Quick answer
I made this after seeing a popular post about Iceland salad and realizing it was a good way to use up leftover homemade mayo and sour cream.
This was not a carefully measured recipe. It was more of a wing-it salad built around cucumber, tuna, boiled eggs, and a creamy garlic sauce.
Even with the tuna and eggs, the cucumber still stood out as the main ingredient. It stayed crisp, fresh, and made the whole thing feel more like a cucumber salad than a tuna or egg salad.
Ingredients
- 1 can of tuna
- 6 boiled eggs
- 1 long cucumber
- Sour cream
- Homemade mayo
- Mustard
- Chili oil
- 6 cloves garlic, crushed
- Black pepper
- Salt
- Garlic powder
- Dill
- Soy sauce
- Apple cider vinegar
Why I made it
The main reason I tried this was because I had leftover homemade mayo and sour cream that I wanted to use.
A creamy cucumber salad made sense because it could take both ingredients without feeling forced. The tuna and eggs made it more filling, but the cucumber still kept it light and fresh.
I also had boiled eggs ready to use, and I wanted to use all 6 of them.
Prep
- Boil the eggs, peel them, and mash or roughly chop them
- Slice the cucumber
- Drain the tuna
- Crush the garlic
- Keep the cucumber and eggs separate while making the sauce
I am planning to make a separate post about my preferred method for boiled eggs, so I will probably link that here later.
Sauce
I mixed the sauce separately before adding it to the cucumber and eggs.
That ended up being the most important part.
The sauce was roughly:
- A scoop of sour cream
- About half that amount of homemade mayo
- A squeeze of mustard
- Chili oil
- Crushed garlic
- Black pepper
- Salt
- Garlic powder
- Dill
- A small splash of soy sauce
- A small splash of apple cider vinegar
The exact measurements were not really part of the thought process. I was mostly tasting and adjusting as I went.
Important note
Mix the sauce in a separate bowl before adding it to the main container.
This makes it much easier to adjust the seasoning before committing.
Once the sauce is mixed into all the cucumbers, tuna, and eggs, it becomes much harder to fix. You can still add more seasoning, but you are adjusting the whole salad at that point instead of just the sauce.
Keeping the sauce separate at first gives you more control.
Mix
Once the sauce tasted right, I mixed the tuna directly into the sauce.
Then I poured the tuna sauce over the sliced cucumbers and mixed until the cucumbers were coated.
After that, I added the mashed boiled eggs on top and gently mixed everything together.
Adding the eggs last helped them keep some of their own texture and identity, while still getting mixed throughout the salad.
What stood out
The cucumber stayed as the main character.
Even with the tuna and 6 boiled eggs, the salad still tasted fresh and cucumber-forward. The tuna added a savory background, and the eggs made it more filling, but neither one fully took over.
The garlic, dill, chili oil, soy sauce, and vinegar helped keep the creamy sauce from tasting too flat.
Final thought
This was a good leftover-use meal.
It used up homemade mayo, sour cream, tuna, eggs, and cucumber in a way that felt more interesting than a normal tuna salad or egg salad.
The biggest thing I took away was that mixing and tasting the sauce first made the whole salad easier to balance. Adding the eggs last also helped them keep some texture instead of disappearing completely into the sauce.