For those of you who eat tuna spread sandwiches, you may know that portioning the amount of spread is… Variable… And sometimes messy. It depends on the bread type, thickness, toast level, etc., as well as the spread’s qualities, AND what you’re feeling like.
I wanna know:
How The Heck Do YOU Make Your Tuna Sandwiches?
Tips? Tricks? Secrets? Ingredients? Spill the beans! Er, tuna.
I’ll go first. If you use a fork to kind of…wipe each slice of bread carefully with its own mechanically-stable layer of tuna and THEN put them together, I’ve found that it usually ends up being the perfect amount. It takes a little longer, but gives a boringly great result.
Biggest tip I can think of - drain your tuna can as much as possible, squeeze as much liquid out as you can. In find this improves the flavor immensely regardless of any other added ingredients.
I dont use a recipe, I just mix tuna and mayo/hummus(!) and a tiny drop of mustard until it looks sticky, not dry, but spreadable. And sometimes I add cucumber slices after spreading the spread on bread
And if I don’t feel like making a mess, I eat them open-faced, so I can pile my stuff without it squeezing out of the sides
Ever eat tuna salad on ritz crackers?
Nope, but sounds tasty
My recipe is simple:
Mix mayo, parsley, garlic powder, chives, rosemary, salt, pepper, chopped celery. You can add other fun stuff if you want to experiment, like horseradish, lemon, mustard, sour cream, paprika, cayenne. I use rosemary in tuna, but dill has always been a favorite with tuna. Dill doesn’t agree with me, so I avoid it.
Add tuna in water, tightly drained (give the tuna juice to the cats).
Put it on your bread of choice with lettuce, preferably romaine. I don’t usually like vegetation on sandwiches, but there’s something about tuna and lettuce that I love.
Chips and drink on the side.
You can also skip the bread, and mix it with any kind of pasta, except spaghetti. That stretches it farther, and makes it heartier. It’s also better cold, so I usually use day old pasta.from the fridge. Drawback is no lettuce, although I suppose you could do lettuce wraps with them.
That’s it, simple.
Something I inherited from my dad, but I do your standard dollop or two of mayo, can of chunk light in water, drained of course, and one of those little single serving boxes of raisins. Sounds weird but it’s delicious. Either eat with half a sleeve of saltines or throw it on some half decent multigrain.
What TF is tuna spread? We always called it tuna salad, even though it’s not really a salad.
The traditional recipe I know calls for mayonnaise, mustard, and relish. I do not use relish. However, I’ve been known to add minced garlic, Tabasco sauce, and shredded cheese. Sometimes, chopped olives. If you don’t use mustard, you can also use BBQ sauce.
Egg salad is messier by far, and I have an egg guillotine. The kind you put a hard-boiled egg in and it slices it. Then you carefully turn it and repeat. Once it’s sliced two ways, I’ve never been able to get the third dimension, I just push it through to the bowl like that. So I get long pieces, but there are ways to 3D slice it (patience? skill? Yeah, probably a skill issue).
Tuna salad is not that messy. I’ve also been known to eat it without bread. It’s very high in protein, and cheese adds more. Screw those nasty ass snot-consistency protein drinks, I’d rather eat tuna out of a small container. I’d LOVE to get a CLEAN can of cat food and put it in there, and walk around looking like I’m eating cat food like a mad lad (it kinda looks/smells like cat food). Like the old “put vanilla pudding in a mayonnaise jar and walk around eating it to look crazy” thing I’ve never actually seen anyone do.
Yeah tuna salad. I couldn’t think of what it was called and I just call it a tuna sandwich because I don’t eat tuna salad any other way. At least not anymore. Tuna salad burgers are not the way to go, even if you can find a binder that works well enough when hot.
Relish is pretty good but gets old pretty quick. Mixing in minced celery is pretty controversial, but I like the flavor and the crunch. Minced onions are more neutral and work in a pinch.
Bbq sauce??
Also, I used to be a painter and we would always joke about putting food coloring in a bunch of milk and yogurt in a paint bucket and scoop and eat it with your hands in public.
Also Tabasco on tuna salad sandwiches is like a cheat code
Oh yes, I’ve used diced white onions in my tuna salad as well. I don’t like relish (or celery), it’s just not the flavour profile I’m looking for.
BBQ sauce = ketchup with molasses, more or less, I think, on the off chance you were asking what it was. I don’t think that’s the case, just covering my bases. Anyway, I use the sweet/spicy kind, so it adds a kick. I wouldn’t do both BBQ sauce and Tabasco. Tabasco gives it a kick, but it’s more subtle, the flavour of the sauce is covered by the tuna, but the heat is still there. For heat plus added flavour, I go for the BBQ sauce. Specifically Sweet Baby Ray’s sweet and spicy (or whatever that variety is called).
I end up with a consistent amount of tuna on a sandwich because 1 can and 2 spoon fulls of mayo mix together to make 2 even sandwiches worth of spread.
I dislike mayo, so I use just enough ranch for it to not be dry. Use whole chunk, celery, salt, and pep. Pickles add a nice flavor as well. If I want to go low-cal, I’ll replace the ranch with Red Hot. For bread, wheat (not toasted). Sometimes I’ll skip the bread and just nosh on the tuna salad itself.
I usually put on a layer about as thick as one of the slices of bread. My tip is to make a melt. Put a very thin layer of mayo on each slice, throw them mayo side down in a pan on medium-low, tuna salad on one slice, cheese on the other get it golden brown then slap those 2 bad boys together.
you might x-post on !cooking@lemmy.world and/or !food@beehaw.org
Do you put lettuce or tomato on your tuna sandwiches? what about melting a slice of cheese and making it a tuna melt?
I don’t like to put tuna on both pieces and combine, I find it’s easier to lump it on one piece and then add the last piece of bread to the top and to smush it down from there.
Damn, everybody on here reps cheese and even tuna melts. I’ll guess I’ll have to try that.
I usually just chop up everything into the tuna salad so that I can easily make another sandwich later without prep. Sometimes I chop up some tomato into it, but I’m not sure lettuce would keep as well. Lettuce does taste nice on a tuna sandwich and gives it a nice crunch, but something about it seems to make the tuna salad squeeze out easier when eating.
I don’t usually like lettuce and tomato on sandwiches, but tuna is different. It has to have lettuce, or I’ll just skip it.
Can confirm. Been using this method for years. Might I recommend throwing lettuce, tomato and a slice of cheese between the tuna?
For whatever reason, I don’t really like cheese with tuna salad. A place by me makes good sandwiches, including a tuna salad sandwich, but does exactly this. I like everything but the cheese. Kinda feels like putting meat on mac & cheese to me.
Meat on macaroni and cheese sounds awesome!
I guess having the same tuna technique does not imply similar tastes!
I will admit, bbq sauce and ground beef on mac is good…
I put jalapenos in mine.
Fresh or pickled?
Pickled. Never tried fresh.
Could throw some thin fresh slices and a sprig of cilantro and some cucumber and call it a tuna bahn mi
Oh, Hello…
The most important step, is not to use too much tuna
