Give Your Tuna Sandwich Some French Flair With This Cheap Ingredient Swap

The fridge is half empty, you don't feel like turning on the stove, and so it's tuna sandwich to the rescue. Over time, this has made it the go-to lunch for busy days, something you rarely think twice about. You already know the dish by heart anyway, perhaps to the point where it starts to get a little boring. When you're trying to chase the monotony away with other ways to elevate your tuna salad sandwich, start by using a baguette instead of the usual white bread.

Embodying French cuisine's penchant for high-quality ingredients and elegant simplicity, the baguette will turn your salad into more than just a quick bite at lunchtime. Instead of simply melting onto the taste buds with that usual softness of white bread, the sandwich collapses with a variety of contrasting textures. First comes the sturdy, toasted crust, then the fluffy interior, and finally, the creamy salad filling it's been cradling, unfolding in between. The exterior, often forgotten, now captures your attention and enhances the filling on the inside. In a dish where texture often comes in second place, the baguette has a way of redefining the tuna sandwich, making it both a textural delight and a flavor joy.

Since you've already got the baguette and canned tuna, it only takes a few more ingredients to assemble a pan bagnat (French tuna sandwich). This time, instead of the creamy mayo, it's a vinegar-based dressing taking the lead, accompanied by olive oil swept onto the inside of the bread. Then, olives, red onions, tomatoes, and hard-boiled eggs join the tuna (and anchovies) in the filling. Think of it as a niçoise-salad-filled sandwich. A crucial distinction is the pressing at the very end, in which the entire sandwich is wrapped and pressed under a sturdy cooking utensil. This allows the dressing to soak through every bit of the filling and fuse the flavors together as much as possible.

If you still want to stick to the regular tuna salad route, a French-inspired tuna sandwich is still possible. The baguette is already a good start. Just incorporate other essential ingredients for French cooking. It could be roasted garlic or compound butter spread onto the bread's interior, with herbs such as thyme and parsley sprinkled in between. Mix Dijon mustard into the dressing and balance out the sharpness with a dollop of crème fraîche. And we can't possibly leave cheese out of the conversation, either. Gruyère cheese and a bit of broiling edges the sandwich into tuna melt territory (like this French bread tuna melt!), and with the baguette as a base, it makes a hefty main course. Maybe add caramelized onion as well for a spin-off of the classic French onion soup.