The Jarred Ingredient You Need To Give Tuna Salad A Little Crunch

Tuna salad can go one of two ways: It can be the bland, boring lunchtime standard that you deign to eat, or a versatile staple that you can flavor to your heart's content to keep it exciting.

Personally, I love a good tuna salad, but that also involves making sure it has a great balance of both flavor and texture. To add both to your tuna salad, you should reach for the jar of pickles that's lingering on your fridge door. Chopped-up pickles are one of the many ingredients that add not only a little crunch but also a briny saltiness to your tuna salad, both of which cut through the smooth sameness that can easily make tuna salad a snooze.

Pickles pull double duty with their flavor additions to your otherwise boring tuna salad. Who would have thought that one humble ingredient could transform a humble lunch into a completely revamped repast?

Most tuna salads you come across are simplistic: Canned tuna is flaked into tiny pieces and mixed with mayonnaise until sufficiently creamy. I'm yawning just thinking about it.

But something as basic as tuna salad can also become a blank canvas for any flavor profile to punch up and improve. Start small by adding some texture, which is where the pickles come into play. Any pickles you prefer to keep on hand, whether kosher dill, bread and butter, or half-sour, pair well with the mild flavor of tuna salad, and each variety of pickle can spin it in its own way. Something like a kosher dill would add a tangy, herbaceous kick to a classic tuna salad, whereas a sweet pickle would a more unique juxtaposition of tastes.

But when giving your tuna salad a boost, don't just chop up some pickles and call it a day. This is a great opportunity to also experiment with seasoning mixes; barbecue-spiced tuna salad alongside some barbecue chips, perhaps? Sweet chili sauce and sriracha can be also mixed in to make a tart, spicy boom boom tuna salad, and if you can find kimchi pickles in the grocery store, all the better. Chopped celery and apples are also among the sweet mix-ins your tuna salad has been missing, and that's only a few beginning suggestions. After all, your tuna salad is only as boring as you make it.