Yes, please, if she thinks it could have a similar flavor to tuna.

My daughter does the same as Blubird. I make tuna salad a lot, and i have tried her chickpea salad. It did not fool me.

I don't think it tastes exactly like a good tuna salad, but it's pretty tasty and fills the desire for a salad or sandwich filling. My daughter doesn't use the kelp flakes which probably would add to the “fishiness”

Vegan Tuna Salad

If you're looking for a legit vegan tuna salad, this is it! Filled with chickpeas, celery, onions, fresh herbs, kelp flakes, and even flaxseed for omega 3. This recipe is perfect for breakfast, lunch, or dinner!Course Main CourseCuisine AmericanKeyword chickpea tuna salad, vegan tuna saladPrep Time 10minutes minutesCook Time 1minute minuteServings 4Calories 234kcalAuthor Courtney

Ingredients

• 1 can chickpeas drained and rinsed
• 1/2 cup celery chopped
• 1/2 cup red onion chopped
• 1/3 cup vegan mayo
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1/8 cup parsley chopped
• 1 teaspoon kelp flakes
• 1 teaspoon ground flaxseed optional (for omega)

Instructions

• Mash the chickpeas using a potato masher until broken down.
• Add in the remaining ingredients and mix until combined.
• Place the chickpea tuna in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour to chill before serving.

Nutrition

Calories: 234kcal | Carbohydrates: 19g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 14g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Sodium: 441mg | Potassium: 254mg | Fiber: 6g | Sugar: 1g | Vitamin A: 232IU | Vitamin C: 5mg | Calcium: 52mg | Iron: 2mg

Here's the LINK to the recipe.source

Thanks! I think the kelp flakes might be too salty, too, but it's a step forward. I would never have thought chickpeas, but I can see that they'd hold their own against the crunchy vegetables.

Grapefruit, I appreciate your honest comments. Still, I think we have to settle for reminding one of the experience and flavor.

add noodles or ramen ... after all, it's a 'salad' ...

texture might be an issue too ... mashed chickpeas might be fine, but more on the order of humus; celery and some sort of pickle may help ... and a sprinkle of frozen green peas.

I have too good an imagination. Funny....but ... urp!

Seaweeds/kelp are not necessarily salty. Depends on how they are processed. My hijiki, wakame and nori are not salty at all. Only 5-20mg per serving. A stalk of celery has about 30mg give or take depending. One type i buy seaside every summer, called dulce, is off the charts because it is not rinsed of the sea water, then partially air dried and needs to be rinsed in a few changes of water.

Both kelp powders i have show 0 sodium. One brand on Amazon shows 27mg and another is 'seasoned' with salt and sugars.

I make a summer and winter(holiday) version of a hijiki/wakame salad. Based on a salad from a favorite Sushi restaurant years ago retired. And a salad from a vegan restaurant. I used to meet a friend for their lunch specials, soup/salad or soup/sandwich. They use jackfruit. The cans are usually in a salt brine but can be rinsed. I used to buy a fresh young fruit about once a year, season and freeze but we don't use it. Now i just buy a tin twice a year, rinse and season with a ginger/tahini/kelp/mustard dressing and into my salad. Lots of lemon.

Wild rice, grated carrot, diced apple, hijiki/wakame, dried fruit, (gogi/mulberry), three bean...chick pea, Marcella, flageolet or others. Olives, artichoke hearts, celery, greens, green onion, herbs. Sometimes halved grapes and cherry tomatoes, toasted cashews, seeds.

I have this one for a 4th of July party. (new to me)

Needs to be 'young'. Ripe is a bit like banana. Young is neutral in taste but good texture.

I've had non-vegetarians ask if it is tuna or chicken.

I think without the greens in my salad it would make a nice sandwich with humus as the mayo.

I don't have any close vegan friends or family. Just a few vegetarian family and friends.

That said, a vegan co-worker is allergic to jackfruit.

This one is getting good reviews. It uses nori for the fishy taste.

https://rainbowplantlife.com/vegan-tuna-salad-sandwich/

Thanks! Sleevendog, my takeaway is try young jackfruit (canned), rinsed, with low/no salt sea vegetables. Right? Your salad sounds interesting too. She might like that, as well.

Sherry, the link page Blubird posted also referred to hearts of palm with the chickpeas. I love how the author says the combo of celery seed and celery gives it an ”American” flavor! Yes! There are all kinds of interesting directions tuna salad can go, but my relative surely wants American school lunch style, though she didn't say. The seasonings and vegetables are easily adjusted, of course. These recommendations for the base will really help!

