Growing up, I always liked tuna salad. We made it with tuna, sweet pickle relish and mayo. I still enjoy the convenience of canned tuna for a quick, protein-rich lunch, but the sweet pickle relishes are all laden with high fructose corn syrup these days and mayo doesn't have much at all to recommend it except nice creamy texture and great flavor.
So today, I opened some tuna and remembered what one daughter-in-law does to make it more palatable for her: she adds the freshly squeezed juice of half a lemon. Then I remembered that mayo is mostly oil and vinegar, and lemon juice is a great sub for vinegar! Which led me next to recall the bottle of gourmet olive oil my other daughter-in-law gave me when I realized could combine the lemon juice and olive oil for a healthy mayo sub! I had already been dealing with the sweet relish problem by mincing dill pickles from the health food store (made without nasty chemicals) and adding a packet of stevia.
So here is what I mixed up today and it was do-it-again-delicious! Serves 4-6
Dili (Daughter-in-laws-inspired) Tuna Salad
3 cans tuna, drained well, flaked into bowl
about 1/2 cup minced onion
about 1/2 cup minced dill pickles
1 packet stevia
juice of 1/2 lemon
scant 1/4 cup cold pressed extra virgin very fresh olive oil
2 tablespoons mayo (I will try it without any mayo next time!)
good dash each: salt, pepper, lemon pepper
3 comments:
I love to add some dried dill weed to mine. Also, an excellent alternative to mayo in dishes like this is sour cream--a bit less oily I'd think. I found some called Walaby European style sour cream at Whole Foods and I won't ever go back to the other. It was Just. That. Good!!
tm
That is a wonderful and healthy variation. Did you know that they also make olive oil mayo? That's what we have been using for a while now, and it's at least a little healthier but still has great flavor.
Yum! Can't wait to give it a try!! :-)
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