My mother created this recipe. The amounts on the spices are merely estimations and “to taste” because she never recorded anything. She frequently cited “love” as the essential component.
| Prep Time: | 25 mins |
| Cook Time: | 10 mins |
| Additional Time: | 1 hr |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 35 mins |
| Servings: | 12 |
| Yield: | 12 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 (16 ounce) package elbow macaroni
- 2 ½ cups mayonnaise
- ¼ cup white vinegar
- 1 ½ teaspoons seasoned salt, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon white sugar
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper, or to taste
- 2 (5 ounce) cans chunk light tuna in water, drained and flaked
- 2 (4 ounce) cans baby shrimp, drained
- 1 large cucumber, seeded and chopped
- 1 small sweet onion, chopped
- 4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
- 2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
- 1 pinch paprika
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook elbow macaroni in the boiling water, stirring occasionally until cooked through but firm to the bite, 8 minutes; drain. Rinse macaroni with cold water until chilled; drain.
- Mix mayonnaise, white vinegar, seasoned salt, sugar, garlic powder, and black pepper in a large bowl with a whisk until smooth. Stir tuna, baby shrimp, cucumber, and sweet onion into the mayonnaise mixture to coat ingredients completely; add chopped eggs and stir. Pour chilled macaroni into the bowl and stir; top with sliced eggs. Garnish salad with paprika.
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour to overnight before serving.
- I personally don’t care for celery in salads, so I use cucumber instead, but you can definitely substitute celery in this recipe.
- This is one of those salads that tastes even better the next day, thus my recommendation is to chill overnight, if possible.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 561 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 32 g |
| Cholesterol | 162 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 18 g |
| Saturated Fat | 7 g |
| Sodium | 451 mg |
| Sugars | 3 g |
| Fat | 40 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
My family loved this, but I personally thought it was a bit dry the next day and also slightly sweet. I’m giving it 5 stars because maybe I went light on the mayo which I often do. The sweetness can easily be fixed so overall I love the shrimp, and tuna in it but mostly the cucumbers!
It turned out good!! I did not use as much Mayo, only 2 cups instead of 2 1/2. I also used a smaller amount of Vinegar and cooked with Penne noodles. Family loved it
Really good! Just made and just had a bowl so I can’t wait to taste later or even tomorrow as the cooks notes state it’s better the next day.
Our family loves this recipe! I send it in our kids lunches, and make it going into busy weekends. I do add 8oz frozen peas, and all tuna (no shrimp) just because it’s more convenient. The cucumber is really awesome.
Probably the best tasting tuna mac salad I’ve had in a while. The addition of the baby shrimp adds just the right bit of extra flavor. Easy to make. The recipe does make a large amount – I doubled it for a party and had two lasagna aluminum pans full!
This is an awesome base recipe for either tuna or seafood pasta salad. I use it for both and adjust/lower the amount of seasoned salt with Old Bay, smoked paprika, and whatever else I feel it needs after melding in the fridge. I add sweet peas and diced celery for crunch, (no cukes) , onion always and a good imitation crab for the seafood version. Thanks for sharing
I made only slight adjustments to this fantastic recipe. I added a small can of sliced black olives and almosr Half of a small bag of thawed early peas. For the shrimp, I used 1/4lb of steamed shrim that I chopped up. We are half of this salad for dinner it was that good!!!!!