Our best canned fish recipes will make you delicious snacks, salads and pastas with tinned fish such as sardines, tuna, anchovies, mackerel, and shellfish such as smoked mussels, which are loaded with umami. Brilliant for the budget conscious as much as the health conscious, canned fish is affordable and healthy, high in protein and loaded with omega 3 fatty acids, which are healthy fats. With a long shelf life, tinned fish is the perfect pantry staple, lifesavers for the time-poor among us.
We’re big fans of canned fish recipes, as they’re usually quick and easy, inexpensive, and nutritional. Keep canned sardines, tinned tuna, canned salmon, tinned smoked trout, cured anchovies, and shellfish, such as smoked oysters and mussels in the pantry and you can easily whip up a pasta, salad, snack, or noodle bowl in no time.
Just make sure to have some good extra virgin olive oil, dried pasta and noodles on hand, as well as some briny capers and dill pickles or cornichons, and spices such as chilli flakes or ground paprika in the pantry. Fresh herbs will enliven dishes and add fragrance as much as flavour.
Two things to be aware of with tinned fish are the sodium levels and sustainability. Salt is key to preservation so a lot of canned fish is high in sodium, making it off limits if you have high blood pressure or consumed only in moderation if you’ve got your blood pressure under control. I’m speaking from experience here.
While canning is inherently sustainable as preservation reduces food waste and therefore decreases the environmental impact, not all canned fish is sustainable due to the source of the fish, fishing methods and over-fishing. When caught responsibly, canned sardines and anchovies are more sustainable than tuna, which is susceptible to over-fishing. If you’re buying tinned tuna, do buy sustainable tuna. Greenpeace has a great guide to sustainable canned tuna.
Now before I tell you all about our best canned fish recipes, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader supported. If you’ve cooked and enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo by supporting our Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon; or buying a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever; booking a cooking class or meal with locals on EatWith; or buying something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers or classic cookbooks for serious cooks.
Looking for more cooking inspiration? We’ve got hundreds of recipes from around the world from places we’ve lived, worked and travelled in our archives, and you can save recipes you like by clicking on the heart on the right of any post to save your favourites in your own private account. Now let me tell you all about our best canned fish recipes.
Canned Fish Recipes for Dishes with Tinned Sardines, Tuna, Anchovies and Shellfish
Our best canned fish recipes cover snacks, salads, pastas, and more. If you’re a tinned fish lover, do bookmark this page as we’ll be adding more tinned fish recipes from time to time.
Tinned Sardines Recipes
Our canned sardines recipes include everything from my fancy sardines on toast to s zingy sardine salad with celery, cos lettuce, capers and mustard dressing.
Fancy Sardines on Toast Recipe with Pickled Onions, Celery and Fresh Dill
One of our best canned fish recipes, this fancy sardines on toast recipe with pickled onions, celery and dill makes toasted sourdough bread fingers, generously spread with crème fraiche (or this homemade dill dip for even more flavour), topped with sardines, with a crunchy, sour, salty, and zingy mix of finely diced pickled onions, celery, capers, and dill in extra virgin olive oil spooned onto the sardines.
Focaccia fingers and homemade croutons are also fab vehicles for these fancy sardines. They make a delish snack, weekend breakfast or light lunch – or filling finger food if you’re entertaining. I’ve been making variations of this sardines on toast for lunch for the last year, but it’s also brilliant for casual get-togethers or weekend gatherings, especially if friends drop by unannounced and you have canned sardines in the pantry.
Canned fish is fantastic for snacky food for entertaining, whether for an elegant soiree or relaxed get-together. And if you having friends over, we have loads of recipes for dips for crackers and crudités, Spanish tapas, Basque pintxos and Mediterranean mezze, to picnic food and pot luck ideas if you’re asked to bring a plate and dishes for feeding a crowd.
Fancy Sardines on Toast Recipe with Pickled Onions, Celery and Fresh Dill
Zingy Sardine Salad with Celery, Cos, Capers and Mustard Dressing Recipe
This zingy sardine salad with celery, cos lettuce, capers and mustard dressing makes a quick and easy salad that’s mostly assembled with pantry staples – a can of sardines, jars of capers, cocktail gherkins, wholegrain mustard, extra virgin olive oil, and white wine vinegar. If you have those in the kitchen cupboard, you only need to buy celery, lettuce, and fresh dill.
I started making this lively sardine salad late last year after returning to Australia to see my mum and discovering these fantastic canned sardines at the supermarket. I now keep a stack of tinned sardines and eat them a few times a week – partly because they’re so delicious and partly because sardines are just so good for us.
