I think it’s about time we start addressing the topic of canned tuna in Taiwan.
Canned tuna is one of my favorite “emergency” foods. With rice, with pasta, in a salad…it fits basically anything, it’s cheap, it can stay on the shelf for a long time and it’s healthier than many “instant food” options. In EU and Ozzyland I’ve always been used to buy canned tuna that looks roughly like this:
This is made to look prettier than it actually is, but basically the canned tuna I’m used to looks like tuna, you can see the chunks and pick them one by one. In a can there will also be smaller bits of course, but that’s part & parcel.
Now the canned tuna in Taiwan:
Jesus Christ Almighty, it looks like someone caught a tuna, fed it to a penguin then waited until it was time for the penguin to feed its offspring. Once the fake-bird started to lovingly vomit the partially digested tuna into its offspring mouth, the tuna was collected, canned and sold to our market. I mean, look at it, it’s the pits.
I do believe i’ve tried every single brand of canned tuna in Carrefour. I only buy tuna in brine because all the oils and weird seasonings used in other varieties of tuna taste like death.
Does anyone know of a brand of canned tuna that sells some goddamn tuna, and not penguin vomit? If I have to go to Jason’s or some other weird supermarket that sells overpriced stuff, so be it, I just need to find some legit tuna.
That’s like 7$ a can, holy balls, that’s a bit above my target price for what I consider “emergency food”, I can have 30 pieces of fresh sashimi in Suao for that price…
tuna, mayo, onion, boiled egg etc etc is my favorite kind of salad, i’m having it right now. I decided to open this post after the last brand of tuna that i could try at carrefour turned out to be just more penguin barf.
flavor is ok-ish, but the consistency is the worst.
Good question and I’m curious what answers you’ll get. I’ve ordered Wild Planet’s Wild Albacore Tuna from iHerb before - mainly because of disappointment similar to yours.
In the ol’ country there were two versions of tuna on sale: one was the chunks, and one was in flakes. The chunks were considerably more expensive. The flakes were intended for the great unwashed (let them eat penguin vomit). AFAIK, though, they both came from the same fish, and they tasted the same to me, so I wouldn’t get too worried about it. As someone mentioned back there, if you spend a little bit more you can get it packed in better-quality oil, which makes a big difference. Salted tuna tastes vile, IMHO.
