When I was a kid, my mom made me tuna melts on days when we were playing hard. They were simple: just a roux, some cream, tuna fish, salt, pepper, and frozen peas…and they were delicious. She’s serve them over toasted bread, so it was kind of like an open faced sandwich. I know some people put cheese over their tuna melts, but that was never my thing.
As I got older, and started cooking for myself, I started adding noodles to my tuna melts…and they kind of morphed into a type of tuna noodle casserole. Now, when Ish and I were both told that we were gluten intolerant (NOT celiac), most of our favorite pasta dishes went right out the window. Which is sad, because I kind of love pasta.
And then I found out that there were semolina and whole wheat alternatives…but not all of them were gluten free. So I got really, really good at reading labels. Really good. Currently, I’m in love with both lentil pasta and chickpea pasta…I have a thing for beans, apparently.
I’ve not tried the red lentil pasta in my gluten free tuna noodle casserole, but I’m sure that it would be delicious. Want my recipe (it’s super easy!)?
Plus, the kids went back for seconds. If that’s not approval, I don’t know what is!
Gluten Free Tuna Noodle Casserole
Ingredients
- 1 box gluten free pasta
- 3 cans wild caught albacore tuna, drained and flaked
- 2 "cans" dairy free cream of mushroom soup
- 2 cups frozen peas
- 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
- 3 shallots, diced
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. While your oven is preheating, cook your pasta according to the package directions-you want it a slight bit al dente. Butter or grease 9x11 baking dish.
- Place your tuna into a mixing bowl. Add the cream of mushroom soup, frozen peas, nutritional yeast and diced shallots. Stir to combine.
- Add the cooked and drained pasta to your tuna mixture, and pour into your baking pan. Bake until the sauce bubbles around the noodles, about 10-15 minutes.
- Serve hot.
Feel free to add your own twist to the basic recipe. Not a fan of mushrooms? Use cream of celery! You could also omit the noodles altogether and just eat the tuna mixture…but if you do that, I would reduce the cream of mushroom soup to one “can”. Just my opinion, of course.
You could also get fancy with spices – Sriracha would be amazing in this for a spicy tuna noodle casserole, don’t you think?
