A Bitten Word Recipe
When it comes to cooking, there's something of a four-point checklist of criteria for every dish: simple, tasty, affordable and healthful.
Usually, a given dish can hit two or three of them. Maybe it's easy and cheap, but it's not very good for you. Or maybe it's a healthful dish that tastes great, but it's pricey and time-consuming to make.
There's one dish, though, that knocks them all out of the park: Tuna salad. It's packed with healthful ingredients, it takes five minutes to make, it tastes great and it costs next to nothing.
It's a quad-fecta!
The only problem with tuna salad? It can get a little boring. You've probably got your favorite, basic, go-to recipe, but let's face it: Eating the same tuna salad again and again can get a little old.
So this summer, we've been making this Mediterranean Tuna Salad. For us, it's been a terrific new spin on tuna, a light and fresh-tasting salad that's a perfect summer meal.
In our idea of the "classic" tuna salad, there are a few key ingredients that always show up: pickle relish, mayonnaise, mustard, celery. It's a version we know and love. Back in the spring, we posted a Dijon-Cilantro Tuna Salad, which was a delicious update to the classic (and swapped in yogurt for the mayonnaise).
But we've been making a salad this summer that throws all those ingredients out completely: no relish, no celery, no mustard or mayo.
We can't remember exactly how we came up with this recipe (although it likely had something to do with whatever we had in our cupboards). Whatever the reason, we're loving this version!
Packed with red onions, Italian parsley, garbanzo beans, lemon zest and a hefty dousing of olive oil, it's already a favorite of ours. The beans add a nice heft to the salad, and the parsley and lemon zest keep everything light and summery.
It's a refreshing spin that keeps tuna salad simple, tasty, cheap and healthy.
Mediterranean Tuna Salad
4 6-oz. cans tuna, packed in olive oil
1 15-oz. can garbanzo beans or cannellini beans (white beans), drained and rinsed
1 medium red onion, diced
1/2 cup olive oil, plus more to taste
2 tsp lemon zest
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp Italian parsley, finely chopped
2 tsp salt
2 tsp fresh-ground pepper
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Mix. Add more olive oil if you want a denser, more moist salad. Serve.
