Tuna Salad No Mayo

Bursting with crunchy, refreshing cucumber, bell pepper, celery, and green onion, this no mayo tuna salad is the ultimate summer lunch! Sandwich it between two slices of excellent bread or dip into it with tortilla or corn chips. Or go low-carb and serve with celery sticks or carrots.

Tuna Salad No Mayo

Most of us grew up on tuna salad made with mayonnaise. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but mayo and I have a love/hate relationship. I love it for what I love it for: in salad dressings, seasoned dips, mixed with mustard for fries or burgers, and such.

But mayo comes with some issues: it’s full of saturated fats and is extremely high in calories. Again, not an issue when I’m using it sparingly, but when it comes to adding a half cup of it to something, it gives me pause.

The trouble is that tuna salad needs the moisture and binding that mayo brings to the party. And like it or not, mayo also brings a little tanginess from the vinegar or lemon juice that goes into the making of it.

Here is where cottage cheese rides in to the rescue. It does the same job binding and moistening that mayonnaise does and even has much of that mild, neutral flavour mayo has. But where it’s wildly different is the nutritional punch it packs.

One half cup of mayonnaise is roughly 750 calories and has 106% of your recommended daily allowance of fat (a whopping 64% of your daily saturated fat allowance, specifically), 1 measly gram of protein, and 9 milligrams of calcium (1% of your US RDA) . By contrast, half a cup of cottage cheese has about 120 calories, 7% of your RDA of fat (16% of the saturated fat RDA), 14.5 grams of protein, plus 68 milligrams of calcium (5% of your RDA).

Since I actually like the flavour and texture of tuna salad better when it’s made with cottage cheese, that makes this no mayo tuna salad a no brainer. For those who are worried they’ll sense the cottage cheese curds in the tuna, I promise I don’t! Folks who are put off by cottage cheese’s look can send the cheese for a trip through a blender or blend ’til smooth with an immersion blender.

Tuna Cucumber Salad

I’m a big fan of tuna salad for lunch. It’s so filling and satisfying without making you feel like you need a big nap after eating it. My ultimate cucumber salad is heavy on the vegetables for the crunchy texture. In fact, it’s a tuna salad with more vegetables than anything else.

I especially love loads of diced cucumber in my tuna salad. It’s a textural addition, to be sure, but it’s also super refreshing. That makes this tuna cucumber salad a perfect meal for hot summer days!

If you want to add a little extra pop, choose a celery stalk that still has some leaves attached. Celery leaves are a great “secret ingredient” to makes things taste extra fresh!

Tuna and Cottage Cheese

There are a lot of choices when you’re looking to make no mayo tuna salad. You can make a no-mayo tuna salad with Greek yogurt or smashed avocado and both are great for different reasons.

My preference is to mix tuna with cottage cheese, though. It has the added bonus of making an already protein rich lunch even more heartily nutritious. I’m fine with the knobbly texture of cottage cheese, so I just add it as is. If you’re not keen on it, you can use an immersion or standard blender to blend ’til smooth.

Dijon mustard adds the most wonderful touch of sharpness and tang to the salad. When all is said and done, I find the combination of cottage cheese and Dijon a much more satisfying mixer for tuna than mayo. You can adjust the amount of Dijon up or down to your liking.

How Long Does Tuna Salad Last in the Refrigerator

Generally speaking, tuna salad stored in an airtight container is safe for 3 to 5 days in the refrigerator. That said, this particular salad is at its best when eaten within 5 hours of being stirred together.

Cut up cucumbers give off liquid as they sit, particularly when they’re mixed in with other things. Maintain the crunch of this salad and do the majority of the prep ahead of time. Just mix the tuna with the cottage cheese and Dijon mustard together. Store this in a tightly closed container and put the diced cucumbers, bell peppers, celery, and green onion in a separate airtight container and store both in the refrigerator.

Right before eating, mix the two together! Problem solved!

Need an after lunch sweet bite that’s still nutritionally sound? Try these irresistible Chocolate Covered Dates!