Ingredients
Fruit salad:
- 1 pound fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
- 1/2 fresh pineapple, peeled, cored and cubed (approx 2 ½ cups cubed)
- 2 cups grapes
- 2 cups blueberries
- 4 kiwis, peeled and sliced
- 3 mandarin oranges, peeled and segmented
- 2 mangoes, peeled and diced
Honey lime dressing:
- 1 teaspoon lime zest (from one lime)
- 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (from one lime)
- 2 tablespoons honey
The abundance of excellent fruit that is in season in the spring and summer is one of my favorite aspects of those seasons. And a large bowl of fruit salad is the best way to showcase and enjoy it. Also, you don’t want to skip the honey-lime dressing that I drizzle on top since I believe it makes the fruit salad taste fresher, juicier, and overall more delectable.
Fruit salad can be made with a wide range of fruits, but for a colorful, rainbow-colored salad, I always like a combination of roughly six to eight different fruits. Consider fruit in shades of blue, yellow, green, red, and orange when you’re at the market. The first thing you should do is wash any fruit that has a skin that you intend to consume, like these grapes.
Now, I won’t demonstrate how to wash every piece of fruit since it would get a little monotonous, but you may wash it in a bucket of water or in a colander placed under the faucet. Just be sure to completely dry the fruit after washing it to avoid adding more water to your fruit bowl.
Normally, all I do is lay it out on a fresh kitchen towel and pat it dry. Since I already have the grapes out, we can start there. You should cut roughly two cups of grapes into slices. You can use red or green grapes; it’s up to you.
You can either use this fantastic trick I learnt a few years ago to slice multiple grapes at once, or you may slice them one at a time using a knife. Finding a plastic lid from a storage container or using a tiny plate with a lip on the edge would be all that is necessary to keep the grapes in place. Next, I like to set another cover on top to shield my hands and help keep the grapes in place.
After that, all you have to do is use a very sharp knife to cut into the middle of the grapes. When you’re done, you’ll have quickly and easily cut through a complete bunch of grapes. The amazing thing about this approach is that it also works with grape and cherry tomatoes.
Once the grapes are cut into slices, simply place them in a sizable dish. You need a sizable bowl because this fruit salad is meant to feed a sizable crowd. The pineapple comes next, and for the juiciest flavor, it’s really worth getting a full pineapple and chopping it yourself. When you pick up a pineapple from the market, the exterior should be hard with some give in the middle.
On the bottom, it ought to smell lovely and sweet. It is most likely underripe if you cannot detect any aroma. Last but not least, I used to believe that if a leaf could be pulled out easily from the top, it was ripe. However, I have since learned that this is not the case; rather, it simply indicates that you have a loose leaf. Okay, let’s split the pineapple in half. Start by cutting off the top end, then turn it over and chop off the bottom.
Remove the outer peel by standing it up on end and cutting it with a sharp knife. To avoid wasting any fruit, I strive to cut as close to the skin as possible. As a result, I occasionally have to go back and trim up any spots that require a little extra shaving off the side. Now, if you look at the top of the pineapple, you’ll notice the fibrous and tough core in the center. It is therefore very simple to eliminate that.
To remove the entire pineapple flesh, simply cut down from the core in a straight line. This is done in four slices, leaving a square core that may be readily discarded. From here, you can cut the pineapple into bite-sized pieces for the fruit salad in whichever size you choose. There are various ways to cut a pineapple, but I prefer this method because it also provides me with a level surface here on the pineapple flesh, preventing it from moving about on me. You’ll want to add half a pineapple—about two and a half cups of diced pineapple—to the fruit salad for today’s meal.
To prepare my pineapple-turmeric smoothie in the future, I will slice up the entire pineapple and freeze the leftovers. Two mangoes are the next item, and to prepare them, simply chop off the top and bottom before peeling them. Use a knife instead of a peeler if your mangoes are very ripe and extremely mushy, because doing so may be challenging. My second mango is great today, but my first one is a little underripe.
The mango has an oval-shaped seed in the center that needs to be removed by cutting just off-center on the wide side, rotating it, and then cutting off the other half. The mango should then be divided into bite-sized pieces once the cheeks have been removed by cutting around the seed. Fruit salads with mango provide a beautiful, creamy texture; I prefer them to fruit salads with banana, which soon turn brown and become mushy. Here is the flesh of my second mango, which, as you can see, is sweeter and much more vibrant and fully ripe.
Okay, the next fruit is four kiwis, which you should cut in the same way as the mango. Cut them in half or quarters after removing the top and bottom and using a peeler to remove the skin. Slice across if you desire smaller pieces. Kiwi is a wonderful addition to fruit salads because it adds a lovely splash of green color and a significant amount of vitamin C.
In fact, even more than the mandarin orange, which we’ll discuss in a moment. So, when you’ve peeled and cut all of your kiwis, add them to the bowl. Add one pound of fresh strawberries for that brilliant red color that fruit salads must have. Simply remove the stems, cut the strawberries in half if they are tiny or quarters if they are larger, and add the strawberries to the dish.
The next step is to add the three mandarin oranges to the bowl. I prefer to use mandarin oranges because they are simpler to peel and segment than navel oranges, but if you can only find them, no worries. Just be sure to trim off any white, stringy, or pithy parts, as I am doing here, before adding them. (upbeat music) The last fruit that doesn’t require any preparation is blueberries.
So simply top off your bowl with two cups of blueberries. Take a moment to savor this delicious kaleidoscope of color before adding the dressing and stirring everything together. Okay, you’ll need one teaspoon of lime zest for this straightforward dressing, and you can get that from one lime. You can juice the same lime after it has been zested, and you will obtain roughly 1.5 to 2 teaspoons of lime juice.
Put two teaspoons of honey in a small bowl with that. I don’t use a lot of sweetener because I believe the fruit is already sufficiently sweet, but the honey helps to temper the lime’s zest. Pour it all over the salad after stirring it all together. The fruit salad only requires a gentle toss to combine everything. This fruit salad is a perennial favorite at gatherings, barbecues, picnics, and special occasions.
I make it as soon as possible to preserve its crisp, sweet flavor. If you have any leftovers, they will stay in the fridge for about three to four days in a sealed container, and if they become a little too soft, you can always make a delicious fruit smoothie out of them.