Healthy Tuna Pasta Recipe

This Healthy Tuna Pasta recipe is a great dinner option when you’re stuck at home and crave Italian comfort food. It’s an easy recipe that combines a bunch of common, affordable pantry items to quickly create a super tasty dinner.

Traveling without a home base for three years encouraged us to become creative in the kitchen. Though we didn’t always have the necessary tools or cookbook recipes, we still wanted to eat well on the road.

Despite the culinary challenge, we were highly motivated to cook at home on nights when we weren’t eating out at restaurants. The longer we traveled without a home base, the more we craved comfort food that was tasty, inexpensive and healthy.

There’s no better example than this tuna pasta dish where earthy tuna, spicy chili and vibrant tomatoes combine to create something special. Daryl first developed this recipe in Italy, modifying it over time until we were both satisfied with the result.

Why We Love This Canned Tuna Pasta Recipe

We love this easy tuna pasta dish so much that we’ve nicknamed it ‘Pasta a la Daryl’ in honor of the creator. We enjoy this go-to recipe once a week when we’re not traveling.

Daryl whips his signature tuna pasta dish together when it’s just the two of as well as when we have friends visiting from out-of-town. It’s a relatively quick to make, inexpensive crowd-pleaser.

Healthy Tuna Pasta Ingredients

As the name suggests, the two main ingredients in this tuna pasta recipe are pasta and tuna. Other key ingredients include onion, garlic, parsley, chili, olive oil and tomatoes.

This flexible recipe can be modified based on what’s in the pantry. Even the fresh ingredients can be replaced if necessary, though we recommend using fresh grape, cherry or plum tomatoes and herbs like parsley or basil.

Pro Tip
We recommend using tuna in olive oil. It just tastes better than tuna in water. We also recommend draining the tuna well so you don’t have an oily mess.

Who doesn’t like pasta? We love the Italian food staple and always have several types of noodles on hand. Daryl likes spaghetti and linguini best, while Mindi prefers chewy shapes like farfalle and gemelli.

We alternate between these two types of pasta depending on our mood and what’s in the pantry. It’s only fair and both work well in this flexible tuna and pasta recipe.

How to Make Healthy Tuna Pasta

You can carefully follow our recipe step-by-step or add your own twist. For example, you can adjust the amount of chili pepper based on your heat tolerance.

Healthy Tuna Pasta Recipe

Pro Tip
Don’t worry if you can’t eat all of the Healthy Tuna Pasta in one sitting. In our experience, the cold leftovers taste surprisingly good.

Continue to Content

Healthy Tuna Pasta

Yield: 6

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

This healthy tuna pasta recipe is both easy and cheap. You likely have all the ingredients in your pantry. Plus, it tastes really good.

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Ingredients

• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup Italian flat-leaf parsley, stems removed and chopped
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon chili flakes (to taste)
• 2 cans tuna in olive oil, drained
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/3 cup white wine
• 2 cups cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
• 1/3 cup capers (salt-packed or packed in brine)
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs, finely chopped
• 1 pound dry pasta
• Salt
• Black pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat a 10" to 12" (28cm to 30cm) skillet at medium-high heat.
2. Add olive oil and then onions to the hot skillet. Saute the onions until pale golden.
3. Add garlic and chili pepper to the skillet as well as a pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Stir and continue to cook for about a minute until fragrant.
4. Add tuna to the skillet and stir a few times until incorporated. Cook the mixture until a noticeable layer of fond appears on the bottom of the pan.
5. Add white wine to the skillet, scraping up the brown bits at the bottom of the pan. Cook until almost all the liquid is gone.
6. On a separate burner, add dry pasta to a pot of well-salted boiling water. Cook until al dente. (See pasta box for cook time.)
7. Add tomatoes and capers to the skillet. (The capers are optional. If you skip the capers, add a pinch of salt instead.) Once the tomatoes are soft, reduce heat to low before adding half of the parsley.
8. Turn down heat on the skillet while the pasta cooks.
9. Four minutes before the pasta is ready, turn the sauce heat to high and add 2 to 4 ladles of starchy pasta water to the skillet. Gently stir and let simmer until a viscous sauce forms. You should be able to see the bottom of the pan when you stir with a wooden spoon. Turn heat down to low.
10. Drain pasta in a colander and immediately add to the skillet. Cook over low heat for 30 to 60 seconds until the sauce incorporates with the pasta.
11. Pour into a bowl and gently stir. Sprinkle bread crumbs and remaining parsley over the pasta.

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About the Authors

Daryl & Mindi Hirsch

Saveur Magazine’s BEST TRAVEL BLOG award winners Daryl and Mindi Hirsch share their culinary travel experiences and recipes on the 2foodtrippers website and YouTube. The married Food and Travel content creators live in Lisbon, Portugal.