7 Ways to Make a Can of Tuna So Much Better
Turn that everyday staple into the stuff of dreams. Healthy, inexpensive canned tuna is just waiting for other ingredients to lift it to new heights. Bobbi Lin for The New York Times Published April 7, 2025 Updated April 7, 2025
Canned tuna can swim alongside so much more than mayo. Salty from the sea but not too fishy, it brings a lot to meals, with its juiciness and substantial yet delicate flakiness. It's also pantry-friendly, budget-friendly and good for you. Here's how to zhuzh up a can of tuna for a school of quick, flavor-forward dishes. Kristina Felix's spicy tuna and avocado tostadas. Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell.
Tuna is rich, oily and salty. Tomatoes are anything but, which means that their sweet-and-sour juices can energize a can of tuna in raw or cooked form. Chop a plump one for tuna salad, or cook some down for a sauce. Toss chunks of tuna and tomatoes into a guacamole for a spicy tostada. | Recipe: Spicy Tuna and Avocado Tostadas
Add high-impact ingredients like warm spices, cilantro and tuna to store-bought marinara for a quick simmer with a rich result. | Recipe: Baasto iyo Suugo Tuuna (Pasta and Spiced Tuna Sauce)
For a lighter sauce for tuna pasta, let the juices from cherry tomatoes mingle with oil, vinegar, shallot, garlic and oregano. | Recipe: Pasta Salad With Marinated Tomatoes and Tuna Naz Deravian's tuna salad sandwiches. Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.
Potato chips are fun to eat, of course, and they play a pivotal role when paired with tuna, whose tenderness needs something to keep it from being too sleepy. Enter chips, which take tuna sandwiches, casseroles and more from retro to timeless with their crisp texture. Cover your tuna salad sandwiches with a few (or more) chips. Whether those chips are kettle, salt-and-vinegar or barbecue is an important and personal choice. | Recipe: Tuna Salad Sandwiches
Potato chips can also solve that pesky problem of tuna salad smushing out the sides of your sandwich. Fold some chips into the tuna salad for structure. | Recipe: Tuna Crunch Sandwiches
When a craving for tuna-noodle casserole hits, you might want to make it nice with your own sauce, vegetables and capers, but there's no upgrade for the potato-chip topping. | Recipe: Tuna Noodle Casserole Melissa Clark's niçoise salad with basil and anchovy-lemon vinaigrette. Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
If tuna were a pop star, briny ingredients like capers, olives, pickles and kimchi would be its backing vocalists, lifting up its briny qualities. Together, they reach high notes of tang and salt. So if your tuna dish seems quiet and drab, look to the condiments in your fridge door to help it stand out. For a savory undercurrent to a fresh pasta with herbs and lemon, warm scallions, garlic, capers and anchovies in olive oil. | Recipe: Pasta With Tuna, Capers and Scallions
Pasta puttanesca is a powerful sauce, with jammy tomatoes, crushed red pepper, olives, capers and anchovies. Tuna, while not traditional, delivers even more briny bites, as well as heft and protein. | Recipe: Tuna Puttanesca
To ensure every forkful buzzes, Melissa Clark skips draping her niçoise salad with anchovies and instead mixes them into the dressing. | Recipe: Niçoise Salad With Basil and Anchovy-Lemon Vinaigrette
Stir kimchi and tuna together for a lively and fortifying salad to eat with nori or something starchy like rice, boiled potatoes, noodles or potato chips. | Recipe: Kimchi Tuna Salad Ali Slagle's tuna and tomato salad. Andrew Purcell for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Carrie Purcell.
The tiny bits of raw onion bring excitement to tuna salad, bursting with juicy crunch and spicy kick in an otherwise creamy salad. But more is more: By cutting the onion in long, slender slices, you'll get bigger wallops. Pickle red onions for a pretty-in-pink garnish. And, as an added bonus, their salty-sweet-sour brine can be used in salad dressings. | Recipe: Scarlett's Tuna Salad
Raw onion provide necessary crunch to an easily assembled salad of tuna, tomatoes, onion, vinegar and oil. | Recipe: Tuna and Tomato Salad
Rescue a sheet-pan meal of roasted potatoes, canned tuna and brown-butter anchovy sauce from being too heavy by showering it with onions and herbs. | Recipe: Roasted Potatoes With Anchovies and Tuna Melissa Clark's one-pan tuna-white bean casserole. David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
White beans can support the more assertive ingredients in a dish. They add creamy bites to salads, or they can be literal support, mashed into patties for frying and casseroles. Mash together beans, tuna, milk and aromatics for a comforting casserole. Don't forget to top it with potato chips (and cheese, and butter). | Recipe: One-Pan Tuna-White Bean Casserole
Why choose between three-bean salad and salad niçoise, two summertime classics, when you could combine them for a substantial meal? | Recipe: Summer Vegetable Niçoise Salad
White beans dispense a velvety texture and structural glue to golden tuna cakes. | Recipe: Crispy Tuna Cakes Eric Kim's tuna mayo rice bowl. Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.
