The Key Ingredient In Ina Garten's Tuna Salad Can't Be Found In A Can

Ina Garten is known to be somewhat of a snob when it comes to ingredients, insisting that her creations be made with "good" this, that, or the other thing. So it shouldn't come as a shocker to find that her recipe, which goes by the basic moniker "tuna salad," contains neither canned fish nor mayonnaise. Instead, it starts with tuna steaks — "very fresh" ones, at that. Most tuna is flash-frozen shortly after it's caught, which is one reason fresh isn't better than frozen fish. There's also the issue that fresh tuna has a pretty high mercury level, which may be more than twice that of the canned kind. Still, when considered a "sometime food," as Cookie Monster might call it, a salad made with tuna steak sounds pretty tasty.

Garten's tuna salad is a simple dish of the fish with a few chopped vegetables like avocados and both red and green onions. She also sprinkles her dish with a lime-wasabi vinaigrette for additional flavor.

Ina Garten doesn't entirely eschew canned tuna, however, or at least tuna that comes in a jar, since she has two recipes that can be made with this ingredient. Her personal preference is for oil-packed imported tuna, but if you use Bumblebee, what she doesn't know won't hurt her. One recipe is for tuna melts, and the tuna salad component calls for "good" mayonnaise, scallions, celery, fresh dill, and optional anchovy paste. As for the cheese itself, she goes with a slightly out-of-the-box pick. Many cooks favor either American or cheddar, while social media food star Owen Han swears that fontina or havarti are the absolute best cheeses for tuna melts. Garten, however, opts for Swiss.

Another Garten tuna salad recipe is made with celery, onions, dijon mustard, minced cornichons, and yet more "good" mayonnaise. (Who's to say Hellman's isn't "good, though? Nor will the world come to an end if you sub sweet pickle relish for pricey cornichons.) Garten likes to spread the salad on sourdough bread and finish the sandwich with sliced radishes and hummus. Again, not your typical tuna salad sandwich, but the home cooks who've tried it seem to have found the hummus and tuna combo to be a pleasant surprise.