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This Tuna Pasta Salad with shell noodles, peas, tuna, celery, and Greek yogurt is fast, healthy, and a dish your whole family can enjoy!
Tuna Pasta Salad
I don't know about you, but for me, warm weather screams pasta salad! This tuna pasta salad is a classic! It easy, fast, and I usually have all the ingredients that I need to throw it together. My kids love this pasta salad and we eat it for lunch all the time, but it works great as a dinner or side dish.
I also love feeding my kids something that I know has great health benefits. Did you know tuna fish is a great source of protein and contains omega 3 fatty acids that can help fight heart disease? For the sauce in this recipe I use a mixture of mayonnaise and Greek yogurt. I love the creaminess that the Greek yogurt adds, and it's packed with protein. You could also serve this dish with whole wheat pasta.
How to make Tuna Pasta Salad:
Cook your pasta according to package instructions, then drain them and allow them to cool a little. I like to use mini shell noodles, but any type of bite-size pasta can be used.
While the noodles cook, chop the celery and onion, drain the tuna, and warm the peas (you could also add the peas to the boiling pasta water during the last minute of cooking).
Mix the mayonnaise and Greek yogurt together until smooth.
Add the cooked pasta, tuna, celery, onion, and peas to a large mixing bowl. Pour the dressing on top and toss to coat.
If you'd like to make this recipe in advance I would suggest waiting to add the sauce until you're ready to serve, otherwise the noodles will soak up the sauce and it wont have the creaminess that you want.
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Tuna Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- 8 ounces small shells pasta, , or your favorite bite-size pasta
- 7 ounces canned albacore white tuna, packed in water, , drained
- 2 ribs celery, , chopped
- 1/4 cup red onion, , chopped
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
- dried dill weed, , to taste, optional
- salt and freshly ground black pepper, , to taste
Instructions
- Cook noodles according to package instructions, until al dente. Drain.
- In a large bowl add chopped onion and celery, peas, cooked pasta, and drained tuna.
- In a separate bowl, mix the mayo and Greek yogurt.
- Stir half of the sauce into the pasta mixture and toss to evenly coat. Season with salt and pepper and dried dil, to taste.
- Refrigerate pasta and remaining sauce separately, covered, for 30 min. Stir in remaining sauce and serve immediately.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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I originally shared this recipe in June 2011. Updated May 2018.
Have you tried this recipe?!
RATE and COMMENT below! I would love to hear your experience.
This is the easiest, most classic version of the tuna pasta salads. Don’t omit the dill weed, either fresh or dried. It’s delicious!!! Thank you!
Your Tuna Pasta Salad is absolutely delicious every time and a go-to for me! This salad is like a “party in your mouth”! Thank you for sharing it! I even add hard boiled eggs sometimes and a little Mayo too! A definite 5STAR recipe! I have made it with elbows and little farfalle. Both pastas go well with the recipe ingredients. And sometimes I use old Bay seasoning to add a little spice to the mix! Never fails!
I have never made a tuna pasta salad in my life but was looking for quick meals to take to work and saw this. It is absolutely delicious and only took me a few minutes to prep.
Looked for a real good tuna pasta salad and I found it here.
Samphire boiled for two minutes chopped finely adds to the flavour and health benefits.
Wonderful! We tripled recipe with a few tweaks: cut back on celery just a little and added chopped dill pickles along with a dash of lemon juice and yellow mustard. Some commenters wonder about the frozen peas – no need to thaw them just throw them right in as long as they’re not clumped together!
I loved this salad however it seemed a little heavy and solid. Do you have anyway that I could solve this problem?
Add a splash of milk if you’d like!
Made this for a family cookout, doubled the recipe. I swapped canned for frozen peas, miracle whip for mayo, and kraft classic ranch dressing for the yogurt. I also added 8 ounces of small cubed marble jack cheese. Don’t really use dill, so just omitted it. It was actually much better the next day after the flavors had time to meld. It was such a big hit I’m making it for a wide dish for my daughters graduation party tomorrow!
Sounds good and will try with ranch, but you did a completely different recipe. So this rating doesn’t count.
Our go-to tuna salad recipe! Works great with brown rice quinoa GF spiral noodles from Trader Joe’s.
Love that yogurt lightens up abit! We often have this with sliced tomatoes for dinner.
The original recipe sorely lacked flavor. Where are all the seasonings? I had to add garlic powder, paprika, more dill, more black pepper, and pickle juice.
So I guess I’m the only one who actually made your recipe. Didn’t change a thing. Loved it.
It was great! Very light! Your not alone!😋
I changed a lot of items because I only had what I had! Why change the recipe then comment on it?!
Very good. I use a higher yogurt ratio. I use regular homemade yogurt. I like your instructions to add more dressing later. I find when you use yogurt, you can even add more the next day and it will taste fresh and delish.
Hi! Thank you so much for your recipe! I really enjoyed it, but I admittedly changed a few things. I used vegan mayo and did not use yogurt. I also didn’t have celery on hand, so I omitted this. lastly, I used vegan sriracha tuna in place of regular tuna and added a splash of vinegar and sugar in too. Fabulous. Thank you!