Tuna Salad Sandwiches Are 10x More Flavorful When You Add This Popular Spicy Snack

The tuna salad sandwich has earned its spot as a classic lunch food. Canned tuna has maintained its relatively affordable status through the years, is abundant in grocery stores, and mixes well with various ingredients to create a salad perfect for your taste. Although plain potato chips are a common side dish or topper for such sandwiches, Flamin' Hot Cheetos offers spice with just as much crunch for a more exciting meal. When deciding whether to use oil- or water-packed tuna, this trick works best with the latter type to avoid too much oiliness from the tuna oil, mayonnaise, and vegetable oils in the Cheetos.

There's no right way to make a Flamin' Hot Cheetos tuna sandwich; it all depends on how creative you're willing to get. You can simply prepare the sandwich as normal and place some Cheetos on top of the filling like you would potato chips. You might break the Cheetos up and mix them into the tuna, mayonnaise, and other ingredients for better incorporation and fuller flavor. Sprinkling crushed Cheetos on top of the sandwich filling also helps you get that crunch in every bite. Alongside the Cheetos, you could fold in complementary spicy ingredients, such as jalapeños or banana peppers, or add a splash of sriracha to the mayonnaise.

You don't have to stop with the classic Flamin' Hot Cheetos — the sky's the limit. Since the inception of the Flamin' Hot line, Cheetos has rolled out dill pickle and limón varieties that bring a zesty tanginess to the spice everyone loves. Limón Cheetos pair well with the brightness of lemon juice added to tuna, while the dill pickle variety offers a perfect complement to chives or red onions. The original crunchy Cheetos have a place here, too; they can give a tuna melt the crunch it needs and increase the cheese factor.

Put a fun twist on your sandwich by crushing up Cheetos and adding them to the bread instead of the tuna. Butter the exterior top and bottom sides of the sandwich, sprinkle on crushed Cheetos, and toast both sides of the sandwich in a pan until the bread is golden. Experiment with a variety of cheeses to make your tuna melt — nacho cheese and Flamin' Hot Cheetos are a popular combination.

Before all of these remixes, the modest tuna sandwich existed for centuries, with an early recipe for it found in the 1893 cookbook, "Beverages and Sandwiches for Your Husband's Friends" by Mrs. Alexander Orr Bradley. Mayonnaise became the famous pairing for tuna because of increased access to convenience foods facilitated by the Industrial Revolution, and people came to love this simple but delicious food. Myriad variations of its ingredients have made this sandwich well-suited for the modern day, and nothing says "modern day" quite like the cheesy fun of Cheetos.