Baniyas Home-Cured Bonito (‘Tuna’)

What the coast calls “home tuna” is not tuna at all but bonito. In the fishing families of Baniyas and along the shore between Tartus and Latakia, the fish is cleaned in the weeks when it is plentiful, poached in water with lemon and onion, drained and packed into glass jars. Olive oil, garlic and salt go on top. The jars wait for winter and come out in the months when waves keep the boats in harbour.

Which fish, which season

In Arabic the fish is balamida. On the coast people tell two kinds apart by name: mabrouma and arida. The jars are filled between late summer and early winter, when shoals of bonito come close to shore and the price drops. Khaled Khalil, a Baniyas fisherman, describes those weeks as the season when fishermen’s wives set up their jars. Families pick a large fish, usually one of around 5 kilograms.

How it is made

• The fish is cleaned, skinned and cut into even pieces.
• The pieces go into boiling water with half a lemon and half a dry onion, in a wide pan over a low flame, for about a quarter of an hour. The pan is wide and the heat low because the pieces break up easily.
• Lifted out of the water, they are left to cool and to give up all their liquid.
• They are packed into a glass jar, and olive oil, garlic and salt go on top.

The onion has a job. It draws out the heavy, sharp smell of the fish, which people on the coast call zankha.

How it is eaten

Straight from the jar, with nothing but a squeeze of lemon. Fishermen describe it as cheaper than tinned tuna from the shop, and different in taste. On the coast this jar is the fish entry in mouneh, the winter pantry.

What has changed

The arithmetic. In 2024 a kilo of bonito at the Baniyas fish square went from 15000 to 65000 old Syrian pounds; these are prices from before the new pound came in at the start of 2026. A report from the same year says many households have stopped making the jars. Its headline gives the reason in two words: high prices and lifted subsidies.