Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen, I'm going to share
with you a real, I'm going to say Classic, it's a real classic deli style tuna pasta
salad, it's like the mayo version of the tuna pasta salad, now I have a tuna - an Italian
tuna salad that I made a couple of years ago and I shared here with you.
That's my other all-time favorite tuna salad, it's got potatoes in it, it's something I
grew up eating, but this is a different vibe, to me this is so 70's, this is so classic
barbecue kind of I don't know, it's just so good I wanted to share it with you because
if you've got people that are not big tuna fans you will convert them with this recipe
a thousand and one percent, you have to just trust me, and everything here it's really
basic ingredients, but I'm telling you they make for an amazing tuna pasta salad.
So, I've got my pasta of choice which are little mini bow ties, or I like titillini
here, or I like some little shells.
I've got my water up to a boil, I'm actually just going to add those right in because those
will take a little while to cook.
Along with a healthy pinch of salt because you want to make sure that the water is well
salted, you'll need some frozen peas, hang onto those and about a minute before the pasta
is done we're going to add those in.
Tomatoes, carrots which I've got some shredded carrot sticks here that I just bought at the
grocery store so I'm going to run my knife through them and chop them finely.
Finally, you'll need some celery, some red onion, some fresh dill, you'll need some tuna,
make sure it's sustainable tuna that you feel comfortable with purchasing and you drain
all the liquid out of it, and you'll need some mayo, you can use light mayo or regular
mayo, you'll need a little bit of sour cream, but this also works really well with Greek
yogurt, plain Greek yogurt.
You'll need a little bit of Dijon mustard, some granulated garlic, a little red wine
vinegar, salt and pepper.
That's everything that you need.
It is so easy, but trust me when I tell you, it's absolutely dynamite, we love, love love
this recipe so much, it's one of the best tuna salads I think ever.
It's just delicious, and like I said, it's a real classic.
I'm just whisking all of my creamy components here for the dressing, and if you don't want
to do pasta, say you want to do like a low carb thing, you can do this with cauliflower.
Just make sure that you cut it small, very much like my cauliflower pasta salad that
I've shown you in the past, just make sure you cut it small and it's not going to be
absorbent, it won't absorb the dressing, like really cling to it but it will still be delicious.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to just give my carrots a rough chop, if you're
using regular carrots, I would just shred one carrot here, otherwise if you dice it,
unless you dice it really fine, it's going to be just a little bit too hard to bite down
on.
But you could add it to some boiling water with the pasta and let it cook down a little
bit, and it'll soften it, so the world is your pickle boo, you do you.
I'm going to go ahead and dice my celery, when it comes to celery in pasta salads or
in salads of any sort, you really try to get the heart of the celery stalk so that they're
really nice and tender, and you save the outer ones for soups and stews because these are
really tender, and it's wonderful in a salad, but the outer ones are just a little bit too
harsh, too stringy, so these just work perfectly.
So I've got my carrots, celery and onions that I finely chopped, I also got my cherry
tomatoes, I've got my dill, I've chopped everything up nice and small, cherry tomatoes about bite
size or the size of the pasta I'd say.
Add those right in, then you need a good pinch of salt, this is your chance to flavor the
dressing and the tomatoes so you want to make sure that you don't skimp on that.
And a good amount of cracked black pepper.
And now you're going to go ahead and add your tuna.
And you're just going to mix all of this together before we add the pasta.
I mean this is delicious as-is right now, to be honest with you it would be a really
good tuna salad for a sandwich or something like that.
But, it's even better when it's coating pasta, because I think everything is better when
it's coating pasta.
I do like my carbs, I do like my pasta what can I say.
Speaking of, cooked it at the last minute I went ahead and added the peas to the pasta,
rinsed it under cold water, just to stop it from cooking any further.
You know this is just a half a pound of pasta and look how much it makes.
It makes a ton, so if you want to go ahead and double the batch and use a whole box of
pasta, then you really will feed a small army really happily, you just gotta go ahead and
take your time to really make sure that this is well tossed together.
My mouth is salivating because it's so delicious, and even though it's creamy, you can see we
didn't add like a cup and a half of mayo, you know?
It wasn't much it was about a half a cup, a little shy of a half a cup, and a little
bit of sour cream it's just perfectly creamy, it's going to be full of flavor, now I'm going
to go give this a taste right now because you know, impatient, and this looks good and
I just gotta.
But this gets better and better the longer it sits in your fridge, so, uh.
That, I'm using the same fork because there's nobody else here today.
Just us.
The tomatoes are full of flavor, they're really juicy, the peas are sweet, it's not like a
really heavily fishy, it's just perfection.
It's perfection, it's perfect for a party, perfect for a get together especially if you
want to do a throwback to classics.
You will love it.
Go to LauraintheKitchen.com to get the written recipe, this is going to go in the fridge
for a while before we go ahead and eat it for dinner, I hope you have enjoyed spending
time with me, and I will see you next time.
Bye.