Let's Not Forget About Canned Tuna

All the justifiable fawning over seasonal produce (those gorgeous tomatoes!) that tends to happen during the summer sometimes makes us neglect the more mundane non-perishables that are lying around our pantries. Canned tuna is one of these things. There are a million things to do with it, but for most cooks I know, once they pick their recipe of choice, they don’t deviate much. Once a tuna with mayo and celery person, always a tuna with mayo and celery person. Or something like that.

Anyway, here are two of my favorite spins on tuna salad, one fairly conventional, the other a little more surprising. The surprising one is a spicy rice bowl where the tuna is flavored with soy, sesame and wasabi. Usually, you’d see this kind of thing with fresh tuna, but it actually works really well (and is obviously cheaper/more accessible) with canned.

The other version is spiked with lemon, shallots, capers, parsley, and olive oil. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but really good. And it’s also worth mentioning here because it’s the perfect dish to substitute canned sardines (much-maligned, so delicious!) for the tuna. Either way, this is one of my go-to sandwiches/vehicles for pita chips.

And if these are both too mundane for you, try taking a can of tuna and setting it on fire. Seriously. It’s apparently a thing. Scroll down. Maybe it’ll even become your tuna recipe of choice.

Spicy Tuna Rice Bowl

A Spicy Tuna Rice Bowl using canned tuna combined with soy, sesame, and wasabi. It may be a strange concept, but trust me, it works.