Sherry's link looks great. I would eat that no problem. It could be right out of the menu pages of the restaurant i mentioned. *Choice of different breads. (they lost their lease but re-opened somewhere in Brooklyn). Last i looked they are still a NYC favorite. And do not use any of the meat replacements. ImposibleFoods, etc. Burgers are old school beans, rice, beets, dates, nuts, seeds, lentils, mushrooms, etc, yada.

I made an excellent batch of very green herby falafel last week and a rich wild mushroom veg non-meat 'meatball'. No plan to ever go vegan/meatless but great options exist.

I have a tin of hearts of palm purchased at the same time as the jackfruit. No idea why. Must be from a Refika recipe as her girlfriend is vegan or vegetarian.

I think the key to this is that it uses "normal" foods. That fake "impossible" commercial foods are not good. They are just chemicals. I have had the Nori in the Rebecca Katz broth I made and it is very good. The key is also to not overblend, you want some texture.

Ask if she likes celery. I do, but my husband does not (in regular tuna salsd). He does not like celery at all. I get away with it in dressing for Thanksgiving, but nothing else.

Yesh, I won't eat that lab product stuff. It's not just that, though. There are some fine vegan restaurants around here, but they're so busy making things that remind people of stuff they know that they leave nutrition in the gutter, and everything they serve is soft. There are a couple where the food has texture, at least. Only two where the food is good and nutritionally defensible, if less crunchy. One is Thai, and uses their traditional TVP. The other runs to massive plates of vegetables, expertly prepared and delicious, with choices of traditional meat substitutes like tempeh. Rather than pretending that tofu has more protein than beans, they use quantity of the veg to give you a full meal. The old (gone for a long while) neighborhood favorite hamburger stand had a fantastic ”veggie” burger along side the beef. It had brown rice, for sure, and likely legumes, mushrooms, etc. I loved it, and had plenty of meat at other meals so didn't have to worry about proteins. It was soft, though. One thing that's great about a teriyaki seitan burger, besides the protein, is that there's some biting and chewing involved. :)

OTOH, a bean and veg sandwich, like these tuna recipes, while not being a big protein source, is still nutritious. ;)

Sherry, if she doesn't like the celery, she can substitute. I just liked the quest for tasting ”American” (which if I were to define it, would be maonnaise, for which she gives recommendations for brands she likes so you don't have to work so hard emulsifying). When I could eat tuna salad, essential for me was some kind of onion, though I really want celery, too, in chicken salad.

Sorry off thread a little.

I really don’t like celery either always leave it out of the traditional mirepoix but had some pickled celery in a starter salad the other day for lunch. It was very nice, the crunch was less and I guess the pickling solution had a little sugar which again made the celery flavour less prominent. The photo shows the little bits of celery.

I had no idea that celery was so polarizing! I love celery, but I can't imagine it being improved by sugar, so this might be one of those things that depends on where it's grown and what variety. I can imagine it could run sour or bitter, but ours isn't. The celery from the farm box is particularly tasty. But I also think it's best in small dice so as not to overwhelm either in flavor or texture.

I was thinking the pickling solution may have had a little sugar, like a teaspoon added to the salt and vinegar mix. I maybe wrong but it seems that pickling solutions are either all salt brine or salt and vinegar or salt, vinegar and a little sugar but not a vast sugary solution like a candied lemon peel. Not really anything to do with sour or bitter celery, but rather the pickling solution.

I was just thinking of why a little sweetness would improve it. I get the softening. First I've heard of pickled celery at all. But I wonder if it would add some zing to ersatz tuna salad.

I make a sandwich filling that is a lot like a tuna salad or an egg salad, in form. I wont mislead that it tastes like fish or eggs, but it the same with basic form and ingredients.

I use crumbled tofu and dress it with the usual mayo, onions, pickles, whatever it is that you might find usually in either tuna or egg salad. I use it just exactly as you would either of these.

Since I dont like fish and dont much care for eggs like this, it suits me even better.

I actually prefer it.

There is not going to be anything that tastes like fish that is not fish. That is just the reality. But a sandwich salad such as this with a common base serves the same purpose and is served the same way.

For myself, I prefer it over the other ones. I often use a vegan mayonaise, not because it is vegan., but because I dont care for real mayonaise. If you like mayo, you just use it.

