Fusilli with Creamy Tuna

This is the smart way to handle canned tuna on a weeknight. Instead of opening a red sauce jar, you’re folding the fish into a no-cook cream sauce that comes together while the pasta boils.

The sauce is built around softened cream cheese, which acts as both binder and base. As the hot pasta hits it, the cream cheese melts smoothly into half-and-half and Parmesan, coating every spiral of fusilli. Those corkscrew curves are doing real work here, catching the sauce in their grooves better than long noodles ever could.

Fresh chives give the bowl a clean onion bite that cuts the richness. The final flourish, a knob of butter on the drained pasta and a heavy shower of parsley, adds gloss and a green herbal lift. This is unfussy Italian-American cooking at its smartest: minimal heat, maximum reward.

Pro Tips

• Use solid white albacore packed in oil for the richest flavor, draining only loosely so the oil can mingle with the sauce.
• Let the cream cheese come fully to room temperature before mixing. Cold cream cheese leaves clumps in the sauce.
• Reserve half a cup of pasta water before draining. A splash loosens the sauce if it tightens up.
• Toss the pasta with butter immediately after draining so each piece stays slick and doesn’t clump.

Variations

• Add a teaspoon of lemon zest and a squeeze of juice to brighten the cream sauce.
• Stir in capers or chopped olives for a piquant Mediterranean spin.
• Swap canned tuna for jarred Italian-style tuna in olive oil for a meatier, deeper flavor.