Jump to Recipe Jump to Video Print Recipe

Chef Chris Cho making tuna salad — This is how you make Tuna Salad!

Tuna Salad is a healthy dish you can pair with any carb for an easy, savory, and delicious meal!

To be honest, I don’t do much Western recipes and this might be as far as I go. I like having this from time to time because it is easy to make, it contains vegetables so it’s healthy, and you can store it in the fridge so you can have a quick snack or meal anytime.

A lot of people have their own ways of making tuna salad, and this is how I make mine. Try it and maybe you’ll like it too!

Ingredients and Preparation for Tuna Salad

Ingredients for Tuna Salad — Chop everything really small!

Canned Tuna

You can use any brand. Oil-based tends to be tastier, so I like using that but water-based is also okay. To prepare this, you need to drain out any water or oil content, even squeezing out any excess so you don’t make a wet tuna salad. Break up the big chunks while you’re at it.

Red Onion, Celery, and Pickles

These are the vegetables we will use for the salad. These will provide additional flavors that ease the fishiness of the tuna and also add texture or a little bit of crunch!

What you need to do is to chop these ingredients really small so that they can be incorporated well. Use about one cup of all these combined, so if you don’t like any one of these just use less or skip them altogether. No onion, no celery, or no relish, no problem!

TIP: To lessen the spice of the onion, you can soak it in cold water for 5 minutes, drain then squeeze out any excess water. This should lessen its strong taste.

Mayonnaise, Mustard, Pepper

These will be the dressing for the tuna salad. Mayo will give creaminess and the small amount of mustard will give that acidity and spice to balance everything out.

Lemon and Parsley (Optional)

While other people might find it necessary to add lemon and parsley (or other herbs) in tuna salad, I find that these are nice to have. Whether you add them or not, the basic tuna salad recipe should be just as good. These will level up the recipe for sure though!

How to Make, Serve, and Store Tuna Salad?

Once your ingredients are prepared, combine them and mix them all together. Super easy! You can eat this with bread, pasta, or greens if you like.

TIP: Try making my egg salad recipe and mix it with the tuna salad, so good!

This can be consumed right away, but I highly recommend chilling this in the fridge for an hour or two so the flavors come together even more. It will be tastier as it cools.

For any leftovers, store them in a clean container in the fridge. It should last for 3-4 days.

Other snack recipes you might like:

Try this recipe out and make sure to leave a rating, a comment, or tag me on Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok when you chop them up! Yeobosayo!

Print Recipe