Make a Fruit Salad You’ll Actually Want to Eat
These little tricks will take your salad from cringe-worthy forgotten side dish to everyone’s favorite thing at the table.
I used to work at this beloved breakfast restaurant in Brooklyn while I was trying to sort out my next big move restaurant-wise. The menu was constantly changing and incredibly innovative. We would serve bone-marrow dumpling soup one day, trout roe omelettes the next, and persimmon-lardo toasts another. Even after I stopped working at the restaurant, I would still come in on my days off to have breakfast there. Did I go for the grand luxurious other items on the menu? No! As delicious as they were, I almost always had their seasonal bowl of fruit instead.
A favorite that stands out in my memory was just a bowl of perfect cherries and some creme fraiche sweetened with the littlest bit of sugar, but there were more where that came from. There was a day where I received a sixth of a local honeydew on a plate in one long piece like the shape of the moon. There were watermelon days, peach days, and some delicious stewed formerly dried fruits in the winter months.
When I compare that to a characterless fruit cup with grapes and out-of-season cantaloupe, it makes me die a little inside. I don’t blame whoever prepared the fruit salad— if you don’t know any better, how are you supposed to improve? However, once you have these rules in your back pocket, you’ll never have an excuse again.
Be Fussy
It’s okay to admit you don’t like eating apples that much, or that grapes don’t really rev your engine. Quantity is not preferred over quality, so be as selective as you like.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: you really only need one type of fruit to make a fruit salad. If you only want to eat watermelon, there are still ways to dress your fruit and make it a more formal dressed-up version of its naked counterpart.
How many fruits do I actually recommend? 1-3 different types of fruits makes sense to me, but make sure that they actually pair well together. I’d hate to see a salad with papaya and dried figs when you could have a berry salad.
Here’s my bonus hot take: sometimes I’ll add a fruit just for color, and that’s perfectly okay. As an example, check out my fruit salad above. The gooseberries are tasty in there, but they mostly work as a color contrast. That’s perfectly okay! We eat with our eyes as well as our mouths, so feel comfortable making a decision for visual effect as well as for taste.
Macerate Your Fruits
Not every fruit is going to taste like it was just picked off the vine all year long. That’s okay! There are ways to enhance the natural flavors of your ingredients and get the juices flowing.
I recommend tasting a fruit, then adjusting the “seasoning” just like you do with savory food. However, instead of using salt, you can use the sweetener and acid of your choice.
What kind of sweeteners are we talking about? I’d add plain old sugar, honey, or maple syrup. You don’t need to add a lot of any of these— a little bit will go a long way, but it will naturally make some lightly underripe fruit seem more succulent.
Acids come in many shapes and forms. Although a traditional option for a fruit salad might be a little lemon or lime juice, don’t let it stop there. A little vinegar may also be a great choice! You could go for rice wine vinegar if you wanted to be more on the subtle side or use balsamic vinegar if you wanted more of a statement.
Lastly, if you haven’t used verjus before, it may be exactly the balance you’re looking for between a straight vinegar and a sweetener. Verjus is a highly acidic juice that typically comes from grapes or crabapples. It is usually packaged to look like wine but has little to no alcohol content. You can find it in gourmet grocery stores and sometimes in wine shops. You won’t be disappointed if you invest in this $13 ingredient: you can use it in a variety of sauces and vinaigrettes, so you’re guaranteed to finish what you’ve started.
Accessorize
A fruit salad without any other ingredients is just fruit. It’s okay to add some dazzle to your salads to make them something that people can’t stop eating.
Once again: the same rules that apply to all dishes apply to your fruit salads as well. You will improve the quality of your fruit salad by adding texture, contrast, dimension, and crunch. How can you do that? By adding any of the ingredients below:
Toasted chopped hazelnuts
Citrus zest
Creme fraiche
Whipped cream
Vanilla extract
Fresh herbs
Unsweetened dried coconut
Chili flakes
This is not an exhaustive list, but instead a jumping-off point. Your instincts are likely to point you in a much better direction than I personally will.
Don’t Be Afraid to Turn It Savory
Just as any green salad may have fruits in it as an accompaniment, a fruit salad can have some savory elements. This can come in the form of cheeses, grains, or vegetables. It needn’t be intimidating! Here are some options below to get you started:
Replace the tomato in a caprese salad with a stonefruit like peach. The traditional mozzarella may be replaced with burrata if desired.
Make a strawberry, blueberry, and cucumber salad.
Combine tomatoes, watermelon, pickled red onions, feta, and mint
Make a melon, prosciutto, and arugula salad that is far more orange and pink than it is green.
Make a quinoa- mango salad chalked with lime, jalapeño, and cilantro.
