Bom Solid Tuna in Olive Oil
That's Some Solid Tuna
Originally Published: Saturday, January 27, 2024
Specs
That’s a colourful tin.Skip the Tuna, Jack
I’ve been avoiding tuna on this blog as it’s likely the most common type of canned fish you’ll see on your store shelves. It’s also likely the first type of canned fish most people experience, and that may have jaded my expectations of canned tuna. The thought of doing a review on a premium canned tuna seemed counter to my past experiences with using it as a cheap and filling topping for student meals.
Bom Petisco is today’s feature with their Solid Tuna in Olive Oil. As one of the premier brands of premium canned tuna (still weird) on the market, this cannery from Portugal is likely available at your local fishmonger or upper-middle-end grocery store. The company is about 50 years old, comparatively young to some of the other producers from that region of the world but is in no way a fledgling business. They’re famous for their skipjack tuna products canned in colourful tins with their trademark yellow stripe.
Clocking in at about $6 CAD a tin, it’s definitely not a cheap can of tuna, so let’s see if it lives up to its price tag.
Om-Nom-Bom
I like it when a tin is easy to open and avoids spewing its contents across my kitchen wall, so I appreciate the easy-open tin that Bom employs for their products.
Peeling back the lid revealed a beautiful tuna steak, neatly trimmed to fit the exact dimensions of the rectangular tin covered in a glistening layer of clear olive oil. There wasn’t an immediate nasal punch of briny (sometimes a little cat food-y) tuna-in-water, but rather a subtle aura of oily ocean musk that radiated from the tin.
Dolphin-free guaranteed!The tuna steak held up to a good amount of prodding from a fork, keeping its shape and structure even from repeated manipulation. Breaking the top layer of fish revealed a delightfully rosy-pink interior was uncommon in canned tuna.
I took some chunks of tuna and placed it on a cracker and suddenly, it didn’t feel weird to treat the morsel of tuna and cracker in front of me as something a bit more gourmet than a packed school lunch.
The first bite didn’t shift any paradigms or reverse any tides, but it was very enjoyable. The tuna was boldly salted, but not overly. It was full of savoury punch and wasn’t overly fishy. The olive oil imparted an almost creamy mouthfeel and helped to cover the palate with tuna flavour. There wasn’t a strong metallic scent or taste found in a lot of canned tuna products.
Adult lunchables.The characteristic canned tuna funk, which I can only describe as a satisfying meatiness crossed with a fish market, was present but not overwhelming.
A bit of acidity followed the glutamate-laden front end, assumedly from the olive oil or perhaps a natural reaction of canning tuna using Bom’s recipe.
The texture of the fish was dense but tender and retained a good amount of moisture. I have always found the experience of eating canned tuna a bit underwhelming because the fibrous muscular structure of the tuna often became stringy and dry through the canning process. While this tuna was better than most, it still suffered a bit from the thorough cooking and high heat of the canning process.
A Bom-b or The Bom-b?
So, was this a canned tuna worthy of its price tag? I think the answer depends on what you want out of your can of tuna.
If you’re content with tuna salads with more Miracle Whip than tuna, then stick with the regular stuff in the familiar cylindrical cans. This is not a diss on the more common form of canned tuna, I love a tuna salad or tuna casserole, but your dollar would go a lot further if you got the cheap stuff for those purposes.
If your purpose is to present something a bit more gourmet, a product that can be enjoyed on its own with minimal intervention, then this is a surprisingly good choice. I could see this tuna featured on a seacuterie along side the sardines and cephalopods. It will probably always seem a little weird, but you can’t argue with results.
Eating a can of tuna basically on its own will forever seem a bit odd.One day I might make a tuna salad with this anyway, just to have a taste of the highlife.
While it is undoubtedly a yummy product, I’m stuck on the value star rating. In all honesty it’s probably a half-star. Since I can’t do half-stars, I will have to give it no stars for now and maybe change my mind in the future.