Ceviche Clasico
Firm white fish, lime, chilli and onion, and a fifteen-minute window where it is exactly right. Buy the fish the day you make it.
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- Resting
- 15 min
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- celery
- fish
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
To serve
Method
Buy the fish on the day you will serve it, from somebody who can tell you when it was landed. Nothing later in this recipe can rescue fish that is merely acceptable, and none of it is cooked with heat.
Soak the sliced onion in cold water for 10 minutes, then drain. This takes the harsh edge off without losing the crunch.
Cut the fish into 2cm cubes, keeping them even so they cure at the same rate.
Toss the fish with the salt and leave for 2 minutes — salting before the acid seasons the flesh rather than just the surface.
Add the lime juice, chilli and celery, stir once, and leave for 12 to 15 minutes. The outside should turn opaque while the centre stays translucent.
Stir through the onion and coriander and serve immediately, with sweet potato and corn alongside. Left to stand, the lime keeps working and the fish goes chalky within the half hour.
This dish is raw fish cured in acid, not cooked. Lime does not make fish safe: it firms the protein and changes the flavour, and it kills nothing. Anyone pregnant, very young, elderly or immunocompromised should not eat it, and fish that has been frozen to -20C for 24 hours is the safer choice for everyone else.