The Veggie Addition To Give Your Tuna Salad Some Crunch In Every Bite

While adding red onion to a tuna salad is perfect for maximizing crunch, its pungent flavor can permeate the dressing, leaving behind a harsh aftertaste. To achieve the same appetizing crunch without the powerful punch, consider adding cabbage to your tuna salad instead.

Shredded cabbage has a wonderful crispness to it that lends salads and sandwiches a much needed boost of satisfying heft. Unlike salad leaves and greens, it retains its structural integrity more effectively and doesn't wilt as quickly when combined with wet ingredients, such as mayo or a tangy vinaigrette. This characteristic is best exemplified in a classic coleslaw where the cabbage retains a level of crunchiness even when left overnight in the fridge. Cabbage is also chocked full of satiating fiber (which is great for the gut and helps you stay fuller for longer), very inexpensive, and readily available all year-round.

Granted, freshly shredded raw cabbage has a distinct aroma, however, it's more of a muted cruciferous-ness and flavor that doesn't overpower the mildness of canned tuna. It can be combined into a mayo-based dressing with ease and doesn't affect the taste in the same way as saltier add-ins, such as olives and capers, that can be mouth-puckeringly tart, or crisp extras, like celery, that can have a bitter edge. It's almost a flavor-neutral vegetable that performs the perfect textural job. The result? Yielding tuna and comfortingly creamy mayo with a crisp, vegetal bite.

Uniform shreds of cabbage are easy to create with a mandoline slicer, but you can also chop your cabbage into small pieces with a sharp knife to achieve a similar effect. However, if you're after less work and more convenience, try adding a store-bought bag of coleslaw mix to your tuna salad. These pre-shredded bags of cabbage often combine subtle white and vibrant red cabbage with julienned carrots, which will lend your tuna salad an inviting color, flavor, and crunchy texture. Soaking your cabbage in ice water for a couple of minutes before drying it with paper towels is a great tip to help it stay crisper for even longer. This technique also dampens down any existing pungency.

The beauty of using shredded cabbage is that your tuna salad will retain its crunch even after a couple of days in the fridge. Unlike other crunchy add-ins like bell peppers, which soften over time as they absorb the dressing they're sitting in like a sponge, cabbage will stay crisper for longer. This means you can prep a large amount of tuna salad on a Sunday and it still be crunchy later on in the week to fill sandwiches, top baked potatoes, or scoop up with crackers and tortilla chips.