Healthy Tuna Salad Recipes

By Food & Wine
Updated May 31, 2017
© Frances Janisch
These tuna salad recipes aren't the classic mayonnaise-laden version. Instead they use fresh ingredients like herbs and vegetables to make them lighter and healthier.
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Fresh Tuna Salad with Avocado

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Nan McEvoy created this salad after falling in love with the incredible olive oil-poached tuna prepared by her friend Paul Bertolli, the former chef at Oliveto's in nearby Oakland. McEvoy uses albacore tuna here, but any fresh tuna will do. In addition to spooning the salad into avocado halves, she also uses it as a sandwich filling and a topping for crostini.

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Tuna-and-White-Bean Salad

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Purists would insist on imported Italian canned tuna fish for the Tuscan classic, but we think plain old tuna from the supermarket is just fine, too. However, make sure the fish is packed in oil; not only will the tuna be infinitely more flavorful, we use the oil as part of the dressing.

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Vietnamese Spicy Tuna Salad

© Stephanie Meyer
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The style of frying and mashing the dried chiles is very familiar to cooks from this part of Vietnam. But when developing my version of the recipe, I used Mexican ancho chiles, which work a lot better for American cooks. I also use capers in place of the small, salted, pickled vegetables that are not available in this country.—Andrew Zimmern

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Tuna, Green Bean And Potato Salad

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A recipe from Giada De Laurentiis, from the 2007 Classic in Aspen.

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Lemony Tuna and White Bean Antipasto Salad

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This quick and easy main-course salad offers all the variety and freshness of a great antipasto. The quality of this dish ultimately depends on the quality of the tuna: Using an Italian or Spanish variety packed in olive oil makes the salad extraordinary.

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Butter Bean, Tuna and Celery Salad

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Big, creamy butter beans give a tuna and celery salad terrific heartiness. The salad would also be delicious spooned over slices of warm grilled country bread.

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Tuna Salad with Chickpea Puree

© Johnny Miller
Tuna Salad with Chickpea Puree

This chunky tuna salad—inspired by a traditional sauce from Livorno, Italy, of tomatoes, olives and capers—makes a very satisfying one-dish meal.

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Heirloom Tomato Salad with Tuna Confit

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This is chef George Mendes’s version of the simple tomato salads common in the Algarve region of southern Portugal. For a shortcut, use best-quality, olive oil–packed canned tuna.

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Hot Niçoise Salad

© John Kernick
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Gwyneth Paltrow transforms one of her favorite salads, the Niçoise, into a hearty one-dish dinner by roasting tuna steaks on a tangle of beans, tomatoes, anchovies and olives.

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Warm Wheat Berries with Tuna, Fennel and Olives

© Frances Janisch
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For this Mediterranean-inflected salad, chef Seamus Mullen likes poaching fresh tuna or bonito in olive oil; store-bought fish jarred in olive oil works very well, too.

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