Healthy Chickpea Tuna Salad (Oil-Free)

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Protein-packed and delicious, this Healthy Chickpea Tuna Salad is an easy recipe that’s super versatile and perfect for sandwiches, lettuce wraps, on crackers, and more! You’ll love this no-fuss recipe that comes together in about 15 minutes. Great for meal prep, lunches, dinners, and snacks.

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Chickpeas can really be anything, can’t they? I love chickpeas in hummus, like in my spinach artichoke hummus. And even in my hummus dressing, which you can find the recipe for in my kale sweet potato salad.

But did you know that chickpeas actually make a great tuna replacement? Mix it with some dulse flakes or crumbled nori sheets for that “fish-y” flavor, and you’ve got something really special.

I never loved canned tuna before I went vegan (and then whole food plant based), but I didn’t mind it in tuna salad. Now that I can make my own vegan tuna salad with chickpeas, I’m a pretty happy camper!

The other thing I had to figure out was the mayo situation. I hate store bought vegan mayo. It’s too rich and oily, and certainly not on my plan.

But luckily, my tofu mayo works perfectly in this recipe! I substituted miso paste for the salt and this is actually a pretty fantastic creamy yet light base for our chickpea tuna salad.

And it’s totally delicious! The pictures in this post show my favorite way to eat it: in butter lettuce leaf “wraps” with tomatoes and microgreens. But I also love it as a sandwich filling with some other veggies, as a dip for sliced veggies, or on crackers! I also have made it into vegan tuna melt sandwiches (my partner loves these) and vegan tuna noodle casserole, if you’re interested in trying those.

Ingredients

See the recipe card below for the full ingredients list (with amounts) and instructions.

Chickpea Tuna Salad

• Chickpeas (AKA Garbanzo Beans): You can use canned chickpeas or dried chickpeas and cook them yourself (I often cook mine in an Instant Pot). You don’t need the aquafaba for this recipe. If buying your chickpeas in a can, I usually recommend buying no-salt-added ones. But if you’re not concerned about sodium, go ahead and use what you want.
• Celery: I feel like this is a quintessential tuna salad ingredient. But I love the flavor and crunch it gives too!
• Green Onion (AKA Scallions or Spring Onions): The veggie from the allium family has many names and a lot of great flavor!
• Tofu Mayo: I’ll give you the recipe for my tofu mayo below. It’s so delicious in this vegan tuna salad and it really only takes a couple minutes to whip up.
• Lemon Juice: I love the tang this gives to the chickpea tuna salad. If you don’t have fresh lemons to juice, the next best thing (in my opinion) is Italian Volcano bottled lemon juice!
• Dulse Flakes: Dulse flakes are a type of seaweed and they give us our “tuna” flavor for the salad. See below for some substitution ideas if you don’t have dulse flakes!
• Granulated Onion and Garlic: For flavor!

Tofu Mayo

• Firm Tofu: Other types of tofu such as soft or medium will also work, though may require less liquid to blend. Extra firm can be hard to blend, but you can certainly try it. You can also use silken tofu (you don’t need any liquid to blend for this, but don’t skip the vinegar).
• Unsweetened Soy Milk: I almost exclusively use soy milk in my kitchen and I only use the kind that comes in a shelf stable carton. This is because I can find organic non-GMO soy milk that’s literally made from just organic soybeans and water. I love to use this type of soy milk for sauces, my morning tea, and making my homemade soy yogurt.
• Apple Cider Vinegar: I love apple cider vinegar specifically because it adds a little sweetness to the recipe.
• Granulated Onion and Garlic: For flavor, of course!
• White or Yellow Miso Paste: This is to replace the salt in the recipe, but I also love the little hint of umami flavors. Per Dr. Michael Greger of NutritionFacts.org, the soy in miso has a protective effect so the sodium in miso paste will not affect us negatively. Please feel free to omit or use a pinch of salt if that is what you prefer.

