Tuna sauce

The tuna sauce is easy to make and rich in flavour, perfect to enjoy as an appetizer or to use to prepare the classic veal with tuna sauce.

Today we are preparing tuna sauce, an original and delicious recipe, ideal for garnishing many dishes, including the famous veal with tuna sauce. This tuna sauce is so good that it can also be enjoyed on its own, perhaps as an appetizer spread on freshly toasted croutons .

Today there are many variations of this preparation, from the one without mayonnaise to the one without capers. But what about the traditional recipe ? To tell the truth, what we find now in supermarkets often leads us to think that tuna sauce is nothing more than mayonnaise with the addition of blended canned tuna. But in reality, as the great culinary popularizer Pellegrino Artusi wrote, it is something more complex and totally different!

A recommendation: if you want to get as close as possible to the original preparation , beat everything with a knife , the real tuna sauce must be thick and consistent . Let's go prepare the tuna sauce recipe together!

How to prepare tuna sauce with the original Piedmontese recipe

1. Place the eggs in a saucepan with cold water and bring to the boil. Lower the heat so that it comes to a light simmer .
2. After about 8 minutes, turn off and cool by pouring cold water from the tap into the pan. Once the hard-boiled eggs are cool enough to handle, peel them .
3. Place the anchovies and tuna, well drained of their oil, the capers squeezed out of the vinegar and the hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters on the cutting board.
4. Chop everything with a knife or a mezzaluna, making sure that all the ingredients still maintain their consistency.
5. Place in a bowl, add ground pepper and a spoonful of oil (or meat broth if you also prepare veal with tuna sauce) and mix with a fork or spoon to obtain a thick sauce.

If it helps to reach the desired consistency, add a drizzle of oil. Taste the sauce, salt should not be needed, but always check it. Here is the authentic recipe for tuna sauce with hard-boiled eggs and without mayonnaise.

Between the initial cooking, the care of the food and the fact that, as we said, the real sauce is beaten with a knife, you can count on this preparation taking half an hour. You can speed up the preparation, sacrificing consistency, by blending all the ingredients in a food processor.

Staying on the topic of recipes without mayonnaise, you can also make a delicious light tuna sauce where the Greek yogurt gives everything creaminess or opt for the 100% vegetable variant with the vegan tuna sauce .

Tuna sauce with mayonnaise

Alternatively, you can try your hand at the most popular variant, namely tuna sauce with mayonnaise. The procedure is very simple: the other ingredients are worked by beating them with a knife or blending them and then the mayonnaise is added, which gives creaminess to everything. This version, less faithful to the real recipe, is certainly quick and useful if you have to run for cover and prepare a sauce on the fly!

Thermomix tuna sauce: here's how to make it

If you want an even quicker and less laborious recipe, you can prepare it with the Thermomix. Here's how it's done!

1. Take the desalted capers, the anchovy fillets and the tuna and chop everything in the bowl for about 30 seconds. speed 5 , then for another 30 sec. speed. Turbo.
2. Add the mayonnaise, mix everything for 1 minute. speed 4.

The recipe for veal with tuna sauce

Now that your tuna sauce is ready, let's see how to make the veal with tuna recipe! Get a piece of veal shank , a long, thin cut, or alternatively, the drumstick.

In a pan, pour some water, an onion, a carrot and a stick of celery and boil. Add the meat and cook for about an hour , until the veal is nice and soft. All you have to do is cut it into thin slices, arrange it on a plate and season it with the tuna sauce.