Introducing a tuna salad that will blow your mind! In a creamy feta dressing, vibrant Mediterranean ingredients like lemon, olives, tomato, cucumber, and red radish make a tabbouleh. Use a spoon to eat it out of a bowl. Alternatively, fill pita bread. It’s excellent!
The dish of Mediterranean tuna salad
What makes this salad so special to me is how the ingredients are chopped to create a spoonable texture similar to tabbouleh, which soaks up the creamy-lemony feta dressing like a mop. As a result, every bite has a little bit of everything!
Salad with tuna in a Mediterranean style
One of those recipes whose sole purpose was to create a nutritious salad using canned tuna that actually tasted good—not just okay, I guess I’ll have to eat canned tuna for now, or even worse, I’ll eat something bland because it’s healthy.
No. No way. Trying to consume less calories at the expense of enjoying my food is simply not an option for me. Eating poorly, even for slim jeans, is a waste of a short life.
But what makes low-carb, gluten-free, low-calorie, and budget-friendly meals so exceptional are the ones that taste great.
Here’s a recipe for a Mediterranean tuna salad that you can make now. I really hope you’ll adore it!
Tuna salad recipe inspired by the Mediterranean
Consider a loaded tabbouleh. However, this version includes tuna, a tangy feta dressing, kale for extra fiber and health benefits, olives, capsicum, and red radish.
After giving it some thought, I don’t think it sounds anything like tabbouleh. My point remains, however. Its texture is similar to tabbouleh and may be spooned. But it’s heartier, so it can stand on its own as a dinner.
THE DRESSER CREAMY FETA
Because the tuna is scattered throughout the salad, it doesn’t require a lot of components for the dressing. You won’t believe how much work the feta puts in here, either!
Creamy feta is what you’ll find with Danish feta. It has a texture that falls somewhere in the between of crumbly goat cheese and soft Greek feta. It crumbles, but in a smeary kind, and it’s versatile enough to mix into salads or purée into a dressing.
It will take a little longer blitzing to get the dressing smooth if you’re using crumblier Greek feta (the kind that doesn’t leave your fingers smeary when you crumble it), and a dollop of yogurt would also be delicious.
Tangy, fresh lemon juice! Like tabbouleh, although not quite as harsh (tabbouleh is often only lemon), this dressing is vibrant and acidic. The tanginess of the lemon balances out the feta’s creaminess.
The higher the quality of the extra virgin olive oil, the more flavorful it will be.
For seasoning, use salt and pepper.
Deciding on Canned Tuna
You can’t assume that all tuna is sustainably caught
For a more flavorful alternative, try cooking the tuna in olive oil and select:
- Finest – catching skipjack tuna with a pole and line
- Suitable – Skipjack tuna fished without the use of artificial flavors or colors (the kind most often seen in big supermarket shops in Australia)
Do not purchase bluefin or large eye tuna since they are considered endangered, and you should also avoid tuna captured using FADs with gillnetting, longlining, or purse seine nets because of the tremendous cost to marine life. Skip the albacore and yellowfin and go for the skipjack.
To find out what kind of tuna and how it was caught, look at the label on the can. Read this post: Choosing sustainable canned tuna for more information on how to choose responsible canned tuna and for suggested brands.
Salad Items Alright! Lastly, the vegetable and leafy green ingredients that make up this tuna salad. As an added bonus, curly kale “self crumbles” once you begin cutting it, making it a breeze to mince into little bits.
Curly kale, as long as it’s young and crisp, not old and floppy, is ideal for this salad since its form makes it easy to slice into little pieces by “crumbling” as you chop. But if you’re short on time, you may use tuscan kale, which is also known as cavolo nero/black kale or lacinato kale.
You may also use cabbage, baby spinach, or any other robust green that you can finely slice.
For a burst of vibrant color and a burst of energy, try red radishes. Try using either red or green onions instead.
A medium-to large-sized red capsicum. The kaleidoscope of colors would be even more spectacular with some yellow!
The tomatoes in this salad won’t have their seeds removed, unlike most others that call for chopping the tomatoes into tiny bits. To make the salad’s “dressing,” just scrape the seeds and add the water.
We shall divide the whole pitted Kalamata olives into four equal pieces. This is my preferred method since it leaves the salad with small chunks of juicy, briny olives scattered throughout. Although pre-sliced olives are convenient, they lack the meaty taste of fresh olives.
As a reference to the tabbouleh-aspiration and for a herby freshness, parsley is included.
Lebanese cucumbers, which are around 7 inches (18 cm) in length, are what I use. Just over half of the long telegraph cucumbers (about 30 cm or 12 inches) will be needed.
Recipe for this mouth-watering tuna salad
This is one of the site’s more involved recipes:
(Pardon me, but there are times when I have to entertain myself while working from home all day! 😂)
1. Whip Up Some Moist Feta Dressing
When making this dressing, I find that a stick blender works best. A standard-sized food processor won’t do, but a smaller one should be OK. For creamy dressings with a tiny volume, I find that using a blender may be a bit of a bother. Scraping it all out is too difficult.
Mix the feta, lemon juice, oil, salt, and pepper in a blender until blended.
To make it thinner or thinner, add water a teaspoonful at a time. Objective: A thick consistency that can be drizzled. The dressing will be watered down when combined with the vegetable juices, so be careful not to make it too thin.
Discard the salad
As long as the veggies are tiny enough to be spooned, the shape and method of cutting are basically irrelevant, therefore I haven’t included any step-by-step images for chopping them. But in the video recipe below, I show you how to cut the vegetables.
Chop the capsicum, kale, tomato (remove any excess liquids), cucumber, radish, and olives and add them one by one to the salad. Add the whole dressing and mix well. Smear it with the crumbled feta and toss it again; that’s a good sign!
Diced tuna — After that, throw in the tuna. As you delicately throw it through, break it up into bits. The tuna is added last because, in my opinion, chunks are better than little crumbly pieces.
You have finished; now it is time to dine!
Tuna salad: several ways to enjoy it
The ten years of recipes here attest to the fact that my favorite salads are the ones that are spoon-friendly, rather than those that need utensils. Instead of looking like a bowl of limp greens that makes me want to eat cookies 30 minutes after dinner, it helps salads seem more filling as a whole meal. (As I type this, I can almost *hear* my mom scolding me and urging me to mature! 😂)
In any case, everything was all building up to the revolutionary suggestion to spoon this salad from a bowl.
You could also make the most delicious tuna sandwich ever by stuffing it into pita pockets. “Nagi x”
Oh, by the way, it could be an overly lofty claim! So, let’s pretend it’s on par with the traditional tuna sandwich. That one has a very tender place in my heart. Be sure to check out the more canned tuna dish alternatives that are proudly still getting wonderful reviews, even from those who are skeptical about canned tuna! 😇
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