The Best Healthy Tuna Salad

Loaded with colorful fresh veggies like peppers, carrots, and green onions, my Healthy Tuna Salad is similar to those that can be found in most New York area delis and is perfect scooped on bread, on top of salad greens, or simply by itself!

Veggie Tuna – a dieter’s delight!

Having worked in several delis as a teenager, I developed a good understanding of human nature and, after a while, was able to predict what someone would order before they even got to the counter. If someone looked physically fit and was sporting gym clothes, they’d either order an egg white, turkey, and Swiss sandwich on whole wheat for breakfast, and if it were lunch time, they’d order the healthy tuna salad, also known as veggie tuna.

Similar to the contents found in vegetable cream cheese, deli healthy tuna salad always had peppers, carrots, and green onion, and would sometimes include cabbage, celery, black olives, and other veggies. While some delis would use light mayo, others would use balsamic vinegar.

My healthy tuna recipe is one that I’ve adapted and absolutely love. I use a combination of Greek yogurt and light mayonnaise, whereas in my classic deli tuna salad, I just use regular mayonnaise.

Both tuna salads are great, but if you’re looking for something a little lighter and with some extra vegetables, this healthy tuna salad is the way to go!

Recipe Ingredients

All ingredients for this recipe are shown in the pic below and special notes are made in this bulleted list to assist you.

• Vegetables. I’m using a combo of red cabbage, carrots, red bell pepper, and green onion. The crunch, color, and flavor of these ingredients add so much to the tuna. Feel free to add other veggies if desired, such as celery, olives, broccoli, or cauliflower.
• Tuna. Since this is more of a deli-style healthy tuna salad, I’m using solid white albacore tuna packed in water. You can use yellowfin tuna packed in olive if desired, but I like to save that for dishes like pasta al tonno and white sauce tuna pasta.
• Mayo and yogurt. Greek yogurt has a higher protein content than regular yogurt and also has a nice tang to it making it the optimal choice for veggie tuna salad (I also use it in my creamy cucumber chicken salad for this reason). I also use light mayo. If you prefer to just use regular or even heavy mayonnaise, you can do that, as well as just yogurt. As mentioned above, many delis will have veggie tuna salad with no mayo and just balsamic vinegar.

See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.

How to make it

1. Drain the water from the cans of tuna and scoop the tuna into a large bowl with the green onion, cabbage, carrot, and bell pepper. Thoroughly mix the celery seed and soy sauce and allow it to sit for 10 minutes.

2. After 10 minutes, add the light mayonnaise and Greek yogurt and mix well. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. The next day, strain the veggie tuna salad of any accumulated water and add more mayo and/or yogurt as needed. Enjoy!

More deli salads

If you’re looking for authentic deli salad recipes, you’ve come to the right place. Here are just a few of our favorites.

• Macaroni salad
• Honey mustard chicken salad
• New York deli shrimp salad
• Deli-style egg salad
• New York deli coleslaw