Creamy Avocado Tuna Salad

hi my name's Amanda and my registered dietician as well as a chef and today I'll be teaching you how to make a creamy tuna tuna avocado sandwich so everyone's had a tuna sandwich before at least I assume you have but today I'm going to do a little healthy twist with adding a lot of brain boosting ingredients to it so let's get started so first of all we have to go to the store I'm going to choose a can of tuna now I love tuna just because it's such an economical protein source meaning is nice and cheap and it packs a punch okay so in one can of tuna normally it has what 22 26 grams of protein in just one full can so when you're in the store and you're purchasing tuna always take a look at what you're purchasing so I have two hands in front of me today one is a chunk light tuna and the other one is a flight flaked white tuna so the difference is one is white and one is light in the description so what's the difference it actually indicates what type of fish that they used for this canned tuna so the one that says white is the albacore tuna so albacore tunas are one of the largest and most prized a variety of tuna with that being said it also is one of the ones that live longest and because it lives the longest it has the most time to accumulate mercury in the flesh of the meat whereas the light tuna are usually the varieties are skipjack tuna or yellowfin tuna which are smaller varieties of the tuna fish with that being said they don't live as long and they don't have as much time to accumulate the mercury in the flesh of the meat so when choosing tuna I always suggest you're going to be eating it on a regular basis to choose the light variety not only because its first of all it's cheaper but secondly you'll have less mercury from the fish okay so with the light tuna you can eat it approximately two to three times a week without any risk of you accumulating too much mercury alright so let's get started so once you open your can of tuna drain it you just want to put it into a larger bowl like so and then meanwhile now we're going to start prepping the other ingredients to add into our creamy tuna avocado salad so to this we're gonna chop some celery so here I have a stalk of celery that I've already washed and we want to chop it nice and fine so to do this I'll show you with one piece of the celery I like laying it flat first so this way the celery doesn't wall otherwise you put it here it makes it very dangerous so won't lay a flat and then we're going to cut them into large lengths like this from here put them together like this and then we're going to chop it nice and fine okay and then we're going to do the same with remaining a piece of celery stalks feel free to add in more I oftentimes will add in 2 to 3 stalks just because I love vegetables the celery gives a really nice crunch into the tuna salad which is why I like adding it now if you do like pickles this is actually a great time to add some pickles in as well so celery and pickles - the avocado salad so from here we're going to just throw it right into the bowl like so again if you're not too comfortable the knife I would just scoop it up with your hands and then drop into your bowl the next ingredient we're add is a little bit of red onion so red onion is fantastic because it's very very antimicrobial as well as anti-inflammatory so two properties which are fantastic for our body now for the red onion we don't want to add too much because it does give it a bit of a bite so what we're going to do is going to lay it flat and I'm just going to cut off a little wedge from here we're just going to peel off the outer skin which is very very thick and tough so just peel it right off like so and I'm going to lay it back again on a flat surface so it move around on us so with the onion what I usually like to do is I'll take my knife and I'll follow the lines you see how their little creases along the lines of the onion to original fall along lines like so all the way through and then we're going to lay it back on the side and we're going to cut it once it makes it hard to hold onto you can flip it again and you go in this way now again if you're really new to cutting a knife don't don't start cutting all the way to the edge because your fingers are well worth it then maybe one scent of onion okay so from here we're just going to add in all the onions again you just take your hand and scoop it right into the bowl like so so you have now your red onion and then we also have your celery next what we want to add into the bowl is some walnuts okay I'm gonna take the walnuts and put it right here like so you don't want a lot just put a little bit less I'm gonna put it all though so walls are a great source of omega-3 fatty acids a plant-based source so again tuna actually has some of our animal-based omega-3 fatty acids but now we're gonna add an extra punch with the walnuts so for the walnuts just 1 ounce of walnuts per day will be enough omega-3s that you need in the recommended amount in one day now to the full we're also gonna add now some cilantro so cilantro this this is a very very fragrant herb is actually the most widely used herb in this world so with cilantro I love it too because it actually is a scavenger for toxins in the body so we'll go around the bloodstream they're looking for of heavy metals which is fantastic okay so with the cilantro what I usually like to do is I keep both the stem and the leaf so unlike other herbs where we rip off the leaves gently we can actually use a stem of cilantro as well because most of the flavor is actually within the stem to make it fast to cut I like in half first then you kind of scrunch it up into little ball or not wiggle a roll and then we're going to start chopping it as fine as you can and I'm gonna go a couple more times doesn't have to be perfect here we're going to toss it right into the bowl there we go next part is our avocado so our avocado is the main star ingredient in this beside the tuna so usually for a cream up creamy tuna salad we use mayonnaise but instead we're going to be swapping mayonnaise today with avocado now I have two avocados very different in size as you can see I like using a moderately big one so this would be perfect for today's salad but not only that you want to make sure they're perfectly ripe so right now when you're holding an avocado sometimes a color can be deceiving so just because this is green it doesn't necessarily mean it's not