Tuna Salad with Chickpeas

This Tuna Salad with Chickpeas is full of amazing flavors. Packed with protein, fibre and fresh ingredients, this salad is healthy, tasty and keeps you full until dinner time.

We love adding legumes in our salads. They make perfect light lunch during summer. Mediterranean black eyed pea salad and Turkish bean salad piyaz are our favorites too.

Although we are in September and chilly days are around the corner, we still crave for light meals like this tuna salad with chickpeas. It’s been one of our staples for a few months. To tell you the truth, we make it whenever we don’t have any energy left after shooting photography or video and need a super quick meal. Even in winter. Using lettuce, spinach and some other greens instead of tomatoes and cucumbers though.

How To Make

The ingredients in this recipe are almost the same as the ones in our Chopped Turkish Salad recipe, which we have as a side dish.

It is really easy to combine everything in a bowl. No cooking is needed. Just chop the veggies and combine them with cooked chickpeas and tuna. Oh make sure you drain the fish before adding it in the salad so that you remove the excessive oil. Make the dressing and pour it over the salad.

As an alternative, you can use a variety of beans in this recipe. If you have some blanched fava beans in the freezer, thaw them and add in your salad.

Shallot Vinaigrette

This is a simple vinaigrette recipe that I use quite often. It tastes really good in almost any salad. We need just 5 ingredients and a jar to make a good shake.

Combine lemon juice, olive oil, salt, black pepper and finely chopped shallot in a jar. Shake it well and it’s ready. I don’t normally measure the ingredients when making this vinaigrette, but the approximate ratio is ¼ cup olive oil to 2 tablespoons lemon juice. You can definitely adjust it to your taste. It matches perfectly with salads like this chickpea tuna salad.

I sometimes use herbs like parsley, basil or mint in the recipe just to make a change. Similarly, you can replace shallot with garlic as I sometimes do when making another Tuna Salad without Mayo.

This shallot vinaigrette can be kept in the fridge for 3-4 days. Just shake it again before using it over your salad.

How Healthy Is It?

For one thing, this recipe is made without mayonnaise unlike traditional tuna salad recipes which are overloaded with mayonnaise. Instead, I use an amazing shallot vinaigrette to enrich the taste of the salad. The result is so good that you don’t even miss mayo.

In addition, this salad is packed with protein (tuna+chickpeas) and healthy summer vegetables. You end up with a healthy yet tasty tuna salad that is pleasing for everyone.

We'd also love to try Dill Beet Chickpea Salad and Lemony Kale Avocado and Chickpea Salad.

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