Top 63 Tuna Fish Recipes: Salads, Steaks, Bakes and More

Start with the can itself, because it sets a ceiling on the dish. Tuna packed in olive oil is richer, moister and more forgiving, and it makes a better salad or pasta where you want some of that oil to carry flavor. Tuna in water (or spring water) is leaner and lets you control the fat with your own mayo or dressing, which suits melts and bakes. Solid or chunk light tuna flakes into firmer pieces; flaked or shredded tuna goes softer and is fine for casseroles where it disappears into a sauce.

Draining is the step most people rush. Press the lid down hard over the open can and pour off every drop, then tip the tuna into a sieve and press again with a fork or your palm. Watery tuna dilutes the dressing, thins a sauce and makes a patty mix that will not hold together. For oil-packed tuna you can reserve a spoonful of that flavorful oil to fold back in, but the brine from water-packed cans should go down the drain — it tastes of nothing but salt and tin.

Flake, do not mash. Break the drained tuna apart with a fork into rough, bite-sized flakes and stop there. Over-working it past that point shears the fibers into a wet paste that turns gluey once dressed, and you lose the meaty texture that makes good tuna satisfying. Taste a flake plain first: that tells you how much salt, acid and fat you actually need to add rather than seasoning blind.

A good tuna salad is a balancing act, not just tuna plus mayo. Bind with only enough mayonnaise to coat — too much and it turns into a slick, heavy scoop with no tuna flavor left. Many cooks cut half the mayo with plain yogurt or a spoon of Dijon for tang and lift. The mistake is treating mayo as the flavor; it is the glue. The flavor comes from everything else you add to it.

Build in acid, crunch and aromatics deliberately. A squeeze of lemon or a splash of pickle brine wakes the whole bowl up; finely diced celery, red onion, pickles or capers give the crunch and sharpness that keep each bite interesting; and fresh herbs like dill, parsley or chives read as fresh rather than tinned. Salt and pepper go in at the end, tasted cold, because chilled tuna salad always needs more seasoning than the same mix tastes warm.

Let it rest, then taste again. Twenty minutes in the fridge lets the flavors marry and the dressing settle into the flakes, and it is almost always at that point that the salad reveals it needs another pinch of salt or a final squeeze of lemon. Serve it cold: piled on toasted bread for a sandwich, scooped into an avocado or tomato, spooned over crisp lettuce, or alongside crackers. A watery salad usually means the tuna was not drained hard enough.

The classic failure of a tuna casserole is a dry, claggy interior. The fix is to keep the sauce a touch looser than you think it should be before it goes in the oven, because the pasta and the baking time will both drink up liquid. A creamy base — a quick béchamel, a can of condensed soup loosened with milk, or a cheese sauce — should pour and coat, not sit in a stiff mound. If it looks thick in the pot, thin it with a splash of milk or stock before folding everything together.

Fold the tuna in last and gently. The tuna is already cooked, so its only job in the oven is to warm through; stirring it in early and hard just shreds it into mush and dries it out. Slightly undercook the pasta — pull it a minute or two before al dente — so it finishes in the sauce rather than overcooking into softness while the top browns. Season the sauce well at this stage; a bland sauce makes a bland bake, and you cannot fix it once it is in the dish.

The contrast of textures is what makes a bake worth eating, so give it a proper top. Breadcrumbs tossed in melted butter, crushed crackers, grated cheese or crispy fried onions all crisp and brown under the heat and give you that crunch against the soft, creamy inside. Bake until the edges bubble and the top is deep golden, then rest it ten minutes so the sauce sets enough to serve in neat portions instead of sliding off the spoon.

Fresh tuna is lean and dense, so treat it like a steak and cook it fast and hot. Start by patting the steaks completely dry; surface moisture is what stops a crust forming and makes the pan spit. Brush them lightly with oil rather than oiling the pan, season generously with salt and pepper or a quick marinade, and bring the steaks close to room temperature so they sear evenly instead of going cold and grey in the middle.

Get the pan genuinely ripping before the tuna goes near it — a heavy skillet or grill pan over high heat until it is just starting to smoke. Lay the steak down and leave it alone; ninety seconds to two minutes a side is plenty for a steak around an inch thick, and that gives you a browned crust with a rosy, rare-to-medium-rare center. Sushi-grade tuna can go even rarer, seared just enough to firm the outer few millimeters. The single biggest mistake is cooking it through: tuna cooked to well-done turns dry, pale and chalky, like canned tuna but worse.

Rest it briefly and slice across the grain. Two or three minutes off the heat lets the juices settle, then cut the steak into slices against the grain so each bite stays tender. A sesame crust, a soy-and-ginger marinade, a salsa or a squeeze of citrus all suit tuna because its meaty richness can carry bold flavors. If the idea of rare tuna worries you, buy from a trusted source and look for sushi-grade or sashimi-grade fish, which is handled for raw or barely-cooked use.