How To Make Real New York Deli Tuna Salad + The Best Tuna Melt!

today we are going to make New York Deli tuna salad you have loved all the other Deli recipes we've made this one seems simple on paper but there are a couple

techniques and tricks that will allow you to get it to taste exactly like a deli here are the ingredients let's get into it right now all right New York Deli tuna salad I worked in a few delies you guys know this if you've been

watching this channel you know we've done a bunch of the deli potato salad mac salad KLA uh chicken salad and I I will say that some recipes like ca Mac

are like the same everywhere they just don't change but tuna salad is one that some places will make it a little bit different I think this is like the best basic one all right so I am using

bumblebee these are 5 O cans delies will often use the chunk light they'll you you know if it's like a fancy Deli maybe they'll do half of the solid albacore then they'll do half for the chunk light chunk light is just it's like mashed

already we're going to mash this anyway so it's not a big deal if you use all chunk light I have albacore here they were on sale we're going to do four cans here which is going to be enough for

about four people for this recipe I have 1 tablespoon of soy sauce okay that is something that I really like to put in there it's you're not going to it's not going to be overly soy Saucy you're not

even going to notice it it will add an oomph to it that's good I have two tablespoons of sweet relish that's kind of another one of those Secrets I have

one teaspoon of celery salt I'm not saying use a a stick of celery or a rib of celery or a medium onion I want you to use the exact amount that I'm saying here so it's going to be a half a cup of

finely diced celery and a half a cup of finely diced onion we have Mayo helman's Mayo delies all delies we'll use the thicker Mayo it's called like decorator

Mayo caterer Mayo often it's not Helman it'll just be a generic brand it makes it really thick so it's almost like a paste don't worry about it though I do recommend you use helmond and not do

definitely don't use Miracle Whip okay use helmet that's going to be what tastes like a New York Deli secret ingredient here we might not need it this is just some crackers some whatever

you can use rits you can use bread if it's too wet this can dry it up very quickly you want it to be kind of pasty where it doesn't fall off of your sandwich and speaking of the sandwich

we're going to use Ry bread and then we're also going to use the quintessential New York deli roll okay they're called hard rolls but they're not they're more the lines of soft many

of you have asked me about a recipe for this I'm working on it it's proving difficult to make there's nobody on the internet that has one tomato if you like on it and then I have some American

cheese bores head Land of Lakes whatever you like whatever your fancy is you can also use cheddar or swiss if you want to make it real fancy before I exit here I just want to clarify we're going to make

a tuna melt with this if you don't want a tuna melt then you're not going to use use the cheese most likely though you could not melt it and it'll it'll still

be fine but that's what the cheese and the bread are for a tuna melt one celery rib you know this is something that you can actually put this in a food

processor because you want it to be fairly thin like you can go even thinner than I'm doing this all right so I'm guessing that's probably a half a cup

there but I want you to do uh exactly a half a cup if you have gigantic cel like I have it would only take one rip okay and I have have onion that I have from yesterday because we don't we definitely

didn't need that huge onion really important drain the heck out of this now listen if you don't do it too well right now you're going to have an opportunity the next day to drain it and that is the

single biggest factor of whether your tuna salad is going to taste anything like a deli or not is if you put it in the refrigerator overnight it's more important than anything else because often like you think a tuna is this like

easy thing you just going to open up a can of tuna you're going to mix it up and then you're going to and then you say it tastes nothing like the deli down the street it tastes nothing like that Deli I'm using the same ingredients it's

just because they're letting it sit you can just open your can all the way and just squeeze the heck out of it okay so

now take your well well drained cans and just add them into a large bowl all right so I'm going to add in the sweet relish that's 2 tablespoons and remember

you can fool around with these amounts if it's not sweet enough to your liking you can add more I you know this is actually one of the one of the few

Stelly salad recipes that from what I remember is they don't put sugar in so because sugar is in almost everything in

a deli case in massive massive quantities okay it's just how it is all right breaking out

the most important change on this show you got to get in here and we want to we want to essentially turn this tuna into like nothing I almost kind of get my

like my hand in there and I just start like this and that really mashes it the goal is to really have no pieces of tuna like none you want this to be almost

like a cohesive thing if you did a really good job like I did it will be very flaky let this sit for about 10 or