Toasted sesame oil is made by extracting the oils from slowly roasted sesame seeds. Even in minuscule doses, it adds a nutty, silky savoriness to whatever it touches. In the presence of sesame oil, tuna tastes fuller and richer. Sauce tuna and bouncy udon noodles with a sesame-soy dressing. | Recipe: Japanese-Style Tuna Noodle Salad
For a mayo-based tuna salad, incorporate spunky pickled peppers and bass-note sesame oil. | Recipe: Pepperoncini Tuna Salad
Or take it in a more comforting direction and stir together tuna, mayonnaise, sesame oil and soy sauce. | Recipe: Tuna Mayo Rice Bowl Genevieve Ko's tzatziki tuna salad. Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.
Can you really enjoy a tuna sandwich without a pickle spear alongside? The pickle jolts with brine and salt (see above), but it's also, at its heart, a cucumber, which is juicy, crisp and sweet — all things tuna is not. That's why the two work well together (opposites attract and all that). Spicy tuna sushi rolls include sliced cucumbers for freshness. A pantry-friendly, home-style rendition should too. | Recipe: Spicy Tuna Salad With Crispy Rice
Mash tuna into tzatziki: The yogurt and cucumber in the Greek sauce is not unlike the mayonnaise and pickles in deli-style tuna salad. | Recipe: Tzatziki Tuna Salad
Pan Bagnat is a more-is-more sandwich piled with refreshing yet rich elements, then squished together so everything melds. Go on and add cucumber. | Recipe: Pan Bagnat
Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , TikTok and Pinterest . Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice .
Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , TikTok and Pinterest . Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice .
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Wordle hints today for #1,448: Clues and answer for Friday, June 6
Hey, there! The weekend is almost upon us and, whether or not you're spending a significant chunk of it watching a ton of video game announcements, we sure hope it's a wonderful one for you. One game we are reasonably sure you're interested in is Wordle, so let's make sure we keep those streaks flowing. Here's our daily Wordle guide with some hints and the answer for Friday's puzzle (#1,448). It may be that you're a Wordle newcomer and you're not completely sure how to play the game. We're here to help with that too. Wordle is a deceptively simple daily word game that first emerged in 2021. The gist is that there is one five-letter word to deduce every day by process of elimination. The daily word is the same for everyone. Wordle blew up in popularity in late 2021 after creator Josh Wardle made it easy for players to share an emoji-based grid with their friends and followers that detailed how they fared each day. The game's success spurred dozens of clones across a swathe of categories and formats. The New York Times purchased Wordle in early 2022 for an undisclosed sum. The publication said that players collectively played Wordle 5.3 billion times in 2024. So, it's little surprise that Wordle is one of the best online games and puzzles you can play daily. To start playing Wordle, you simply need to enter one five-letter word. The game will tell you how close you are to that day's secret word by highlighting letters that are in the correct position in green. Letters that appear in the word but aren't in the right spot will be highlighted in yellow. If you guess any letters that are not in the secret word, the game will gray those out on the virtual keyboard. However, you can still use those letters in subsequent guesses. You'll only have six guesses to find each day's word, though you still can use grayed-out letters to help narrow things down. It's also worth remembering that letters can appear in the secret word more than once. Wordle is free to play on the NYT's website and apps, as well as on Meta Quest headsets. The game refreshes at midnight local time. If you log into a New York Times account, you can track your stats, including the all-important win streak. If you have a NYT subscription that includes full access to the publication's games, you don't have to stop after a single round of Wordle. You'll have access to an archive of more than 1,400 previous Wordle games. So if you're a relative newcomer, you'll be able to go back and catch up on previous editions. In addition, paid NYT Games members have access to a tool called the Wordle Bot. This can tell you how well you performed at each day's game. Before today's Wordle hints, here are the answers to recent puzzles that you may have missed: Yesterday's Wordle answer for Thursday, June 5 — DATUM Wednesday, June 4 — CEASE Tuesday, June 3 — ADMIN Monday, June 2 — PREEN Sunday, June 1 — ROUGH Every day, we'll try to make Wordle a little easier for you. First, we'll offer a hint that describes the meaning of the word or how it might be used in a phrase or sentence. We'll also tell you if there are any double (or even triple) letters in the word. In case you still haven't quite figured it out by that point, we'll then provide the first letter of the word. Those who are still stumped after that can continue on to find out the answer for today's Wordle. This should go without saying, but make sure to scroll slowly. Spoilers are ahead. Here is a hint for today's Wordle answer: Improve intellectually or morally, or help someone understand. There are no repeated letters in today's Wordle answer. The first letter of today's Wordle answer is E. This is your final warning before we reveal today's Wordle answer. No take-backs. Don't blame us if you happen to scroll too far and accidentally spoil the game for yourself. What is today's Wordle? Today's Wordle answer is... EDIFY Not to worry if you didn't figure out today's Wordle word. If you made it this far down the page, hopefully you at least kept your streak going. And, hey: there's always another game tomorrow.
