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Ingredients
- Basic tuna salad recipe
- You might call this tuna-mayo.
- 1 small (125g / 3 1/2 oz) can water packed tuna, very well drained (I cut the lid off completely, and use it to really squueze out the water.)
- 3-4 tablespoons of mayonnaise, or as much as you want
- Grind of black pepper
- Pinch salt (optional)
- Mash it all together to a smooth paste with a fork.
- Tuna salad variations
- Tuna salad with miso
- My sister Meg used to work at the Toraya tea room in New York, and made a fantastic tuna salad plate with miso dressing. This is a tuna salad spread that takes those flavors.
- 1 small (125g / 3 1/2 oz) can water packed tuna, very well drained
- 2 tsp. white miso
- 2 Tbs. mayonnaise
- Squeeze of lemon
- Grind of black pepper
- Mash it all together to a smooth paste with a fork.
- Tuna salad with anchovies and capers
- This one is a bit salty, but delicious!
- 1 small (125g / 3 1/2 oz) can oil packed tuna, very well drained
- 3-4 oil cured black olives, pitted
- 3 anchovy filets
- 1 Tbs. capers
- 2 Tbs. mayonnaise
- Chop up the olives and anchovies very finely. Blend with the tuna and mayonnaise. Add the capers to the mix or sprinkle them onto the sandwich just before eating. (This is also great mixed pasta.)
Details
Servings 1
Adapted from justbento.com
Preparation
Step 1
Freezing methods
Once you have the tuna salad made, you can freeze it in a number of ways. (Don’t keep frozen tuna salad for more than a month if you can help it.) With all of the methods, the frozen tuna salad defrosts completely in a couple of hours, so it’s ready to eat by lunchtime.
Method 1: Freeze a batch of tuna salad
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Make a batch of tuna salad, pack into a ziplock bag, flatten out and freeze. Break off chunks as needed.
Pros: The easiest way to have some ready-to-go tuna salad. Due to the oil in the mayonnaise, the tuna salad doesn’t freeze hard, so you can just break off as much as you need at a time. Good for making tuna salad onigiri too! Just use a chunk of the frozen tuna salad as your onigiri filler. (You can also freeze premade tuna salad onigiri - as long as you keep them on the small side they will defrost to an edible state by lunchtime.)
Cons: Your hands get a bit fishy as you handle the tuna chunks. The broken off chunks may not be that neat (though when they defrost into tuna paste, your sandwich won’t even notice). You will probably want to wrap the chunks up in some plastic or put them in a bento cup (or cupcake liner) in a corner of your bento box.
Method 2: Freeze a whole sandwich
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Make a tuna salad sandwich as usual, wrap in plastic film or put in a ziplock bag.
Pros: You have a ready-to-go sandwich! Just bring along some crunchy/crisp vegetables like lettuce, tomato slices, cucumber…whatever strikes your fancy.
Cons: You can see the biggest problem with this in the photo: this frozen sandwich has only been out of the freezer for a few minutes, but there’s already condensation inside the plastic. Frozen sandwiches do end up a bit moist, though not to the point of being inedible provided your tuna salad filling is quite moisture-free.
Method 3: Freeze portioned tuna salad
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Divide the tuna salad into individual portions that are about the size of your sandwich bread. Wrap each portion in plastic wrap and freeze.
Pros: This is the neatest way to pack tuna salad. You can just pack one of the portions with bread and some veggies into a box and go. The frozen tuna salad will have defrosted by lunchtime, and will also keep your whole lunch cool.
Cons: You do use up some plastic film. If you use different shaped bread you’ll need to re-distribute the tuna salad on the bread, though that’s not a big deal.
For what it’s worth, I use method 1 the most, followed by method 3.
Tuna salad sushi rice sandwich
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Finally, here is a sort of tuna salad ‘sandwich’ (which is actually a variation of oshizushi or pressed sushi), using sushi rice instead of bread. This makes two or four ‘sandwiches’.
2 cups warm rice (here I’ve used zakkokumai for added fiber and texture; you could use brown or white rice here just as successfully)
2 Tbs. sushi vinegar
1/2 cup tuna salad of your choice (I used the miso variation), freshly made or frozen
1 Tbs. capers (optional)
1 Tbs. finely chopped celery (optional)
Mix the sushi vinegar and rice together well, and let cool to room temperature.
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