Greek Tuna Salad

For a simple but delicious protein packed lunch try this Greek tuna salad. All the flavors of a Greek salad topped with chunks of tuna and dressing with a light vinaigrette. An easy but filling salad you can put together in minutes. The whole salad has 28.1 grams of protein and just 5.3 grams net carbs.

You might also like this low carb Mediterranean tilapia dinner.

I love a bit salad for either lunch or dinner. And one of my favorite types is a big fat Greek tuna salad. The key to the delicious flavor of this big salad is the quality of tuna and the olives. I discovered years ago that oil packed tuna has so much more flavor than water packed and so I use that in this dish.

I also love castelvetrano green olives and purple or black Kalamata olives. So when I see the vibrant green castelvetrano olives at Costco I buy them and make this dish. And luckily for me Aldi carries Kalamata olive all the time.

But even if you don’t have these specific ingredients you can make this dish with your favorite olives and whatever tuna fish you have on hand. These are just my favorites. So put it altogether and you have a huge and satisfying low carb (5.3g net carbs) lunch that is also high protein (28.1g) thanks to the protein packed tuna.

Recipe ingredients and substitutions.

The simple ingredients I used were a salad base were romaine lettuce, sweet bell peppers, red onion, English cucumbers, red radishes, Kalamata olive, castelvetrano green olives, feta cheese and oil packed canned tuna.

The Greek vinaigrette salad dressing ingredients were extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, fresh garlic, dried oregano, salt and black pepper.

• Canned Tuna – As I mentioned above I love oil packed tuna as it has so much more flavor than water packed or chunk light tuna. Mine was yellowfin but you can also use albacore tuna. You can use whatever kind you want and even leftover tuna steaks would be even better!
• Feta Cheese – I use a block of Greek feta but you can use crumbled feta cheese. Whatever you can find or have on hand. If you don’t like the flavor of feta you could stubstute with goat cheese, blue cheese, asiago, fresh parmesan cheese or any other sharp cheese. Or eliminate it if you are not a cheese fat but it does add to the dish.
• Greek Olives – I used castelvetrano green and Kalamata olives as they are Greek and very flavorful. You could substitute with whatever olives you like. I would say black olives have the least flavor but green olives with pimento would be better.
• Salad Base – I used romaine lettuce but you can use whatever kind you want. Go for a more sturdy one with crunch like iceberg over spring mix. I also always use seedless cucumbers, red onion, radishes and sweet bell peppers. Of these I think the cucumbers, onions and peppers are necessary. You could also add some tomatoes like cherry tomatoes, plum tomatoes or grape tomatoes.
• Greek Dressing – You should have most of these ingredients on hand. I would say the fresh garlic is necessary but you could use garlic powder. I also think the extra virgin olive oil is necessary. Use one with the strongest olive flavor and it will add another layer of Greek flavor. You can substitute apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar or another type of vinegar. Balsamic will be a bit overpowering. Freshly squeezed lemon juice will also work but you might have to play around with the olive oil to vinegar ratio.

How to make a Greek tuna Salad.

Step 1: First make you salad base. Chop up the lettuce and veggies and arrange in a large salad bowl. I ate the whole thing so use a larger salad bowl if you have it. Also add the 2 kinds of olives.

Step 2: Whisk together the Greek salad dressing ingredients. Pour over the salad and mix well. Again I used all of the dressing.

Step 3: Now you can top with both the drained tuna and the crumbled feta cheese. That is all there is to it.

This is a simple low carb high protein lunch but I eat it fairly regularly so I wanted to share it with you. And while I ate the whole thing you could easily make this into 2 lunches.

If you want to add fresh herbs try some fresh mint, oregano or parsley. And if you don’t carb about carbs you serve it with some pita bread. Please scroll down for the printable recipe card.

More flavor combinations you can make with this salad.

The beauty of this salad is all the variations you can make. Here are some of my other favorite flavor combinations.

• French (Nicoise) : tuna, fresh green beans, hard boiled eggs, olives, capers, tomatoes
• Buffalo Chicken: celery, red onion, blue cheese, buffalo chicken
• Chef: ham, turkey, cheddar or swiss, hard boiled egg
• Big Mac: ground beef, pickles, onions, cheddar, thousand island dressing
• Mexican (taco salad): taco ground beef, cheddar or monterey jack, tomatoes, black olives, avocados, cilantro
• Philly Cheesesteak: sautéed onions, mushrooms and peppers and a creamy parmesan dressing
• Antipasta: salami, roasted red peppers, provolone, artichoke hearts, olives, ham
• Fajita: fajita chicken, onions and peppers, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream

Match the appropriate dressing with each salad. For instance Greek salads lend themselves better to a olive oil and vinegar type dressing or a lemony vinaigrette. The Big Mac works well with thousand island dressing and the Mexican and Fajita are good with either a simple vinaigrette, spicy ranch or a citrus cilantro vinaigrette.

When in doubt a good oil and vinegar plus some garlic, herbs and spices work great.

Well I hope you give this Greek tuna salad a try as it’s really is one of my favorite go to low carb high protein lunches. I but honestly I eat it because I just love it.

The nutritional information for the whole salad is 381 calories / 27.3g fat / 12.1g carbs / 6.8g fiber / 28.1g protein = 5.3g net carbs

The nutritional information for all of the dressing is 246 calories / 27g fat / 1.3g carbs / 0.3g fiber / 0.2g protein = 1g net carbs