I put in "mayo", pickles and onions and add tumeric to give it color and it also imparts a bit of flavor. You could also just use a bit of paprika to give it a slight color, or just not bother. It also lures the imagination that is something that it is not.

I like to soak up as much water from the tofu as I can by cutting it into thick slices first and puttiing it on a dish towel to absorb as much as I can. I dont like things wet or weepy.

In my world I cant imagine why anyone wants anything to taste like fish.....eeew! But that is my preference. You may actually like it.

But, what if what you present is not well accepted by the person that you are trying to please? It might be a bit unfair to expect them to recieve it well. They might feel obligated to try to show appreciation when they really dont want to eat it. Just a thought. With no salt it is more difficult to achieve that goal. How sad to have such restrictions!

I really think that I could dish this up as egg salad and not many would even notice. MIstaking it for tuna, maybe not as much.

It is a bit like a hamburger, in that you dress it up with so many things that the meat may not actually be the star attraction by that time. Of course, if your burger is graced with a very nice piece of meat, that would be missed. But, with those premade little patties of cheap quality ground meat, missing that is not a problem. So this tofu based filling has some merit in that regard. The tofu is pretty neutral.

Thanks for sharing, Claudia. Burgers, in my book, aren't “premade little patties of cheap quality beef”. The neighborhood favorite hambuger stand I mentioned above—not a fast food chain—had fabulous, high quality burgers. Your tofu salad sounds fine for what it is. The point of this exercise is to mimic tuna salad enough to scratch the itch for what she can't have. The standard meat substitutes don't do it for her, but I'm hoping the chickpeas+hearts of palm+kelp or the young jackfruit+sea vegetables, will be close enough to be a happy experience. IME, similar things can trigger the sense memories and be satisfying in the absence of the original. It's the recipes I'll be giving her, so she can customize to her favorite seasoning and vegetable flavors, rather than trying to make it and guessing wrong.

I wonder what Daniel Humm at 11 Madison would do.

Off topic, but interesting to those who are vegetarians. I have a couple of trees (Toona Sinensis) in my garden which are very curious:

See these videos:

dcarch

I simmer cubed radishes in concentrated broth to make cubes of ersatz pork or chicken. It’s just a fun novelty for me, so I’ve never really developed the idea, but you might try experiments along those lines.

If your relative can tolerate meat-based broth, maybe make a small amount of reduced and concentrated tuna broth from canned tuna, then simmer stuff in it. Radishes will be soft; for more texture, try frozen-thawed tofu.

If broth is not tolerable, maybe find a vegan fish sauce and experiment with that. I suspect they are pretty salty, though.

John, your radishes sound interesting. Please say more about frozen-thawed tofu. Not for this purpose in that my relative can't have any animal protein at all, including broth, but maybe just flavored water if it's a good texture substitute.

Your mention of vegan fish sauce was an eye opener. I don't know if fermentation kills the proteins I'm allergic to in fish or enhances them, but I've always just avoided it, including a high end Asian restaurant where I was with friends that have almost nothing I could eat. There was a chicken dish with fish sauce which they said they could make without it, but they didn't substitute any non-fish sauce or even salt it, and the dish was beautiful to look at and nearly inedible, rubbery and flavorless. Perhaps, while the waiter was cognizant of avoiding paramedics, the chef was insulter and wanted to punish us. (The unamended food was great)

So, I looked at some bottles and they were way too salty even for me. I've read that soy sauce is so salty because it's prepared with brine. I don't know if it's any good, but I found a recipe for a very low sodium soy sauce alternative. It starts with chicken stock, but I think it could work with a rich vegetable stock. A project for another day. But I found some vegan fish sauce recipes that sound good! Some are very salty, of course, but where it's not soy sauce giving the salt, it can be made less salty, and perhaps low sodium soy sauce would be okay. Even if the relative doesn't want to go there, I may try them! Thanks!

I ALWAYS use low sodium soy sauce. I do not know if it is reallylow salt or not, but it has to be better than the fully loaded.

Me too, Sherry, but low(er) sodium for soy sauce is hella salty. Some tamari is as low as 480mg per tablespoon, but most low sodium soy sauce is over 600mg, and some over 700mg. Many of these say "reduced" (see below)., "less" or "lite". The substitute recipe doesn't say the portion basis, but most sauces are a tablespoon. For both the chicken and vegan versions, it qualifies for "low". The vegan has a lot more sodium, I think because it was in packaged broth.

