High-Protein Tuna Pasta Salad for Meal Prep
The lunch that survives the fridge. Yogurt-based dressing instead of a mayo bath, two cans of tuna, and it actually gets better by day two.
You need
- 1 pot
- 1 large mixing bowl
- 2 meal prep containers
Ingredients
For 2 servings
- 160 g (5.6 oz) short pasta (fusilli or penne), dry
- 2 cans (2x 140 g) tuna in water, drained
- 120 g (1/2 cup) Greek yogurt
- 1 tbsp mayonnaise
- 1 tsp mustard
- 1/2 lemon, juiced
- 150 g (1 cup) cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1/2 cucumber, diced
- 1/4 red onion, finely diced
- 8 olives, sliced (optional)
- salt + pepper to taste
How to cook
Cook the pasta in well-salted water to full al dente, then rinse briefly under cold water to stop the cooking.
Whisk the yogurt, mayo, mustard, lemon juice, salt and pepper into a dressing.
One spoon of real mayo carries the flavor; the yogurt carries the volume. You get the creamy taste at a quarter of the fat.
Flake the drained tuna into the dressing and stir.
Fold in the cooled pasta, tomatoes, cucumber, onion and olives.
Taste hard: cold dishes need more seasoning than hot ones. Add salt, pepper and lemon until it pops.
Portion into containers. It keeps 3 days in the fridge and tastes best from day two.
Keep a lemon wedge in the container and squeeze it fresh before eating. It wakes the whole salad up.
Why it fits a lose weight goal
- 36 g protein per serving from two cans of tuna plus the Greek yogurt dressing.
- The yogurt swap saves roughly 200 kcal per serving against a classic mayo-only tuna pasta salad.
- Cold, portioned and fridge-stable for 3 days, the cut-mode lunch that removes the daily decision.
Cooking guides
Pann is your AI cooking assistant: tell it what you've got and it builds the meal around it, quietly sized to your lose weight goal. No food database, no log spiral.