15 minutes to just absorb the other flavors and then we will mix our Mayo in 1 to 1 and 1/4 cups of mayo right now

that should be good for now all right so I'm going to mix this all in here and again you could break out a glove and do it again but just get it thoroughly Incorporated you're not

really going to be able to tell here how dry it is or whatnot you're going to be able to tell the next day just adding a little bit of bread like crackers or

breadcrumbs just canned breadcrumbs you know store boo breadcrumbs it will just dry it it'll suck it up immediately because you want it to be like that you don't want it to fall off the sandwich I

got white pepper it doesn't if you you know if you don't have white pepper just use just use black pepper it's about an eighth of a teaspoon so if you want more celery seed all that I would probably wait till the

next day because all this stuff is going to the flavors are going to amplify they're going to increase the single most important thing that you can do is cover it well and get it in

the fridge overnight I recommend if you can't do it overnight at least get it in there for like 4 6 hours till it gets nice and cold but really do it overnight okay it's overnight it really is

overnight now I took a page from Emerald and the the Food Network and all those other uh shows this is the one I just made okay obviously and this is the one that's been in the fridge overnight so

what we want to do here is you can see there's definitely moisture down here if it was really wet then I would say you got to drain it like take a strainer

drain it we did this for the chicken salad this is not wet enough to do that but we will add a couple crackers and it's going to stiffen it up before I put the crackers in I just want to show you this might be completely fine for you

and that's fine for a lot of lot of people we'll just put a couple couple crackers in there perfect wow yep that's exactly what I wanted to happen now listen you

could start with like maybe not all of them now I'm going to mix this in see if it stiffens it up it's going to absorb all of the liquid that's like outstanding in the bowl and you know you

can use Saltines Ritz crackers anything like that just like this now look at this point you can mix in more mayo and we normally the next day I always need to put in another 1/4 cup sometimes up

to a half a cup that's what the recipe says up to a half a cup that is so good the onion comes through much more now the celery a little bit more salt

actually this is outstanding there's a way to make everything good better best the trick with these salads is just

overnight then remix drain then remix and then season sandwich making one onone you never put tomato and cheese together though sometimes you have to for this one you want to have cheese on

both sides of the bread there's nothing else going to be here except for the tuna you going to have to do that or you can just sacrifice and just do the cheese on one side of the bread why is it that the that the tomato and the

cheese shouldn't touch they slide it just it slides and then when you when you bite it it just goes and it like flies out but you know look sometimes rules are meant to be broken Let's uh

cut our tomato I'm going to toast the bread I'm just going to put a tiny bit of oil you can do butter too but you won't I don't want it to be too much here olive oil and a little uh brush so

just a touch okay just a little touch on both sides just about a minute or two per side just to get it a little bit toasty and then we'll lay our cheese broil it and it'll be done and it'll be

great it's going to be great look perfect that's all I want just a little bit of toast toasted action not too much it's another 30 seconds got my Broiler

on we'll do one like I guess in more traditional way so the cheese doesn't hit so we'll do a couple slices on it Broiler minute 2 3 just don't incinerate

it but we want it to get nice and melty be right [Music] back so let's uh let's do a little deli

wrap for James because James isn't going to be back for a long time I'll show you how to do a delra so look take these two pieces together like

this turn down turn down fingers like this one to under now everything is contained in

there now you can cut but that's what you would do there like this so one more piece of paper wrap it again you could also use a piece of foil

now and wrap it that would be a good thing to do as well the taste tester is here for the tuna melts I really like the tuna salad I like the Ry bread I don't like the

cheese with it really yeah and so je just put lettuce on it like well yeah we that's and listen if you don't like a tuna M and James didn't know he was getting a tuna melt either so this isn't

like a regular tuna sandwich this is a tuna melt tuna melts are popular in the deli not so popular I I would probably when I worked in the deli I would

probably make one tuna melt for every 20 regular tuna sandwiches so yeah they're not they weren't too popular but I I think when they're done right and I thought this was done right uh I think

it's really good no it's good it's good don't get me wrong but I think a regular tuna sandwich is better the tuna itself is delicious okay I really like it

um I'm just not a big fan of the whole tuna Mountain that's fine I really do like the tuna salad all right well why don't you why don't you do two grades then grade the tuna melt and gr grade

the tuna salad for the tuna melt cuz it's not bad it's not bad I'm going to give it an eight what about if it was 3 hours ago right when it was hot like the cheese was like just melted oh yeah then

I'll probably give it a higher I I just it tastes like right now since it's not like melted and it's not hot it taste like you just like put tuna salad on some like toasted Brad and like slapped

a piece of American cheese on it I hate defending myself on camera here but in my defense this bread isn't toasted anymore really because it's 3 hours

later I'm actually going to get the tuna salad a n and a half thank you if the tuna salad wasn't good I would probably give it like a five you know what I think and I think he can tell what he

thinks too when he's eating that whole entire sandwich all right we'll take it thank you James thank you for watching if you

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that is a goal of our is to raise that Instagram numbers on Instagram I put stories up all the time and I put little short videos of these longer videos if you're into that sort of thing James can

you please get off the granite counter before you break it thank you I thought he's going to fall on the sink