What can I do with three pounds of canned tuna?

April 3, 2013 5:25 PM

I've just had three pounds of canned tuna dumped onto my desk (long story). More specifically, it's a 3 lb pouch of Starkist chunk light tuna in water. Because it's a single pouch, I can't use it in installments. Can you suggest any interesting/innovative ways to use this tuna -- for a two-person household -- before it goes bad? If I have to, I'll portion and freeze it, but I'm curious to hear of any alternatives.

Difficulty: no tuna salads, fried tuna cakes, or tuna casseroles. We don't eat wheat products, so no pasta or bread. We have cats, but they for some reason don't like tuna. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

posted by El Sabor Asiatico to Food & Drink (19 answers total)

Best answer: That's a lot of fish to leave to go bad. Can you give it to a food bank or shelter?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:29 PM on April 3, 2013 [4 favorites]

Throw a dinner party and serve the most epic Nicoise salad ever.
posted by Sara C. at 5:29 PM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Start a prank show?

Sorry.
posted by Hop123 at 5:31 PM on April 3, 2013 [9 favorites]

Response by poster: Start a prank show?

Sorry.

Oh my god, I totally walked into that.
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 5:33 PM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Make a bunch of tuna casserole and freeze it. I'm not a huge fan of tuna, I nth donate it.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:37 PM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't know if your casserole prohibition applies to all casseroles or only the noodle ones. There's a whole category of tuna rice casseroles if the noodles were the issue... you could easily sub corn or potato starch for flour as thickener if you wanted.

Otherwise, I also vote donate.
posted by fingersandtoes at 5:41 PM on April 3, 2013

I AKWAYS made tuna casserole with rice. So don't let gluten stop you.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:44 PM on April 3, 2013

I make a thick, tomatoey tuna sauce thing which I usually have on couscous, but you could have on quinoa. It keeps pretty well and you could probably freeze it in portions for a quick dinner.

For that amount of tuna, you'd need: 3 x 400g tins of tomatoes; 3 large onions, chopped; about 5 cloves of garlic, minced; 2 x 140g of tomato paste; about a tablespoon of salted capers, rinsed; about 375g marinated split green olives; chilli & pepper to taste - don't need salt. Sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil, add tinned tomatoes (chop them up if not already chopped). Add tuna, olives, capers, chilli, tomato paste and cook for a little until all heated through.

Or donate to a charitable organisation/favourite cafe.
posted by Athanassiel at 5:52 PM on April 3, 2013 [4 favorites]

squeeze it out, spice it up, and dehydrate it along with celery & onion. Then bring it & some crackers with you & rehydrate for tuna pate on hiking/camping trips.
posted by headnsouth at 5:59 PM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Make bouchons au thon! they freeze decently too. The recipe calls for gruyere and creme fraiche but I've always used cheddar and sour cream.
posted by arcticwoman at 6:01 PM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

The answer is so simple, it's brilliantly elusive.

Feed the tuna to other fish.
Many fish will devour tuna. 3 lbs is nothing for them.
posted by Kruger5 at 6:09 PM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

This might be hard to do with the no wheat thing, but a post-Easter perennial favorite in my family was the "bumstead sandwich". (No relation to the comic strip.) You'd have thousands of hard boiled eggs laying around that won't get eaten, so mom would make these up and freeze them for snacks and quick dinners. There are a variety of recipes out there, but it's basically a kind of tuna salad (tuna, eggs, olives, mayo, chopped up gherkin pickles and some kind of mild, pickled pepper) on a hamburger bun. They sound kind of awful, but they were delicious. You could probably come up with a non-wheat way of serving them, whatever you use for sandwich types of things.

Also a possibility: make a shitload of sushi rolls of varying styles and freeze them up.

I would recommend that whatever you do, prepare the tuna into $whatever before you freeze it. I have to think that a bag of frozen plain tuna is not going to thaw nicely.
posted by gjc at 6:09 PM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Is the "no tuna salad" because you eat tuna salad on bread, or do you just not like tuna salad? I make this tuna-cabbage salad that's very tasty, and there are lots of other salads-with-tuna recipes.
posted by mskyle at 6:13 PM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

I have been sitting here, wracking my brain and imagining you scraping loose tuna off of your keyboard and papers, and wondering why on earth you were contemplating eating it after it spilled all over your desk. Then I realized what you meant.

Err, that being said, I always liked to eat canned tuna mixed with lemon and pepper and red onion. Ususally on crackers.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:19 PM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

I would go with Tuna Curry on Rice. Tuna is great with curry. Should fit within all of your stated requirements (you could even skip the rice and add many vegetable options).
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:20 PM on April 3, 2013

I know you said no tuna salads, but this one is quite different from the usual mayo and celery affair. Maybe it'll work for you?

Oh, also on days when I want to pack a lunch but am feeling lazy, I just mix up rice, tuna, some sesame oil, soy sauce, and a vegetable that might be in the fridge, like collard greens or soybean or mung bean sprouts. It's surprisingly satisfying! You can freeze such a mix.
posted by ignignokt at 5:22 AM on April 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

I would make tuna patties - similar to salmon patties. I would go ahead and saute or bake all of them, then freeze leftover portions. You can use potato flakes as a binder in them.
posted by prettymightyflighty at 6:20 AM on April 4, 2013

This is a favorite at our home. Not at all a diet recipe, but something for special occasions (and very good for bringing to potlucks etc.). Freezes very well, so I'd probably make the whole thing into a large number of portions for 4 people, which would then be eaten over less than a month, because I am the mother of growing teens.
My recipe uses grammes, and in real life, one can vary the proportions of the different ingredients a lot, according to taste.

This portion serves 8 as an appetizer:

370 g drained tuna
200 g softened (not melted) butter
100 g soured creme (or greek yogurt)
1 tsp lemon juice
salt, pepper, chili to taste

blend everything. put in containers to cool. Then freeze what you can't eat.

Must be cooled down at least 6 hours before serving.

Goes excellently with raw veggies, on rye-bread, in summer roles with veggies, in sandwiches, on tomato-halves, on egg halves, on biscuits etc.

I add all sorts of stuff. Chopped tomatoes or bell peppers, a quarter of an onion, capers, spinach, dill, cilantro etc. (not all at a time, but sometimes more than one element at a time) Since it disappears so rapidly here, I don't know how these additions effect freezability.
The butter is very important, which is why it is a party dish, not everyday food. If you make it with lighter products, it cannot keep.
Sometimes I exchange some of the butter or the creme with mayo, which is good.
It can be made with only butter (then 100 g more) and savories. Everyone loves this version until one tells them what is in it.
posted by mumimor at 1:20 PM on April 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

tuna, peas, tomato passata or tinned or puree or sugo, lightly cook, serve with pasta eg lumache that cups the peas naturally so they all mix in, classic of everyday italian cuisine when i lived there. google sugo, i'm too lazy
curried with noodles, loved it as a student, genuinely ill when cooked it out of nostalgia
posted by maiamaia at 4:09 PM on April 4, 2013