One of our best tinned fish recipes, this sardine salad was one of those clean-out-the-fridge cum pantry concoctions – leftover celery from ragu alla Bolognese, baby cos left from a salad, quick-pickled shallots I needed to use up, and sour cream from the batch of pelmeni and vareniki I made virtually as soon as I arrived. Then I reached into mum’s fridge and pulled out all the opened jars.
Zingy Sardine Salad with Celery, Cos, Capers and Mustard Dressing Recipe
Sardine Pasta Recipe With Spaghetti, Caper Gremolata and Pangrattato
My speedy sardine pasta recipe with caper gremolata and crunchy pangrattato makes a fast pasta with tinned sardines. It’s one of our best canned fish recipes and it comes together in minutes. It’s a pasta dish that tastes of the sea – it’s delightfully fishy, a little salty, a lot zesty, and has loads of flavour, texture and aroma.
This quick and easy spaghetti with canned sardines, gremolata with capers, and a simple traditional pangrattato of crunchy breadcrumbs is a pasta dish that’s loaded with texture, flavour and fragrance. Our recipe uses this gremolata recipe and this recipe for pangrattato, also known as mollica di pane in Italy, a condiment of crunchy breadcrumbs that includes fresh parsley, lemon zest and grated Parmigiano.
If you’re looking for more quick and easy pasta recipes, try this aromatic lemon pasta recipe for pasta al limone, this creamy tomato pasta sauce with gnocchi recipe, penne Bolognese recipe for a ‘cheat’s Bol’, this asparagus, mushrooms and bacon gnocchi recipe, our spaghetti pangrattato recipe, this cherry tomato feta pasta recipe, bacon and mushroom pasta, and fusilli with a creamy pumpkin pasta sauce.
Sardine Pasta Recipe With Spaghetti, Caper Gremolata and Pangrattato
Canned Tuna Recipes
Our tinned tuna recipes include everything from Terence’s ultimate tuna melt recipe to fast tuna pasta recipe with scallions, capers and fresh herbs.
Ultimate Tuna Melt Recipe for the Best Tuna Melt Ever
Terence’s ultimate tuna melt recipe takes the often-limp grilled cheese and tuna toasted sandwich and by replacing the milk bread with fresh home-baked sourdough bread turns it into a café-worthy gourmet open sandwich – which in our opinion is the best tuna melt we’ve ever eaten and one of our best tinned fish recipes.
For our non-American readers, a tuna melt is a toasted grilled cheese sandwich filled with a creamy tuna salad typically made from canned tuna, mayonnaise, diced onion, pickles, Dijon mustard, tomatoes, and salt and pepper. Usually served as closed sandwiches, Terence’s recipe makes an open face tuna melt, as they’re so filling and you really don’t need two slices of bread, especially if using sourdough.
If you’re a sourdough baker, Terence has more sourdough bread ideas here. If you haven’t begun your sourdough journey yet, see Terence’s simple sourdough starter recipe, his beginner’s guide to easy sourdough baking and our sourdough starter discard recipe ideas to use the excess sourdough you remove when you feed your starter. Terence has been baking sourdough for many years and is a sourdough master.
Ultimate Tuna Melt Recipe – How to Make the Best Tuna Melt Ever
Russian Mimosa Salad Recipe for the Soviet Union’s Festive Layered Spring Salad
My Russian mimosa salad recipe makes a layered salad from the Soviet Union or USSR that was typically served for festive spring holidays such as Easter. One of those layers is canned tuna. The original Soviet-era salad was layered in a glass bowl or served as a kitschy salad cake, almost like a savoury trifle. I prefer to present fun DIY salads in individual glasses with bowls, spoons and condiments.
Like Russia’s beef Stroganoff and chicken Kiev, the mimosa salad was another Russian dish that travelled the world at a time when most Russians couldn’t leave the Soviet Union, became tremendously popular outside the USSR, especially in the Seventies, and has since been revived as retro-cool classics.
The Russian mimosa salad might not be as well-known as beef Stroganoff and chicken Kiev, and maybe it’s just my wishful thinking that this kitschy layered Soviet-era tuna and egg salad is long overdue for a revival, particularly in the form that I prefer to present it in, rather than as a cake or trifle. Regardless, you need to make these little salads in a glass. They’re so delish and are fab for a light lunch or relaxed entertaining.