Substitutions

• Chickpeas (AKA Garbanzo Beans): If you don’t have chickpeas, any white beans such as Great Northern Beans, cannellini beans, or butter beans will work. You could also use canned young/green jackfruit!
• Celery: If you hate celery or don’t have it, I’ve actually found that carrot is a really nice substitute. It does add a little sweetness but I actually really liked it the one time I was out of celery and needed a substitute.
• Green Onion (AKA Scallions or Spring Onions): I think traditional tuna salad uses red onion, but I’ve always preferred green onion. Use what you have and/or enjoy!
• Tofu Mayo: If you don’t want to make my tofu mayo (you could definitely use white beans instead of tofu!), store bought vegan mayo will work. Just keep in mind that it does have oil.
• Lemon Juice: I love the tang this gives to the chickpea tuna salad. If you don’t have fresh lemons to juice, the next best thing (in my opinion) is Italian Volcano bottled lemon juice! If you want more sea-flavor to your chickpea tuna salad, try relish (not sweet relish though), pickle juice, or caper juice. I didn’t choose to use these because of the high sodium content but you can use them if you prefer.
• Dulse Flakes: Dulse flakes are a type of seaweed and they give us our “tuna” flavor for the salad. See below for some substitution ideas if you don’t have dulse flakes!
• Granulated Onion and Garlic: For flavor!
• Firm Tofu: If you can’t have tofu, try 1.5 cups white beans of any kind. Or try 1 cup of soaked raw cashews or soaked raw sunflower seeds. You may need more liquid to get these to blend depending on which substitution you’re using and the strength of your blender.
• Unsweetened Soy Milk:
• Apple Cider Vinegar: If you don’t have it on hand, rice vinegar, white balsamic vinegar, or even lemon juice will work instead.
• White or Yellow Miso Paste: If you don’t have miso paste but you don’t want to use salt, another nice option is using a bit more of the dulse flakes as they add a bit of the saltiness.

How to Make Chickpea Tuna Salad

Watch me make this recipe or follow the step-by-step instructions below.

1. Make the tofu mayo: If using homemade tofu mayo, blend up those ingredients now until smooth. Taste and adjust any seasonings as needed and blend again if you do add anything. Pour into a jar and refrigerate until needed (up to 5 days).
2. Mash the chickpeas: Start by mashing your rinsed chickpeas in a medium or large bowl. You can just use the back of a fork or you can use a potato masher which does make it go a little faster. If you want to use a food processor, that’s fine, but just pulse it because it’s very easy to puree the chickpeas which ruins some of the texture in the chickpea tuna salad.
3. Add veggies: Finely chop the celery and green onion (or red onion) and add them to the bowl with the mashed chickpeas.
4. Add remaining ingredients: Add the tofu mayo, lemon juice, dulse flakes, granulated onion, and granulated garlic to the bowl.
5. Mix: Mix with a fork until well combined. Taste and adjust any of the seasonings as needed.
6. Serving: You can do anything you want with this chickpea tuna salad. I love to serve it in butter lettuce leaves or romaine heart leaves, but it’s also great in collard wraps (recipe coming soon!), regular wraps, sandwiches, on pasta, or on crackers. Also great on top of a leafy green salad!
7. Storage: Store vegan tuna salad in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Expert Tips

• Don’t Love Fishy Flavors? Try making this into a vegan chicken salad by just leaving out the dulse flakes.
• Add other flavors and textures: You could add other things to this vegan tuna salad like chives and/or dill, halved grapes or raisins, nuts like sliced almonds or chopped walnuts, seeds like raw pumpkin seeds or hemp seeds, or other veggies.
• Add other vegetables: Speaking of veggies, you can make this a more veggie-packed dish easily by adding finely chopped veggies like carrots, broccoli, bell peppers, etc. Just remember that you might need a bit more tofu mayo, lemon juice, and seasonings to account for the larger volume of chickpea salad.

Serving Suggestions

My favorite way to serve this chickpea tuna salad is how you see it pictured on this page: in butter lettuce leaves (but green or red leaf lettuce or romaine leaves work well too).

You could also throw this mixture in a collard wrap or some other wrap or tortilla for an awesome plant-based wrap.

And of course I love it in a sandwich too with low sodium Ezekiel sprouted whole grain bread, which I find in the freezer section of my local grocery store. Any bread that fits your dietary needs will work. I always toast mine and add spinach or baby kale, cucumber, tomato, and sometimes onion.

It’s also great as a dip, like my butter bean hummus or spinach artichoke hummus. Dip some sliced bell peppers (halved mini bell peppers work perfectly like a “scoop chip”), cucumbers, carrots, celery, or whatever you like in it and enjoy a high-protein flavorful dip!

You can also spread this chickpea tuna salad on crackers like Mary’s Gone Crackers (not all of their flavors are oil-free but the “original” varieties are oil-free) or Wasa Light Rye Crispbread (oil-free).

And finally, if you want to be fancy, make this vegan tuna salad into a vegan tuna melt or vegan tuna casserole (note that these two recipes may not be 100% WFPBNOSOS but you can easily tweak them to make them compliant).

Chickpea Tuna Salad Recipe

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