The Fresh Addition Martha Stewart Adds To Her Tuna Salad Sandwiches

Everything Martha Stewart does always seems to be a little bit extra, but that's been on-brand for her since the '90s when her namesake TV program "Martha Stewart Living" showed her gilding everything but the guests. Her favorite pizza toppings include petits pois (très bougie), she makes coffee in a French press with what are no doubt perfectly-ground beans, and her signature "Martha-tini" calls for bison grass-flavored vodka. Of course, she wouldn't just make her tuna salad with mayonnaise and celery, not her. Instead, she stirs in some chopped apple, as well, and finishes the whole thing off with fresh basil.

While basil certainly adds a distinctive flavor, the salad also includes lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Stewart even pours in the oil from her canned tuna, and she prefers using lemon-flavored mayonnaise, as well. (Her favorite kind is The Ojai Cook Lemonaise Lite.) She likes to make her tuna salad sandwiches on thinly-sliced toasted sourdough bread, although she may also use a lettuce leaf to make a tuna wrap.

Martha Stewart seems to be a big basil fan. She grows her own, because of course she does, and uses it in recipes both sweet and savory. One of these is pesto, which was super popular right around the end of the last millennium when her own star was also on the rise. She uses the trendy herb in various pasta dishes, stir-fries, salads, and as a canape garnish, too, and pairs it with fresh tuna as well as the canned kind. Some of her dessert recipes include the herb, as well, notably her lemon shortbread with basil berries, but just about the most Martha Stewartiest thing we can think of (besides gilded basil) is the sugar-glazed basil leaves she makes to decorate fruit pies.

If you don't care for basil's licorice-y flavor, though, there are other Stewart-endorsed herbs you can try in your tuna salad. Flat-leaf Italian parsley's a favorite of hers, and it would add a fresh green touch, as would dill, which is another one of the herbs she grows in her planters. She also plants cilantro (although she calls it coriander), which would work well in a southwestern-style tuna salad. In this case, though, you might swap the lemon juice in Stewart's recipe for lime and replace the celery and apples with diced poblano peppers and avocados.