The name means 'fish mixture' in Dhivehi — 'mas' means fish and 'huni' means grated coconut. The key ingredient is cured and smoked tuna called 'mas', which has been a staple of Maldivian cooking for centuries because tuna is the most plentiful fish in the surrounding Indian Ocean. Skipjack and yellowfin tuna are the most commonly used species.
Making fresh coconut is central to Maldivian cooking. Coconut palms grow on almost every island, and freshly grated coconut has a sweet, milky flavour completely different from the desiccated coconut used in most Western baking. In the Maldives, coconut appears in breakfasts, curries, sweets, and drinks — it is as everyday as butter or oil in other cuisines.
Mas huni is mixed by hand, with the ingredients gently combined so the flavours — salty tuna, sweet coconut, sharp onion and lime — balance each other perfectly. It is eaten wrapped in warm roshi flatbread. Families often eat it sitting together in the morning before the day's work or school begins.
Beyond breakfast, tuna is central to the whole Maldivian diet and economy. The Maldives uses a traditional and sustainable fishing method called pole-and-line, where single fish are caught one at a time on a barbless hook. This means very little is wasted and other sea creatures are not accidentally caught — it is one of the most environmentally careful ways of fishing in the world.