Restocking the office pantry a week ago, we grabbed our usual half dozen pouches of tuna. We like tuna pouches for both office and trail due to their ease of use. Just rip open a pouch, add condiments to taste, and eat! While we have seen the new flavored tuna pouches, we noted a new tuna product from Starkist - tuna salad. We tossed a pouch in our cart for review here on the blog.Starkist tuna salad is premixed tuna and condiments in one convenient pouch. The ingredients list tuna, water chestnuts, celery, dill relish, white vinegar, sugar, salt, onion powder and egg yolks. With the exception of the water chestnuts and vinegar, the ingredient list reads much like the tuna salad our mother made for us many years ago.
We ate our tuna salad much like we would on the trail. We started with some hot pork ramen soup, which we always have with trail dinners. We then ripped open our pouch of tuna salad and dug in. Crunchy. Definitely crunchy. We could taste the celery and the bitter bite of the vinegar. As we hadn't yet read the ingredients, we assumed the crunch was celery, of which we are not fond. It was only when we paused to examine a fork full of tuna salad we discovered the pearly chunks of water chestnuts and relatively little celery. We decided today at lunch that we are not a fan of water chestnuts in our tuna salad. In fact, we decided that we would rather stick with packing pouches of plain tuna in water or oil and then seasoning the enclosed tuna with mayonnaise and pepper to our own taste. Sorry, Charlie. We like you just as you are/were.
As we know that individual tastes differ, Starkist tuna salad maybe just what you want in a trail food. We can see the advantage of one piece of trash to pack out versus multiple condiment packets. As the cost of Starkist's tuna salad is about a dollar, we recommend you buy a pouch on your next grocery run and give it a taste.
Disclosure: We select and purchase the product(s) reviewed. We have no material connection to either the manufacturer nor the retailer(s).
Tried the tuna salad pouch today - convenient but not very tasty. If my mom were to serve me that for lunch as a kid, I might slap her.
ReplyDeleteConcur on the "convenient but not very tasty." We were honest in our description, but realize that taste is an individual thing. StarKist likely fed their product to a focus group and enough liked it to go to market. As we stated, we'll pack plain tuna and mayo packets when we take tuna.
ReplyDeleteBTW, we are rethinking tuna as its only 50 calories/ounce well below the 100 threshhold. We like tuna and have never not eaten tuna on a backpacking trip. Its one food we tolerate. We're planning to go with tuna in safflower oil this summer and will still mix in some mayo to boost the calories.
Thanks for commenting!