Give Tuna Salad More Character With A Few Sprinkles Of This Breakfast Seasoning

There are a lot of reasons to love tuna salad. It's relatively inexpensive, it can be keto-friendly, and kids generally like it. But sometimes, ordinary tuna salad -– tuna, mayo, celery, maybe a little salt and pepper -– can get monotonous. Swapping avocado for the mayo can be a heavenly upgrade, but that involves having a ripe avocado on hand and processing it. Some days, even that's too hard. If you're seeking an inspiring flavor upgrade with minimal effort, look towards your everything breakfast bagel — or rather, its seasoning.

The savory and salty combo has been a go-to for many people since Trader Joe's introduced its Everything But The Bagel seasoning in 2017 (the everything bagel itself dates back to the 1970s or '80s). The combination of salt, garlic, onion, sesame seeds, and poppy seeds simultaneously creates a contrast in sharp flavors and a perfect marriage. Fans add it to eggs, grilled salmon, panko breading, and now tuna salad. Though Trader Joe's may have been the first to bottle the seasoning, there are now a number of brands available, including a version by Newman's Own. It's also pretty straightforward to recreate the seasoning at home.

Tuna salad is endlessly customizable. Julia Child liked to chop in capers and cornichons and add a squeeze of lemon juice. Adding fish sauce imparts a distinctive umami note. But the nice thing with everything seasoning is you can literally grab the bottle and sprinkle in a teaspoon or two, stir it up, and you're done.

As it does with almost anything it's added to, everything seasoning effortlessly infuses the tuna with a ton of flavor. You get a bright zing from the salt, a savory tang from the onion, and the crisp pops and smoky flavors of the poppy and sesame seeds. Fans of Everything But The Bagel will already know what to expect, but first-timers may be genuinely and pleasantly surprised by how distinctive their first bite of the seasoned tuna salad is.

The seasoning plays well with any version of tuna salad, but it seems to work especially well with a traditional deli-style salad made with plenty of mayo, maybe hard-boiled eggs and celery, but little else. Salads that contain hot sauces, peppers or other very flavorful ingredients have a lot going on already, and everything seasoning can get a bit lost. While homemade tuna salad is easy to whip up, you can also buy premade packets like Starkist Tuna Creations Deli Style. One other note: Since the seasoning contains a healthy amount of salt, remember not to add more when making the tuna salad itself.