Our TUNA PASTA SALAD is loaded with creamy avocado, red onion, and diced tomatoes. This is a summer staple that makes a great lunch or side dish at any cook out!
Pasta salad is arguably the best part of summer.
Cool, refreshing, and infinitely adaptable. What’s not to love about that?
We have quite a few pasta salad recipes, including our famous Italian pasta salad (it’s loaded with so much goodness) and Amish macaroni salad.
I also make this BLT pasta salad all summer long and it’s a winner too!
I mean, I’m excited about summer for a lot of reasons, but pasta salad definitely ranks high on the list!
Table of Contents
Ingredients:
Pasta – Campanelle is our favorite, but farfalle, macaroni, and penne will work.
Tuna – Use your favorite brand of the canned/bagged stuff and drain it well.
Avocado – It adds so much creamy goodness to the salad.
Tomatoes – Juicy, colorful, what’s not to love?
Red Onion – You can skip these if you have onion haters, but we love the bite of an onion in pasta salad.
Lemon – A little citrus just brightens up the whole dish. We prefer fresh lemon juice vs. bottled.
Mayo – Use full fat or low fat mayo here.
Seasonings – We’re seasoning this with a mix of chives, dill, salt, and pepper. Simple, but flavorful.
What We Love About This Recipe
This tuna pasta salad makes for a cool, refreshing dish that is especially awesome during the summer! We love that you don’t need to heat up the kitchen and that this can be served as a side dish at dinner or as a quick lunch. Plus, the avocado is creamy and filling and the lemon adds loads of bright flavor.
How to make Pasta Salad with Tuna:
Pasta: You’ll want to start with cooked pasta. Any small shape that you love will work well here.
I’ve used a mix of campanelle and farfalle this time around, because I had a couple open boxes. Macaroni and rotini are great choices too.
I like to rinse my cooked pasta under cold water to quickly cool it down. You really don’t need the starch in pasta salad, so rinsing it is just a quick way to get the recipe going.
Dice: You’ll dice up an avocado, some cherry tomatoes, red onion, and chives to add to the cooked pasta along with some tuna.
Mix & Chill: In a mixing bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, dill, lemon juice, salt and pepper and finally add that to the bowl with the pasta, tuna, and veggies.
Toss gently to coat everything in the dressing mixture.
I prefer to let this cold tuna pasta salad chill out in the fridge for an hour or two before eating. It helps the flavors meld together and I like my pasta salad very cold.
Be sure to cover the dish tightly. No one wants their fridge smelling like tuna. 😉
This tuna pasta salad recipe is so easy and it’s got great flavor.
What to serve with cold tuna pasta salad:
This makes a great lunch – double the tuna if you’d like it to be extra filling and just serve with some fresh fruit or grilled veggies on the side. Our air fryer zucchini makes a great side too!
If you’d like to serve this as a side, it will work well with any of your standard barbecue fare – turkey burgers, grilled BBQ chicken, or hot dogs and brats.
Don’t want to fire up the grill? Make your brats in the air fryer.
My Jiffy corn casserole and broccoli cheese casserole all go well alongside this pasta salad.
For dessert, try my Bisquick peach cobbler.
Hope you guys love this cold tuna pasta salad as much as we do!
Tuna Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- 8 ounces campanelle pasta
- 12 ounces tuna drained
- 1 avocado diced
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes halved
- 1/2 cup diced red onion
- ¼ cup mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons minced chives
- 1 tablespoon dill
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and rinse under cold water.
- Add the pasta to large bowl along with the tuna, avocado, tomatoes, and red onion. Stir to combine.
- Add the mayonnaise, lemon juice, chives, dill, salt, and pepper to a small mixing bowl and whisk to combine.
- Pour dressing over the pasta salad and stir to coat.
- Season with additional salt and pepper as needed.
- Cover tightly and refrigerate for one hour before serving.
Pamala says
Hey Karly, regarding the tuna pasta salad, is that fresh dill? If I use dried dill would I use less?
Karly says
I used fresh dill. You could reduce to a teaspoon if using dried and always add more if you like. 🙂
Dana says
Well…. This looks and sounds really delicious. I just went to the market and bought all the ingredients and my husband said that he wanted to make a tuna pasta salad tonight (I usually make all our meals). He just now finished it and put it in the fridge to chill; he only mixed together pasta, peas, tuna, and a *whole jar* of mayo, THATS IT! Literally not anything else in it, no salt, nothing. Lol! (Sigh) I guess ill have to make your version tomorrow for me.
Karly says
Oh my, that’s a lot of mayo! Hopefully your hubby’s recipe turned out, but if not, I hope you give this one a try!
Joyce says
Would this work with smoked Alaska canned red salmon?
Karly says
I haven’t tried it, but I think it would be fine.
Rena says
This Pasts Salad looks so tasty! Going to make this for my kids
Lauren @ Lemon & Mocha says
I love pasta tuna salad and yours looks delicious! Bring on the avocado 🙂
Kimberly says
This looks really good. My daughter loves pasta salad. Definitely gonna give this one a try soon, hope it will be tasty for her.
Karly says
Hope you and your daughter enjoy!