Southwest Tuna Melt: Jazz up your traditional tuna melt with spicy southwest flavors for a delicious and crave-able lunch or dinner packed with flavor and healthy too!
Let’s talk about lunch. I feel like lunch is the hardest meal of the day to keep up with healthy eating. Okay, so maybe for like a week you’re super good and pack your healthy lunch every morning and eat it while magically resisting the donuts and chips lying around the office calling your name, but eventually you run late just one morning and all of the sudden you’re totally out of the habit all over again. Is that just me? I remember countless days of ordering Jimmy John’s and convincing myself it was healthy because I got the lettuce wrap…that I then proceeded to fill with their delicious salt and vinegar chips.
One of my very favorite easy lunch options is tuna salad. With canned tuna, it takes all of 5 minutes to make, and with 13 grams of protein per serving, the health benefits of tuna are tough to beat. I can’t say the same ol’ thing doesn’t get boring though. Sometimes you have to jazz your favorites up a little.
I’m really loving Bumble Bee’s Tuna Strong movement. I love that it focuses on strength and health rather than being “light” or “skinny”. And I love their Tuna Mind…Tuna Body…, Tuna Soul…Tuna Strong™ because strength really is about the whole package: mind, body and soul.
To jazz up the traditional tuna melt, I mixed my Bumble Bee canned tuna with avocado and Greek yogurt instead of mayo (although if you eat dairy free, you could totally sub an olive oil mayo for the Greek yogurt). Then I added some lime juice, green chilies and spices for extra flavor.
- For the tuna:
- 2 x 5 ounce cans [url href=”http://www.bumblebee.com/” target=”_blank”]Bumble Bee tuna[/url], drained
- 1 avocado, mashed
- 1/3 cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt (or olive oil mayo for dairy-free)
- Juice of 1 small lime
- 1 x 4 ounce can green chilies
- Generous pinch cilantro
- Generous pinch cumin
- Pinch salt
- Pinch lemon pepper
- For the sandwich:
- Whole grain bread (I used Udi’s multi grain gluten-free)
- Pepper jack cheese (omit if dairy-free)
- Chalulah for topping, optional
- In a large bowl, mix all ingredients for tuna together. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.
- To make your sandwich, toast bread in a toaster oven until desired doneness. Place a slice of cheese on your bread. You can either leave the sandwich open faced and add the tuna to that slice without adding an other piece of bread (that’s how I eat it), or you can place the cheese on one piece and the bread on an other. Put bread topped with cheese/tuna mixture back in the oven until cheese is melty, about 1 minute.
- Top with chalulah if desired before fully assembling sandwich. Serve immediately.
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This post is sponsored by FitFluential on behalf of Bumble Bee.
Hey Ari,
This sounds so delicious and fresh. Adding it to my menu for today’s dinner 🙂