Pair these Tuna Pickle Boats with Buffalo Ranch Chicken Dip, Everything Bagel Veggie Pizza and Italian Dressing Bean Dip for a quick and easy assortment of snack for any gathering.
★ Why You’ll Love this Recipe ★
Looking for a light and tasty snack that's also super easy to make? These tuna salad pickle boats are going to rock your world!
You might only need 5 ingredients to make these tuna salad pickle boats, but there's a lot to love about them. Here are a few reasons to add these to your Must-try Recipes list:
Low in Carbs
These tuna salad pickle boats make an awesome low-carb snack, appetizer or lunch. Or even a light dinner.
Baby dills work great for serving smaller bites.
If you're looking to make these as more of a low carb sandwich to enjoy for lunch or even dinner, then full sized pickles would work really well for that. Choose your own size!
Filling and yummy!
These tuna stuffed pickles amount a good amount of protein so you'll feel full but in a good way, not in a bloated way.
Super Easy to Make
No cooking required! Just some mixing and chopping. So when you're short on time, but still want to snack healthier, this is a great recipe for you.
★ Ingredients You'll Need ★
All you need is 5 ingredients!
If you've got tuna, mayo (or Greek yogurt), sugar or honey, dill pickles and red onion then you're good to go!
Here are a few tips about each ingredient:
- Dill pickles. You can use baby pickles or full size pickles depending how you want to enjoy or serve these tuna salad filled pickle boats.
- Red onion. You can use yellow or white onions as well but I prefer red as they are more mild when raw.
- Mayo. You can use light mayonnaise or even Greek yogurt instead. Full fat mayo is going to taste best, so it's up to you if you are willing to sacrifice a little flavor for a healthier snack.
- Tuna fish. Chunk white tuna is going to taste best and be lower in fat.
- Honey or sugar. This is optional but adds a really nice sweetness that balances out the vinegar in the pickles and adds a lot of flavor without adding a ton of sweetener. This the sweetener out for keto diet.
Ready to eat in just 10 minutes!
These tuna pickle boats are super easy to make. You need just five ingredients — white chunk tuna fish, mayo (or you could use Greek yogurt if you prefer), sugar or honey (optional), dill pickles and red onion. You can add pepper too if you'd like.
I find the sugar or honey adds just a touch of sweetness that balances out the salty/vinegar taste of the pickles really nicely however, it's totally fine to leave it out if you're cutting sugar or sweetener out of your diet. This makes these keto friendly as well.
★ How to Make this Recipe ★
This tasty snack is easy to make.
No cooking necessary, just prep and assemble.
Here are the basic steps (full recipe below):
- Mix tuna salad ingredients.
- Halve and scrape out the seeds of each pickle.
- Chop seeds and pat with a paper towel to absorb excess juice.
- Add chopped seeds to tuna salad mixture.
- Fill each pickle skin with the tuna salad.
- Chill or serve right away.
Easy and super yummy!
★ Tips & FAQs ★
Drain, drain, drain.
The only real trick to this recipe is to make sure you drain the tuna and dry off the pickles really well so these tuna pickle boats don't end up too juicy.
To drain the tuna, open the can then leave the lid in place to press and squeeze out all the extra liquid.
Next, when you slice the pickles in half, you want to dry them off a little. Just soak up any extra pickle juice with a paper towel.
Try chicken instead of tuna.
Not a huge tuna lover or want to try something different? You can use cooked and shredded chicken to make a chicken salad filling instead of tuna. A great way to use up leftover chicken, or pick up a rotisserie chicken and use that to save time.
Counting carbs?
Pickles, tuna, mayo and onion are all naturally low in carbs. So by nature of the ingredients, this is a low carb snack since no crackers, bread crumbs or pasta are involved in this recipe.
However this recipe does call for sugar or honey to enhance the flavor. As I mentioned, you can just leave the sweetener out all together and you will instantly lower the carbs. You'll still get great flavor, it'll just taste a bit more salty, no biggie.
If you're not counting carbs, go ahead and add that spoonful or sugar (or honey!)
Storage
Refrigerator
Whether you're using full sized whole pickles or the baby ones, both can be made ahead and chilled in the fridge until you're ready to serve.
Cover loosely in plastic wrap or store in an airtight container and these will last up to 5 days in the fridge.
These tuna pickle boats travel well especially after they've been chilled for a bit.
The tuna salad tends to stick to the pickles after these have been in the fridge for awhile.
Because you're working with pickles, as long as you pick a good brand of pickles to start with, then the pickles stay nice and crunchy!
Freezer
I do not recommend freezing these stuffed pickles. Freezing changes to texture of the tuna salad and doesn't keep very long in the freezer either.
Serving these as an appetizer?
When making these as an appetizer, I use whole, baby dill pickles.
Baby dill pickles weight about 28g. Whereas larger, whole dill pickles are about 114g each. Since we're just replacing the inside of the pickles with tuna salad, you'll need to use 3-4 baby dills in place of each large dill pickle for this recipe.
★ More Snack Recipes ★
Want even more snack ideas?
Browse all my easy easy snack recipes! Be sure to Pin your favorites for later.
This easy recipe for tuna salad pickle boats was featured on South Your Mouth!
Tuna Pickle Boats
Ingredients
- 6-8 whole baby dill pickles or 2 large whole pickles
- 5 oz chunk white tuna
- ¼ cup mayonnaise
- ¼ cup diced red onion
- 1 teaspoon sugar or honey
Mighty Mrs. is a #WalmartPartner.
Instructions
- Cut whole pickles in half from end to end, lengthwise. Using a spoon or paring knife, cut or scrape out the inside of each side of the pickle to create a boat shape with the remaining pickle skin.
- Chop up the scraped out insides and place them in a mixing bowl. Using a paper towel, soak up any extra juices from the pickle boats and chopped inside pieces.
- Thoroughly drain tuna and add to bowl. Press with a fork to chop up large chunks. Add mayonnaise, red onion, chopped pickle, and sugar or honey (optional) and mix well to form the tuna salad.
- Spoon tuna salad into each pickle boat. Chill and serve or serve immediately.
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