Miami Herald
5 days ago
- Miami Herald
A year after tragedy, mommy blogger breaks her silence. See the cryptic post
She's back. Almost a year after moving to South Florida after immense family tragedy, Candice Miller re-emerged on Instagram. Last July, the socialite's husband, real estate tycoon Brandon Miller, died after being found unconscious in the garage of the family's Hamptons mansion. The 43-year-old's death was later ruled a suicide, due to overwhelming debt, according to The New York Times. The so called mommy blogger, whose lifestyle page Mama & Tata boasted roughly 100,000 followers at the time, quickly deleted the account. Miller has kept a low profile since selling their home for $12.8 million, auctioning off its items and rebuilding her life down south with her two daughters. According to they live in an apartment in Miami Beach owned by a pal, Alexander von Furstenberg, designer Diane von Furstenberg's son. But now the 42-year-old influencer seems ready to embrace a new chapter. Monday's post on her public personal page shows a picture of a sunrise over the ocean in an unknown location. ''In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer,'' said the caption, quoting a 1950 essay 'Return to Tipasa.' by French philosopher Albert Camus. 'And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger — something better, pushing right back.' It's unclear if Miller will resume Mama & Tata, or start a completely different project. The original website, with content about lavish vacations, luxury beauty treatments and five-star meals, says it's expired.
6 days ago
Kate Spade remembered 7 years after her death
Seven years ago this week, the fashion world was stunned by the death of designer Kate Spade. Spade died by suicide on June 5, 2018, in her apartment in New York City. The fashion designer, best known for her eponymous line of colorful handbags and whimsical clothing and accessories, was 55 years old at the time of her death and the mother of a teenage daughter she shared with her husband and business partner Andy Spade. In an interview with The New York Times following Kate Spade's death, Andy Spade said that perhaps no one was more shocked by the death of his wife, from whom he was unofficially separated at the time, than those who knew her best. "We were in touch with her the night before and she sounded happy. There was no indication and no warning that she would do this," he told the newspaper. "It was a complete shock. And it clearly wasn't her. There were personal demons she was battling." Andy Spade also said at the time that although his partner of 35 years suffered from depression and anxiety, she'd been seeing a doctor regularly and was taking medication to combat the conditions. Contrary to reports, he added, there were no substance abuse issues, nor were there any business problems. Kate Spade started the Kate Spade New York line with her husband in 1993, and she eventually sold all her shares in the company in 2006. She launched a new line in 2016 called Frances Valentine. Her partner in both business ventures was also her best friend, Elyce Arons, whom she met as a freshman at the University of Kansas in 1981. Arons shares new memories of Kate Spade in her upcoming memoir, "We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade," to be released June 17. In an excerpt from the memoir shared with People earlier this week, Arons recalls how Kate Spade was hesitant to have her name on the Kate Spade New York fashion line. Kate Spade's idea for a handbag line, according to Arons, came from not being able to find the right handbag for a fashion shoot while working at the publication Mademoiselle in the mid-1980s. "It was time to name the baby. Andy's idea was to combine Katy's first name with his last name -- Katy became 'Kate' because Andy liked the rhythm of two one-syllable words together," Arons writes in her book. "Katy liked it a lot, too, but her shyness made her cautious. 'Don't expect me to be Kate Spade!' she said when we first agreed on the name, and many times after that." The handbag line became a huge success and later grew to include clothing, accessories and fragrance. When Kate Spade New York was sold in 2006, Arons said its founders celebrated with a trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where she said she and her best friend talked about the future. "On our last night in Cabo, Katy and I stole away for a sunset cocktail by the beach. We both ordered margaritas," Arons writes in her memoir. "'So what's next?' I asked. Katy replied, 'Whatever it is, we'll do it together.'" Later in the book, Arons writes what it has been like to live with the grief of losing her friend to suicide. "All of us who loved her have had to find a way to make peace with her incomprehensible choice. It's not been easy. I've learned to never take the people whom I care about for granted," she writes. "As I tell my closest friends: Go to your sister or your best girlfriend who's just like a sister to you. Go to her today and hug her so hard that it's like you won't ever let her go." If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal, substance use or other mental health crises please call or text 988. You will reach a trained crisis counselor for free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also go to or dial the current toll free number 800-273-8255 [TALK].
