Budget Bougie Tuna Macaroni Salad Makeover on a Real People Budget

Aug 30

5 min read

Creamy tuna macaroni salad served in a patterned ceramic bowl on a rustic kitchen table, with an ordinary fork, purple cloth napkin, iced drink, houseplant, handwritten budget notes, and a small gold raccoon figurine. — Grandma's bowl, a perfectly respectable fork, and macaroni salad that doesn't need a trust fund.

I subscribe to Martha Stewart's mailing list because I love checking out her ideas and recipes. Today she had a recipe for tuna macaroni salad so I checked it out. It's a bit much. It sounds great, but it's a tad on the bougie side, so I immediately started thinking, "How could I make that cheaper and easier?" I asked myself What does each ingredient actually contribute, and is that contribution worth what it costs me? Martha isn't “wrong.” Her version probably does taste great. I'm just asking, what can I keep, what can I skip, and what can I replace without turning lunch into punishment? And I have some ideas!

First let's look at Martha's ingredient list as opposed to mine. Later on I'll show you an estimated general idea of the cost difference, too. Nice things, real budgets always. The link to her complete article and recipe are at the end of this article, too. Not trying to take anything from Martha. Love her work. But she's not buying my groceries.

Martha's suggested ingredient list

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
8 ounces elbow macaroni pasta
½ small red onion
2 ribs celery, plus celery heart leaves
½ jalapeno
1 (5-ounce) can solid tuna in water, drained and flaked
6 tablespoons mayonnaise
¼ cup low-fat buttermilk
1 ½ teaspoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons dill relish
1 teaspoon grainy mustard

To me there are a lot of unnecessary additions that probably make hers taste amazing and a little decadent, but are out of my budget or just not things I generally keep on hand. I'm not buying fresh produce with all the recalls going on, so the fresh celery and jalapeno are out for me. I also don't see what a measly teaspoon of some Gray Poupon type mustard would really add, so nope.

Bruce's budget bougie ingredient list

8 ounces or so of your favorite type of pasta
1 approximately 5 ounce can of chunk light tuna (Martha says only use solid white tuna for its milder flavor, but where am I gonna find that and how much is it gonna set me back?)
Greek yogurt to taste instead of mayo because I hate mayo and Greek yogurt gives me the creamy texture without using mayonnaise. I'm thinking a small individual serving size would do for one batch.
Dill or sweet relish to taste
Celery seed or celery salt if you want that celery flavor

Trimmed down for ease of prep and real people grocery budgets. If you want to get the satisfying crunch and a slightly similar taste experience without the celery, I bet diced cucumber would be amazing in this. You can also make your own variations adding your favorite spices and herbs, maybe some cheese cubes, canned sweet peas. Make it your own. Make it a little different every time to add variety to your menu. I personally like plain ol' sprinkle Parmesan cheese in my pasta salads when I have it on hand.

Martha's article goes step by step on the prep but I think most people know how to make a basic pasta salad. Boil and drain your pasta, add the other ingredients like the tuna and relish, stir in your Greek yogurt and chill. Literally. Chill it. Martha suggests making it up to 8 hours ahead and refrigerating before you plan to serve it. And I think that's... a good thing.

Martha's article has a rather ominous sounding warning about making sure not to leave the salad out at room temperature for longer than two hours because her version contains dairy and eggs (from the mayonnaise), It further warns that if the air is warmer than 90°F, don't leave it out for more than one hour. Since my version substitutes Greek yogurt for mayonnaise, I'd use the same conservative approach and keep it refrigerated in an airtight container. When in doubt, toss it. Besides, lukewarm pasta salad sucks.

How to Store Leftovers

Martha says your leftover tuna macaroni salad can be refrigerated for up to four days in an airtight container. Keep refrigerated and use your best food-safety judgment. I trust Martha not to give us food poisoning a whole lot more than I trust the FDA to protect us from it now. Ba da bing!

Now the fun part: run the numbers

I asked Watson, my chatGPT assistant for help here. He said, "Using representative current Walmart prices where I could verify them, the biggest cost drivers in Martha's recipe are pretty obvious:"

Martha ingredient	Recipe amount	Approx. cost used
Elbow macaroni	8 oz	~$0.49
Red onion	½ small	~$0.40
Celery	2 ribs + leaves	~$0.40–$0.50*
Jalapeño	½	~$0.10–$0.20*
Solid white tuna	5 oz	$1.78–$2.08
Hellmann's mayo	6 Tbsp (3 fl oz)	~$0.65
Buttermilk	¼ cup (2 fl oz)	~$0.15*
Lemon juice	1½ tsp	~$0.04
Dill relish	2 Tbsp	~$0.16
Grainy mustard	1 tsp	~$0.05*
Estimated ingredient cost actually used		about $4.20–$4.60

The verified current prices include Great Value elbow pasta at $1.94 for 32 oz, Hellmann's at $6.47 for 30 oz, StarKist solid white tuna at $1.78 for 5 oz, Great Value solid-white tuna at $2.08, Great Value dill relish at $1.92 for 12 oz, and Great Value lemon juice at $2.24 for 32 oz. I'm not linking to Walmart because I hate Walmart. You know how to type it into your search engine if you want to do your own price checking.

And here's the really interesting BT&DW number:

What you'd actually have to buy

Even though the recipe only uses a few dollars' worth of ingredients, a person starting with an empty pantry could easily walk into the store needing roughly:

$15–$20+ worth of packages/produce to make Martha's version.

That's because you're buying a whole jar of Hellmann's, a whole carton of buttermilk, a bottle of lemon juice or actual lemons, a jar of relish, mustard, etc. The Hellmann's alone is currently $6.47. Dayum! I've heard Hellmann's is delicious but is it made out of gold?

Bruce's version

Ingredient	Amount used	Approx. cost used
Pasta	8 oz	$0.62
Chunk-light tuna	5 oz	$0.96
Plain Greek yogurt	5.3 oz cup	$0.82
Relish	~2 Tbsp	$0.16
Celery seed/salt	optional	~$0.05
Estimated batch cost		~$2.61

With my trimming and budget hustling your actual shopping-list cash outlay can be very close to the batch cost because you're deliberately choosing small, inexpensive formats for the yogurt and using pantry staples. The pasta and relish leave you with plenty for another meal, but the Greek-yogurt cup can be used entirely.

Final verdict:

Using current budget-store prices as a rough comparison, Martha's version costs roughly $4–$5 in ingredients used, while mine comes in around $2.60. That's not an exact scientific price comparison—your grocery bill will vary—but cutting out the extra produce, buttermilk, lemon, mustard and pricier tuna makes a pretty damn obvious difference.

Link to Martha's Tuna Macaroni Salad

Final Thoughts

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Oh look, he's trying to sell stuff again. Yeah, if you buy through this link I get some store credit to buy myself some stuff, but you don't pay a penny more. In fact, this is on sale at a pretty darn great price as of this writing and I think shells would be great for this recipe.