Try making grilled tuna salad with fresh tuna steaks instead of using canned tuna. It’s sandwich-changing.
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This is one of my favorite fresh tuna recipes. Start by selecting fresh albacore tuna steaks from your fish monger. I recommend grabbing about three 4-ounce filets.
Give them a quick brine with some oil, pickle juice, salt, pepper and celery salt. These are the flavors you find in tuna salad, so by adding them to the brine, your salad will be flavored on multiple levels.
Place them on the grill over medium-high heat and grill for 6 minutes per side.
After about 12 minutes on the grill, let the fish cool slightly, and then tear the grilled tuna into chunks. Already this is looking better than the canned stuff.
For the salad dressing, combine mayo, mustard and a little acid like lemon juice and vinegar.
Finish it off with some hard-boiled eggs, celery, onion and diced up pickle.
Grilled tuna salad is delicious served on a bed of lettuce or between two slices of bread.
More Salad Recipes
- Chopped Turkey Salad with Honey Mustard
- Hawaiian Macaroni Salad
- Shishito Pepper Potato Salad
- Fresh Grilled Vegetable Spring Salad
More Seafood Recipes
- Grilled Ahi Tuna Steaks with Sesame Soy Dipping Sauce
- Grilled Tuna Melt Sandwich with Cornichon Caper Aioli
- Grilled Salmon with Cherry Glaze
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Grilled Tuna Salad
Ingredients
- 12 ozs Albacore tuna steaks
- 2 tbs canola oil
- 1 tbsp dill pickle juice, from jar
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/4 tsp celery salt
- 3 tbsp light mayonnaise
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp champagne vinegar
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 hard-boiled egg
- 1/3 cup celery, diced
- 1 pickle spear, diced
- 1 tbsp onion, minced
Instructions
- Place the tuna steaks in a zip-top bag. Add 2 tablespoons canola oil, pickle juice, ½ teaspoon salt, pepper and celery salt into the bag. Toss to coat and allow flavors to blend for 20 minutes at room temperature.
- Heat the grill to medium-high heat. Place the steaks on the grill. Grill for 6 minutes. Don’t move the steak while it’s cooking. It will sear and easily flip when ready.
- After about 6 minutes, flip and grill for another 6 minutes. Remove from grill and let cool at room temperature.
- In a bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice, vinegar and ½ teaspoon salt.
- Break the tuna steaks up with your fingers and add to the mayonnaise mixture. Stir to coat.
- Chop the hard-boiled egg and add to the tuna with the celery, pickle and onion.
- Enjoy on a bed of lettuce or as a sandwich.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Sounds delicious! I will try it for our next girls luncheon. Can I make it the day before?
Yes. Absolutely.
12 minutes for a 4 oz. piece of tuna? You could probably finish them in half that time, especially letting them rest afterward.
I posted this recipe a really long time ago. Now I would recommend cooking to an internal temp of 145F more than cooking a specific amount of time.
It was a very good and quick salad to make, my wife loved it. I actually used yellowfin tuna just caught a bunch my wife is not a fan of searing the tuna like me but she loves tuna. So I used your recipe and for our dinner and i seared mine. She loved it and I tasted it and it was delicious now I know what I am having for lunch tomorrow cause she didn’t finish it. Thank you for that recipe. And if you have recipes for searing yellowfin I am all ears thank you again
I made this tuna salad and it was delicious ! Absolutely the best I’ve ever made. I didn’t use mustard and I couldn’t find champagne vinegar in the store so I omitted them. I’ll be making this every week !
Could this be made by searing the tuna ruby red as one would do for instance for nicoise? I love the idea of fresh made tuna salad but hate the thought of trying it out through poaching or even grilling I was thinking of pressing it with pepper and then doing a Ruby sear and adding it just wondering what your thoughts are on that?
Fabulous!!! We had leftover grilled yellowfin and I found this recipe. My dad fell in love with it. This will be my go to for fresh tuna.
Great! Thanks for sharing!
Just made this Salad with fresh tuna. I’ll never go back to canned. Utterly delicious
Thank you girls can grill
Can you pan fried the tuna ?
Sure. Just cook it to your preferred doneness and then mix it with the tuna salad ingredients.
I used lime, rather than lemon and added some tomato and cucumber because I like it in my tuna salad, but this recipe is delicious!
I made this tuna salad several weeks ago then lost the recipe. Now that I’ve found it again I can enjoy some more delicious tuna salad. I cannot eat tuna from a can anymore. Thank you for this awesome recipe.
I didnt know what to do with tuna steaks in the freezer and found rhis recipe.
I substituted a celery by an apple, and it was delicious.
Thank you.
Thanks for the feedback. So glad you enjoyed it. I love the idea of adding apples :)