This is on Google from the FDA:

Salt/Sodium-Free: Less than 5 mg of sodium per serving

Very Low Sodium: 35 mg of sodium or less per serving

Low Sodium: 140 mg of sodium or less per serving

Reduced Sodium: At least 25% less sodium than the regular product

I wonder if tofu skin would give the right texture. I've never had it myself, but they talked about on The Splendid Table and said it was like chicken. And then infuse it with the vegan fish flavors mentioned. Good luck, can't wait to hear what works even though I eat tuna I'm quite curious.

I'm not sure what the real name for the stuff was but back in the dark time of my life before retirement when I was still working (As Maynard G Krebs used to describe so well), there was a Chinese restaurant we'd go to as a group occasionally that had a vegetarian sub-menu of dishes made using plant-based "meat". The normal spectrum of chicken dishes - Kung Pao, General Tsao, Sweet/Sour, with Snow Peas or Brocolli, Curry Chicken, etc, all made with vegetable-based protein. The dishes were all good. We'd order it as one of the dishes to share, just to be different

That sounds like TVP, which is an agribusiness term for a meat substitute which is a by-product of oil processing.

plllog, if you freeze then thaw tofu, it changes the texture to be less pasty, more chewy, more voids, less soft, more meat-like. Grab a block and try, it’s kind of cool. Smoked tofu is another angle, you can buy that in Asian markets.

Whether it will sub well for tuna in tuna salad I’m not sure, but I’d cube it then mix with mayo, seasonings, the usual tuna salad stuff, and then take a portion and experiment with the tiniest amount of fish sauce.

In fact ,I’m now thinking there must be a better way to get that tuna-y flavor than fish sauce, because canned tuna is not really “fish-y“ which is why kids will eat it, and it’s not really salty either. Maybe forget about “fish”-ish and instead try “umami”-ish things. I’m a fan of nutritional yeast, of dry cheeses like ricotta, of powdered mushroom.

Cool! Thanks for the explanation. I don't mind tofu. I just don't know the tricks or anything because it's not, um, don't hate me for saying so...exciting. I will try the freeze-thaw. Agreed about the state of fishy. Tuna, especially canned for salad, is tasty but not fishy. It does often have a scent of the ocean, which is why the kelp seems like a good idea.

The information up to here has been passed to the relative, but no commentary yet.

Yes, tofu is one of those foods whose main role is to be flavored by other foods. Kind of like steamed rice. I go through phases of eating it and not eating it. When I’m on a low carb kick, tofu becomes a mainstay. I have played around with making it, which isn’t that hard. Pan-frying, deep-frying, smoking tofu can make it more interesting as a standalone. But the same effort applied to, say, a pork spare rib is, I think, better spent. Unless you can’t eat pork spare ribs, but decide to go on living even so :-)

That reminds me, I bought a vegan ”poke bowl” at Whole Foods. The cubes of “ahi” looked almost perfect, had okay texture, didn’t taste quite like ahi tuna but had the right soy and vinegar and hint of wasabi flavor, so all in all it was pretty okay.

I think the offerings of ersatz meat and fish are interesting, as are the efforts at faux rice and noodles. Someday we may all be living in steel caves, and while Soylent Green will keep you fed, it is neither tasty nor low-carb. Wait, if Soylent Green is made from people, it might be low-carb. And maybe people are tasty. People are called ” long pig” in some cultures, after all. Not all people, perhaps just some people. Some very anxious people.

I think we're more likely to be living on legumes. I object to faux food in general, because the nutrition is more important, but I have no qualms about reproducing a flavor, whether vegan tuna or poke. If your almost perfect ”ahi” was radish cubes or tofu or something like, still no objections, but no soylent or lab made sludge for me! I'll endure a life of pease porridge before that (though maybe not nine days old).

what a fun thread ... gruel for the soul.

Turns out there's tuna flavoring:

https://specializedrx.com/products/tuna-vegetarian-os-natural-flavor-concentrate-vet

That is truly amazing!

Baking tofu also can change the texture to a more firm and "meaty" texture.

I have started buying tofu as a staple when grocery shopping. It is a flavor absorber and carrier. I have come to welcome it in my kitchen.

In the Asian store you can buy knots of that skim that forms on the top of the pot when making soy milk. I bought is once but didnt really know what to do with it, so will withold the opinion. It seems to be like wet sheets and they fold it and knot it up. It must be some by product of the proteins in the soy that form this.