The 1-Ingredient Upgrade for Tuna Salad Sandwiches, According to a Food Expert
J. Kenji López-Alt explains why adding chips to your tuna salad (or chicken salad) sandwiches is genius.
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As a child, sandwich day at school was my very favorite. I can still see in my mind's eye the tidy sandwich, crisp pickle, and adorable bag of potato chips on my lunch tray. I was the kid who took apart her sandwich to sneak a few crispy potato chips inside. At the time, I felt like I’d reached the peak of culinary innovation, instantly upgrading my turkey, tuna, or chicken salad sandwiches with a pop of saltiness and crunch.
Recently, I felt instant nostalgia when I saw the real culinary innovator, J. Kenji López-Alt, share his recipe for Tuna Crunch Sandwiches on The New York Times.
While incredibly simple, his trick instantly upgrades any sandwich, particularly salad-based. Kenji crushes a handful of his favorite chips—salt & vinegar—on top of the tuna salad before adding the top slice of bread. He explains, "Beyond crunch, chips also add stability to the sandwich, holding the tuna salad in place as you eat."
Chips not only taste delicious, but they also play a crucial role in keeping a sandwich together. You've experienced the frustration of a messy bite into a tuna, chicken, or egg salad sandwich, only to have half of it end up in your lap. One solution would be to make a drier salad, but that doesn't sound appealing.
Adding gently crushed potato or corn chips to the sandwich helps to hold all of the goodness in place while you eat it. Now, that is the problem-solving this world needs!
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Kenji's tuna salad cleverly swaps olive oil for mayonnaise for richness, but he encourages readers to use the potato chip trick with whatever version of tuna salad speaks to them.
After far too many tuna salad sandwiches in grammar school, I’m more of a chicken salad fan as an adult. So I’ve been adding crushed corn chips to an avocado-based chicken salad—it’s my current go-to lunch.
For the potato chip purists, I recently rediscovered another blast from the past: Utz Potato Stix. My kids love them as much as I did as a kid, and they make the best addition to sandwiches. They are super crunchy but small enough to pile high between two slices of bread.
If you meal-prep tuna or chicken salad at the beginning of the week, make sure you add the chips right when you build the sandwich to preserve that craveable crunch.
Read the original article on Simply Recipes.
