In summer, I am all about quick and easy recipes. Salads are thus some of my favorite meals to have. Be it lunch or dinner, salads can be eaten all day long. At least, that is my humble opinion. And they are perfect for summer! There are many fresh ingredients around at that time and you can thus have many different variations. A tasty and simple salad is a classic tuna salad. Here’s my take.
Tuna salad comes in many shapes and forms. Basically all you need is some tuna for a salad to become a tuna salad, but it’s what you put with it that makes or breaks the deal. I love pairing mine with fresh ingredients, but a creamy tuna salad can also be great as a spread on toast or straight up. I will be sharing two different forms of tuna salad that I love.
Tuna Salad no. 1: fresh and crunchy
Ingredients:
- 1 small can of tuna (They sell these in packs of 2 and are smaller than regular cans. I find them perfectly for salads like this one)
- 1 or 2 handfuls of leafy greens
- 1/2 cucumber, sliced
- some cherry tomatoes, halved
- black olives, halved
- bell pepper, diced
- capers
Put your greens in a bowl, add cucumber, then tuna, then rest of veggies and you’re done!
If the first number is a bit light weight for your taste and you want to add some more protein and fat, you can very easily whip up a different salad. I call this the creamy variety and you can play around with it as much as you like. We used to have a variety of this on toasted bread on hot summer days when I was still living at home. I did make my own variety that contains some other ingredients from what my mom used to do, but it is still inspired on that. I have no pictures of this salad unfortunately.
Tuna salad no. 2: creamy
Ingredients:
- 1 can of tuna (large)
- a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise
- 1/2 avocado, diced
- as many pickled baby gherkins as you’d like, sliced
- as many pickled baby onions as you’d like
- capers
- black olives, sliced
Put all ingredients into a bowl and just stir it all together until you have a slightly sticky consistency.
Those are my 2 quick and easy tuna recipes. They are super simple and very tasty. Especially the second, which may not be the healthiest due to the mayonnaise it contains, but it certainly makes for a tasty condiment for those summer barbecues.
How do you use tuna in a salad?