Cook With Ido

Basics Series
No Cook Lunch Make Ahead

The Best Tuna Salad

(the trick is in the order — eggs go in last)

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By Ido
· May 2026 ·
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Homemade tuna salad sandwich on white bread sliced in half on a wooden board

Tuna salad sounds too simple to write a post about — and that's exactly why most homemade versions come out worse than they should. The technique here is small but it matters: finely chopped onion and pickles for the base, roughly chopped boiled eggs added last so they hold their shape, and lemon for brightness so it doesn't taste like a mayo bomb. That's the whole post. Five minutes, one bowl, no fancy ingredients — just the right order.

Prep
15
min
Cook
0
no cook
Serves
2-3
batch
Level
Beginner
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This is the first in a new Basics Series on the blog — short, no-fluff posts on the things you make all the time but probably never thought to actually nail down. Tuna salad earns its spot at the top of the list because even Serious Eats has a 10-ingredient version; mine is half that and still better than what you'll buy at any deli.

Annotated tuna salad ingredients laid out: tuna, mayo, mustard, pickles, red onion, hard boiled eggs, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper
Everything you need — tuna, eggs, pickles, red onion, and the dressing components

Ingredients

What you need
Serves 2-3 · tap to check off
  • 2 cans of tuna (drained well)
  • 2 hard boiled eggs
  • 2 small pickles (salt brine or sweet)
  • ¼ red onion
  • 1.5 tbsp mayonnaise
  • 1 tsp yellow mustard
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • Black pepper to taste

How to Make It

1
Boil the eggs. Add a generous pinch of salt to the water — it makes the shells peel cleanly later. Boil for 10 minutes, then transfer straight to ice water to stop the cooking. Peel and set aside.
2
Finely chop the onion and pickles. A manual hand-crank food processor takes literally two seconds and saves you the knife-and-board cleanup. Worth the $15 if you don't have one.
3
Drain the tuna properly. Press the lid down into the can and squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Watery tuna salad is the most common way this recipe goes wrong.
4
Mix everything except the eggs. Tuna, mayo, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, chopped onion, chopped pickles, salt, pepper. Mix until evenly combined and creamy.
5
Roughly chop the eggs and fold them in last. Big-ish chunks, gentle folding. The eggs are the texture moment — you want to bite into pieces of egg, not eat egg-paste.
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Why eggs go in last
If you mix the eggs with everything else from the start, they break down completely and turn the whole salad into a uniform mush. Adding them at the end and folding gently keeps the chunks intact — that's what gives you the texture contrast in every bite.
Finished tuna salad mixed in a metal bowl on a wooden board, showing visible chunks of egg and pickle
The texture you're aiming for — creamy base, visible chunks of egg and pickle

Four Ways to Riff On It

Once you have the base technique locked, the flavour direction is yours. Each of these swaps the eggs/pickles/onion combo for a different texture-and-acid pairing — same method, different soul.

Fresh & Herby
Swap the eggs, pickles and onion for green onion, finely chopped celery, and a generous handful of dill. Lighter, more lunch-bowl than sandwich filler.
Pickled & Punchy
Use pickled red bell pepper and pickled white onion in place of the eggs and pickles. Bigger acid, almost giardiniera-style — great on toast.
Sweet & Crunchy
Try fresh red bell pepper, a handful of corn, and sweet cucumber pickles. Kid-friendly, summer-leaning, surprisingly addictive in a wrap.
The Classic (this post)
Eggs, pickles, red onion. The all-purpose default — sandwich, salad topper, cracker spread. Start here, branch out from there.
Side cross-section of a tuna salad sandwich on white bread showing the textured filling with visible egg pieces
Cross-section of the classic build — generous filling, soft white bread

How to Use It

Pairs with
  • Tucked between two slices of homemade no-knead buns with a leaf of crisp lettuce — the classic move.
  • On top of a bed of leaves for a quick lunch bowl — rocket, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, a drizzle of olive oil.
  • Spread thick on toasted sourdough for an open-faced version with extra cracked pepper.
  • Stuffed into half an avocado for a protein-heavy no-bread lunch.
  • As an onigiri-style filling — see my homemade sushi rice post and use it the way I describe for the tuna mayo riceballs.
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Storage
Tuna salad with mayo keeps for 3-4 days in an airtight container in the fridge. Don't freeze it — the mayo separates and the eggs go rubbery. If you can taste any sourness or off-smell, it's done.

That's the whole post. Drop a comment below with your favourite riff — I'm always collecting flavour combos for the next iteration. And if you make the sandwich version, do yourself a favour and use proper soft white bread, not anything fancy. This is one of those recipes where the ingredients want to be quiet so the technique can speak.

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