Russian Mimosa Salad Recipe for the Soviet Union’s Festive Layered Spring Salad
Fast Tuna Pasta Recipe with Scallions, Capers and Fresh Herbs
Another of our best canned fish recipes, our fast tuna pasta recipe with scallions, capers and fresh herbs makes a quick and easy pasta dish that comes together in 20 minutes or less. It uses basic pantry provisions such as dried pasta, olive oil and canned tuna, and refrigerator staples like jarred capers and anchovies. Just pick up some fresh herbs and scallions on the way home.
You’ll love this easy tuna pasta, as it’s packed with so much flavour for such a simple pasta: there’s loads of umami courtesy of anchovies, a taste of the sea thanks to the capers and tuna, while the herbs bring freshness, and the crunchy shallots or fried breadcrumbs give texture. A little lemon at the ends adds the citrusy notes of Southern Italy.
While I recommend bucatini for this recipe, long pastas like spaghetti, linguini and fettuccini will also work. And a penne or rigatoni would probably be great as well, as the sauce will find its way into the tubes and cling to the ridges of the rigatoni.
Fast Tuna Pasta Recipe with Scallions, Capers and Fresh Herbs
Tinned Anchovies Recipes
You can buy anchovies in tins as well as jars. We tend to purchase jarred anchovies as we use anchovies a lot in our cooking and anchovies last longer in jars as they’re fully covered in oil. But if you don’t cook with anchovies a lot and only want to use a handful of anchovies in one dish, then buy a tin of anchovies.
Easy Olive Tapenade Recipe for Traditional French Tapenade from Provence
This easy olive tapenade recipe is based on the traditional French tapenade recipe from Provence in southern France that’s made with only four ingredients – black olives, capers, anchovies, and olive oil. Of course, you could add garlic, herbs and spices. But we think this classic Mediterranean olive dip is absolutely delicious in its original form
This black olive tapenade recipe is one of the best things to make with a mortar and pestle and yet it’s not a cooking project. You can make this authentic French olive tapenade recipe using the traditional method, which is pounding the ingredients together with a pestle and mortar, in minutes.
There are infinite ways to serve olive tapenade. We love to dip grissini, crunchy cheese sticks or crispy sourdough crackers in the olive tapenade. Or you can just spread the tapenade onto fresh crusty olive sourdough, toasted baguette slices or our crispy homemade croutons. It’s one of the many great things to do with stale bread!
Or get creative and use the tapenade to concoct pintxos or tapas toppings, as we did after tasting an tapenade and red pepper pintxo in San Sebastian many years ago – which was inspiration for the Arabian themed pintxos Terence made for our sunset soiree in Dubai, a pre-launch before the proper London party that launched Grantourismo and our yearlong global grand tour’ advocating slow, local and experiential travel way back in 2010.
Easy Olive Tapenade Recipe for Traditional French Tapenade from Provence
Cherry Tomato Salad Recipe for a Taste of Summer on the Mediterranean
This is the best tomato salad recipe if you want a taste of summer on the Mediterranean and it’s super quick and easy to make – so easy that after you make this you’ll never have to look at this recipe again. The key to making this summer salad taste great is fresh, flavourful produce and top quality ingredients.
What makes this the best tomato salad recipe ever is, firstly, the flavours, and secondly, that this easy summer salad comes together so quickly. After you make it once, you really won’t need to look at this recipe ever again – although you’re more than welcome to, of course!
Use the sweetest cherry tomatoes and crunchiest cucumbers you can find. In my dreams, I’m using the grassiest extra virgin olive oil from Valencia, sweet red onions from Tropea, briny capers from Pantelleria, aromatic Italian basil from Liguria, the juiciest olives from Kalamata and finest feta cheese from any village in Greece, and Ortiz salted anchovies from Spain.
Cherry Tomato Salad Recipe for a Taste of Summer on the Mediterranean
Bigoli con Salsa Recipe for a Venetian Pasta with Onion and Anchovy Sauce
This bigoli con salsa recipe hails from Venice and is a classic Venetian pasta dish made with the wholewheat pasta called bigoli, used throughout the Veneto region, particularly in Verona, and an onion and anchovy sauce that’s sprinkled liberally with parsley. It’s deceptively simple, decidedly delicious, and it’s another of our best tinned fish recipes.
As Francesco, the owner of Antiche Carampane, our favourite Venetian restaurant, told us when we sought his advice on what Terence should make from Venice for The Dish: “It’s the salty seafood taste of the anchovies combined with the sweetness of the onions that make bigoli con salsa so special.”
