t have 30 minutes, you want to at least marinade this for 10 minutes. Anything less than that and the fish won’t absorb any of the flavors of the marinade.

If you wanted, you could crust the tuna with a spice blend of salt, black pepper, sesame seeds, and garlic powder after the fish is done marinading.

We don’t because, in my opinion, it takes away from the teriyaki taste, but it does look pretty.

Heat a large skillet on the stovetop over medium-high heat.

A non-stick pan or a cast iron skillet are best for cooking tuna.

You want the skillet to be really hot because you’re just searing the tuna. A cool skillet won’t give you the nice crust that you’re looking for.

Place the marinated tuna steak directly onto the skillet.

It will sizzle when you drop it down. That’s what you want to hear. If it doesn’t, the pan isn’t hot enough.

Quick note: If you’re not using a non-stick pan, you might want to put the tiniest drizzle of olive oil down so tuna steaks don’t stick to the pan. However, I always worry about the oil making the fish oily, so I don’t do that.

Cook the fish for 90 seconds on one side.

Flip the fish over and cook it for an additional 60 seconds. This gives you a really nice even sear on both sides while cooking the fish to a medium-rare and leaving the middle perfectly pink.

Don’t mind if the fish looks a little dark. That’s from the soy sauce in the marinade cooking, not because you cooked it too long and burned it.

Quick note: If you want to cook the tuna all the way through, you can cook it for three to four minutes on each side (although anyone who likes tuna will tell you that’s too long, but you should absolutely cook it the way that tastes best to you).

We serve pan-seared tuna teriyaki over a bowl of white rice with steamed vegetables on the side. I also add a dash of sesame seeds on top because it looks pretty (and because, as I mentioned above, I don’t crust this in a spice blend before I sear it).

It would go really well with a spicy kani salad (which is a Japanese imitation crab salad) as well.

Pan-Seared Tuna Teriyaki: Frequently Asked Questions