Swap Mayo For Pesto In Your Next Tuna Salad For A Fresher Flavor

Mayo and tuna are a longstanding duo, with mayo's consistency and flavor providing a nice creamy richness to complement tuna's umami notes. However, pesto is a lighter, fresher, and bolder condiment that'll put a novel and delicious twist on conventional tuna salad.

Pesto delivers a wealth of savory flavors, making it a versatile condiment that you can utilize as a pasta sauce, sandwich spread, and salad dressing. We've demonstrated that pesto's many uses extend to seafood dishes like crab cakes and fish filets. So stirring a spoonful of pesto into your favorite water-packed tuna is a no-brainer. Fresh savory herbs like basil, cilantro, and arugula, salty and nutty parmesan and pine nuts, the spicy bite of raw garlic, and earthy olive oil are all the tuna salad needs. Plus its thick, paste-like texture provides a subtle crunch to contrast the soft, flakey canned tuna.

Whether you're using a homemade pesto like this bright and fresh pesto, or your favorite brand of store-bought pesto, between 2 tablespoons and 1/4 cup will bind and season one can of tuna. You'll have plenty of leftover pesto for another meal later on in the week.

Despite pesto's delightfully grainy texture, a simple two-ingredient pesto tuna salad might leave you desiring a bit of crunch. If you'd rather not make a more elaborate tuna salad, you can add texture by pairing a bowl of tuna salad with crunchy accompaniments. Crudites like carrot sticks, cucumber rounds, cauliflower florets, and celery sticks will bring even more freshness and a healthy crunch. Add a few dollops of pesto tuna salad to iceberg lettuce cups for a crunchy carb-free tuna wrap. Olive oil and rosemary crackers and parmesan cheese crisps are also great crispy accompaniments that'll also pair well with the herbal savoriness of pesto.

Of course, you can also use pesto and tuna as the foundation for a multi-ingredient tuna salad. Mediterranean versions of tuna salad, coincidentally favored by celebrity chef Rachel Ray, are oil-based. So, you can draw inspiration from common Mediterranean recipes for pesto tuna salad. Olives, pine nuts, sun-dried tomatoes, new potatoes, diced red onion, and capers would all be great mix-ins for a Mediterranean-inspired pesto tuna salad. If you're using this cilantro pesto recipe, you could give the pesto tuna salad a Mexican twist by adding diced red bell peppers, canned corn, pickled jalapeños, and toasted pepitas.

Even if you have already made a classic mayonnaise-based tuna salad you can still stir in a spoonful of pesto for an herbal upgrade. If you're craving pasta, add a helping of pesto to this zippy tuna pasta salad recipe.