Tomato... Tonnato?
The best sauce you've never heard of
Sometimes you taste a sauce and it makes such an impact on your taste buds that everytime you taste anything similar in the future, you go back in time to that first memory.
For me, one such sauce is Tonnato sauce.
What is Tonnato sauce?
We’ll get to that in a minute… hear me out.
I was early in my pro cooking career and I was helping an Italian chef friend open a new restaurant. He was from Northern Italy and I was a sponge learning to cook alongside him; trying to soak up every tip and flavor dialing he would show me about food from where he was from in Italy.
From gnocchi, to rabbit ragu, to pastas and then this dish from the Piedmont region:
Vitello Tonnato.
aka: Veal with Tuna sauce
I’ve always been an adventurous eater but in this case, my chef friend/mentor told me simply “try this”. I took a fork of meat that was draped in a luscious sauce and took a bite.
This was an absolute flavor bomb of soft, supple, tender meat with a blast of umami in the sauce that had a hint of acidity but was also so creamy that the entire bite made a lasting memory that takes me back to this day.
“Bro wuuuut is in this sauce?”
My chef friend replied: This is veal in a tuna sauce.
“Tuna sauce?!?! Wtf?”
But I was hooked, and thus began my love affair with tonnato sauce.
This began as a peasant dish but over the years has been the subject of much elevation and refinement as the base foundation of veal and tuna have become more costly and tuna, especially, has many quality variations.
You can use this sauce with beef, vegetables, even as a crudite dip or to make the best tuna melt you’ve ever tried in your life!
*I had some on hand and put out for family saying “try this” dipping into roasted chilled vegetables; they all fell in love and I told them after what the blissful concoction was.
Now the good news.
Most recipes have you make an egg yolk emulsion like mayonnaise which can be a little fiddly and unstable so I’m showing you below a dummy-proof version which requires no cooking at all or making any emulsions.
There’s also a secret ingredient I like to add that pushes this tonnato sauce over the top in terms of flavor and memorability.
I’m not even stopping there. I go through each ingredient in the list so you know exactly what to get so you aren’t stuck with an underwhelming sauce. 🤝
You can whip this up in 5 mins ⏲ 🙌