right in this case it is not ripe just yet just by the touch of it so it's hard as a tennis ball it's not going to be ripe enough all you want is a little give to the avocado the second part what you want to do is you're choosing avocados is take a look at a little bit of this little stem end when you rip off the stem end it should be a light to bright green in the center if it starts looking brown in the center I would not use the avocado because that indicates that the inside the avocado is brown inside as well so when you're shopping mixture you take a look at that little stem end and make sure it's green in color and not brown okay if it's brown just put it back where you found the next part is when you take your avocado we're going to slice it in half first so I'll show you what we're going to do I'm going to take that Mikado and slice and a half like so and then just peel it look how beautiful this is a perfectly ripe avocado with no bruises in the center second I think we're going to do now is I always like putting my Mikado down like this flat and then having it so you and just have your avocado what this helps us do is now we can actually take the skin right off like so this is a very really good way of taking the flesh of avocado away from the peel because mostly antioxidants in the Nava kado lies right in this dark marine area and if you use a spoon you look you usually lack to you unable to take away all the dark green part so remove the skin like this actually allows you to get all the antioxidants so we're going to take the peel off and then put it right into the bowl so I'm going to do that with this quarter as well just put it all the way in like so sometimes it sticks not a problem just take your fork may scrape it down like so and then we do the same with the other half of the avocado so again I'm gonna gently go with this now I don't really encourage people to take their knife and knock in here many people have cut themselves it looks fantastic on TV but let's just do it the safe way so again I'm going to peel the back and I'm going to do it the last part again from here you can just gently go with that okay so give me a little bit a second I'm going to wash my hands all right so now that Akkad oh is in here we're going to finish off the dressing for our creamy avocado salad so to the bowl we're also going to add a little bit of apple cider vinegar now so this is a regular apple cider vinegar you can find it in the vinegar section of the store if you don't have apple cider vinegar you can use a little bit of opal just regular white vinegar so going to add that in and then to it we're also going to add some mustard so any mustard will do you can do the ballpark mustard we can use Dijon mustard you can use some fancy you know walnut or tarragon flavored mustard but regular mustard with damage as well and I'm going to add a little bit salt and black pepper as well just sleep now again feel free to add as much pepper as you want salt we don't need it too much so just a little gentle sprinkle a beat just enough and what we're going to do next we're going to take the bowl and we're going to mix everything together so this is one that gets fun you're gonna mash it all around to get that mikado all mashed now the apple cider vinegar that we added prevents the avocado from turning brown okay so you can make this a night before and store it in the fridge so the next morning you can eat this on top of the size a toast for breakfast or make it into your sandwich today we're going to do a little bit of twist we're going to actually roll it in lettuce leaves and put it into on dive leaves as well it's extra vegetables so again in here we have our tuna we have our avocado that's being mashed we have a load of red onions some heart-healthy walnuts we also have some cilantro and we have some apple cider vinegar and mustard and salt so once you get that all incorporated so again give it a nice mush as you can see we didn't really want to use a big avocado if we use the less of a smaller version then we may need to just because it won't give you that creamy effect that we want for a tuna salad so now that that's nicely tossed we are going to stuff our leave so now that our creamy tuna avocado salad filling is all nicely incorporated we're going to wrap it in our lettuce leaves now again feel free you can always just top this off on the sides of a whole grain toast or put it into a tortilla we're today we can do a little bit of twist to something new and so in front of me today I have some red leaf lettuce and we also have some on dog these so we're going to stuff them both today now with these type of leaf lettuce easier way to kind of stock them is we actually want to take away some of the rib just so it's easier to fold so what I'd like to do is take my knife and I just carefully run it down like so just take off a little bit of the little end okay so that's all you really need to do is take it off you don't want to go too deep you can but then it gets a little bit dangerous another way to do it actually is fold in half gently and then you can just trim off a little bit of the end and that way makes it a little bit easier to fold okay so we're gonna do I'm going to stop it right in the center like so and give a little bit generous little portion I like usually stuffing a lot I just like a little tuna and then just like you would regular wraps and go with that and then mixed up so you have one wrap like this you can eat it put a toothpick on if you wanted to you can also take an on dive and then using a spoon or your fork again be generous fill our protein so with brain health we always want to make sure we do include protein throughout the day okay this keeps our alertness high memory high as well keeps us less lethargic and these our mood up do one more perfect little snack and look how much filling that you made so it's good for two people right beside and there you have it a creamy avocado tuna salad filling that you can wrap into vegetables or you can put it on your whole grain toast or your favorite cracker as a mid-morning snack for breakfast lunch or even an afternoon pick-me-up I hope you enjoy this recipe

Channel: MacGetOnTrack

Views: 1,562,317

Rating: 4.8598323 out of 5

Keywords: Avocado (Food), Tuna Salad (Dish), Food, Health, Diet, Dietitian, McMaster University (College/University), Recipe, Recipes, Cooking

Id: JpCnz41AUt8

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2015