There are many Venetian dishes we could have shared during our time in Venice for our series ‘The Dish’, a collection of recipes for the quintessential dishes of places we settled into on the yearlong global grand tour dedicated to slow, local and experiential travel that launched Grantourismo. Sarde in soar (a type of marinated ‘sweet and sour’ sardines) and spaghetti con vongole (spaghetti with clams) were a couple of them.
However, many of Venice’s traditional dishes are tied to local varieties of seafood unavailable elsewhere or dishes that won’t please a lot of palates, such as Venice’s famous liver dish. As we wanted you to cook the dishes at home, Terence opted for something more practical and this bigoli con salsa recipe couldn’t be simpler. It’s a fantastic dish to make in your palazzo apartment kitchen in Venice, when, exhausted after a day traipsing around the Accademia, you just want to stay in and cook something simple to sip with a bottle of Soave.
Bigoli con Salsa Recipe for a Venetian Pasta with Onion and Anchovy Sauce
Italian Potato Salad Recipe with Olives, Capers, Anchovies and Rucola
This Italian potato salad recipe will make you one of our best potato salads, a warm potato salad with olives, capers, anchovies and rucola – or arugula to our American readers. While it’s one of many Italian potato salads I fell in love with during our travels in Italy, with those quintessential Mediterranean ingredients it could come from any Mediterranean country.
I adore eating this Italian potato salad while it’s still warm – and who doesn’t love a warm potato salad? – warm salads are a fantastic accompaniment to so many winter mains. This German potato salad recipe makes one of my favourite warm potato salads – it’s really a great year-round salad. In spring and summer, you can refrigerate warm salads, chill them it, and pull them out of the fridge just before serving.
Like the Italian green beans recipe we recently shared, this Italian potato salad is the perfect accompaniment to Mediterranean style braised chicken, juicy pan-roasted brined pork chops, chicken cacciatore, or even chicken schnitzel or chicken parma. It would also be fab with côte de bœuf.
Italian Potato Salad Recipe with Olives, Capers, Anchovies and Rucola
Spaghetti alla Puttanesca Recipe for a Piquant Southern Italian Pasta
Another of our best canned fish recipes, in this case tinned anchovies, this spaghetti alla puttanesca recipe from Southern Italy is a rustic pasta dish has a sauce that is enlivened with the flavours of garlic, capers, olives, anchovies, and crushed red pepper. It’s a piquant tomato sauce like no other.
Like Terence’s ragu alla Bolognese recipe, this spaghetti alla puttanesca recipe is one that he’s been making for well over 25 years. It’s our go-to pasta when we’re in need of comfort food and has long been one of our most popular comfort food recipes.
If you’re not a fan of anchovies, note that the sauce doesn’t taste like anchovies as the anchovies are ‘mushed’ into the sauce. But it’s the combination of all of the ingredients that make this an umami bomb that is balanced by the sweetness of the tomatoes, so anchovies are essential.
It’s a great year-round pasta recipe, too. Our northern hemisphere neighbours in the midst of summer can serve a smaller portion with a Mediterranean style salad, while a big hot bowl will warm up our Australian friends in the southern hemisphere in the midst of an extremely chilly autumn.
Spaghetti alla Puttanesca Recipe for a Piquant Southern Italian Pasta
Tinned Shellfish Recipes
Canned shellfish such as smoked mussels and oysters, baby prawns and crabs are fantastic served as snacks, finger food and in pastas and salads. We’ll be adding more recipes to this section very soon.
Smoked Mussels on Hummus with Pickled Shallots, Smoky Paprika and Chives
This dish of smoked mussels on hummus with smoky paprika and chives is a deliciously addictive yet quick and easy snack that’s perfect for entertaining. Present it as a fancy dip that guests can scoop up with crackers or crunchy crisps or serve it with warm toasted Turkish bread fingers so guests can spread the hummus and mussels on top to create their own customised canapés.
We have a recipe for an authentic creamy homemade hummus, which Terence learnt to make from a Lebanese work colleague when we lived in Abu Dhabi many years ago. But if you’re short on time, of course you could use a good store-bought hummus.
Serve the dish with pita crisps and/or sourdough crackers for scooping it all up. We also love it piled onto warm toasted Turkish bread.
Smoked Mussels on Hummus with Pickled Shallots, Smoky Paprika and Chives
If you’ve cooked and enjoyed any of our our best canned fish recipes, please do let us know in the comments below. We love hearing how our recipes turn out for readers and welcome your feedback and tips.
